Chris Chevere, senior graphic design major, draws the Earth during the Creative Clash competition on Saturday at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Working alongside teammate Skylar March, a graphic design alumna, the duo aimed to represent UCF’s “Reach for the Stars” campaign.
Emmy Bailey
The clock was ticking and markers were flying as the lobby of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts transformed into a high-stakes creative arena during Saturday’s Creative Clash at UCF Celebrates the Arts.
Eight UCF School of Visual Arts and Design students went head-to-head in a large-format artwork competition. It was a one-hour live battle where artists faced a blank, door-sized canvas and a theme they wouldn’t know until seconds before the clock started.
This year’s prompt was a tribute to NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon. Victor Davila, associate professor of graphic design, helped organize and emcee the event, starting by pairing the eight students into teams. After that, the theme was revealed and the timer began.
Team Four, Skylar March, a 2025 graphic design alumna, and Chris Chevere, senior graphic design major, grounded their piece in both the Artemis II mission and UCF’s “Reach for the Stars” campaign.
“When we were first given the prompt, our minds jumped to you know, to the moon, which is often used as a shorthand for success,” March said. “So it’s a pretty common saying, aim for the moon because you may end up among the stars instead, even if you miss.”
Their piece followed that idea to its logical end: Citronaut on Earth, Pegasus launching outward toward the stars — a visual nod to Artemis II’s long-term goal of reaching Mars.
“It was a very chaotic process. As we worked, we realized new things, like my marker started dying after drawing the earth, so I used that for texture instead of coloring it in. And we also used our fingerprints to create, like, the texture of the cosmos,” March said.
Halfway through the hour-long process, Davila added a bonus: Teams had to incorporate the concept of humanity’s first contact with the moon’s surface and were allowed to add exactly one color to their piece.
Ariana Bounce, senior studio art major, strokes her marker on the canvas during the Creative Clash competition Saturday at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Bounce was one of eight School of Visual Arts and Design students competing in the UCF Celebrates the Arts’ live large-format artwork battle, where the theme isn’t revealed until seconds before the clock starts.
Emmy Bailey
The results were vivid, chaotic and entirely their own.
Team One, featuring senior graphic design major Gianna Vargas and junior animation and visualization major Stephanie Arrarte, took home the judges’ award.
“We wanted to lead the viewer’s eye from the bottom, so a lot of the weight is there, and then it gets lighter as you go up,” Vargas said. “We have Knighro at the bottom, and I feel like he is who we all look forward to being happy and gaining a sense of inspiration from. So he pulls the whole fortress, all of us grabbing onto each other as a community, as we all ascend into the moons and the stars together.”
Three judges, all UCF alumni — Reina Castellanos, Christian Stanley and Ali Castro — evaluated the finished works. Team One earned top honors, while Team Three, featuring sophomore advertising and public relations major Marcia Steinborn and senior graphic design major Vanessa Mroan, earned the Crowd Pleaser Award, with their lunar vision placing Knightro center stage and winning the audience vote.
For first-time attendee Chris Mansor, the appeal was immediate.
As the five-minute mark hits, participants in the Creative Clash commencement Saturday at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts put the final touches on their pieces. The lobby, filled with onlookers and the scratch of dying markers, fell into a tension as the artists raced to finish.
Emmy Bailey
“We’re into supporting the local arts, so it’s always fun to come out and see what students are doing nowadays,” Mansor said.
The finished artwork remains in the lobby as proof: Given a blank canvas, a handful of markers and an hour, UCF artists can reach the moon.