Students of world-renowned Belgian 'game school' design stamps with digital touch
The Digital Arts & Entertainment course at Howest in Kortrijk has already been awarded several times as the best game design and development course in the world. It is a breeding ground for talent in video games, 3D animation and video effects. All the more reason to give these future video game designers an opportunity to express their creativity on a high-profile, 'slaying' stamp.
Friday 31 January 2025Howest organized a contest for the best stamp design among DAE students in 2023. They could submit a work (existing or new) for the stamp; from these, the 3 best works were chosen by the school. In addition, from the +-50 final year group projects, the best game and the best film were also chosen to arrive at a total of 5 diverse works now featured on the stamp sheet. They are not crypto stamps, but attached to two of the five stamps, there is a QR code that takes you to a world that captures the imagination.
1. With the first stamp, “A Fairytale in Ruin”, by Yanouk Verleysen, one immediately enters a fairytale landscape.
2. A group of students, Jana Baloghová, Rico Criel, Sedes De Cock, Famke Dewachter, Nicolas Neve, Tuomas Paul and Piotr Zaras created a beautifully crafted video game of an otter, Otterwordly, which is linked to the stamp by a QR code.
3. Christiane Schaper brings a painting to life in “Breathtaking Brushstrokes”. “A hand emerged from the canvas, fingers gracefully gripping the edge of the frame, as if pulling itself out of the depths of the two-dimensional abyss. With an eerie glow in its eyes, the figure crept out and fixed its gaze on the artist.”
4. 4. When you scan the QR code on the fourth stamp, you find yourself in the middle of the prehistoric steppe. Students Mari Gallet, Theoni Fotoglou, Katharina Alexander, Finn De Brie, Arnout Zeghari and Roy Terium spectacularly bring this world to life in “Giant of the Steppe”.
5. Finn Bogaert then catapults us back into the future with "Exodus Labs”. He shows the workspace of a spacecraft dedicated to analyzing various materials and substances found on other planets and asteroids.
These stamps are located on the leaf in a lovely landscape with a ruined face overgrown by flowers and greenery, created by Katharina Alexander.
Regis Le Roy, Academic Director Digital Arts and Entertainment Howest: “At Howest DAE, we took up the challenge of helping to think about the creation of a stamp with both hands, and the students were totally up for it as well.
Our students are digital natives, but bridging the gap with a paper medium like stamps is an opportunity for them to be able to see their work physically as well; or how you go from the drawing board to the envelope, so to speak: our students land their creativity on stamps.
We are often in the rapidly evolving world of video games, visual effects and animation, sometimes underestimating how each image in itself can also tell a lot. The images on the stamps show that this can also be very powerful and timeless in its own right, as each stamp always has been and always will be ... and then having a digital link attached to it makes it even more punishing."
The sheet consists of 5 different gummed stamps value ①WORLD. The new stamp issue costs 15 euros (for a sheet with 5 stamps) and is available from now on the eshop of bpost, as well as in the Philaboutiques of Brussels and Mechelen.
