As he mentioned on his Twitter this morning, Matthew Lewis is the Ambassador for the Young Game Designers Competition which is being held by The British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Today he was at the launch of the competition at the Walthamstow Academy, he will be promoting the competition. According to the press release:

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) is launching a new initiative that explores the creative possibilities and career opportunities within video games. The BAFTA Young Game Designers competition invites teams of three young people aged 11-16 from across the UK to submit a design for a new video game. The winning team will be announced at the EA British Academy Children’s Awards in November.The main aims of the competition are to promote creativity, help young people understand the different roles within video game design and highlight the key subject areas for entry into the industry.

BAFTA is partnering with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), Abertay University and EA for the competition. The winning team will receive a prize package that includes a BAFTA Young Game Designers Award; a work experience stint at Bright Light, an EA games studio, during which they will continue to develop their games concept; and a prototype of the winning game developed with Abertay University. All entrants – including the winning team – will retain the right to take their game to any studio in order to develop it commercially. The competition is open to all children aged 11-16 and further details about how to enter the competition can be found at www.bafta.org/ygd .

Matthew Lewis, best known to fans of the Harry Potter films as Neville Longbottom, has come onboard as the BAFTA Young Game Designers Ambassador. He will promote awareness of the competition to the media, children and their parents and sit on the competition’s judging panel.

On 14 July, BAFTA will host a launch event to kick off the competition with 120 school children from across England. Featuring panel discussions and workshops that focus on gameplay, characterisation, storytelling and environments (how locations and settings impact on games), the event will take place between 10.30am and 3.30pm at Walthamstow Academy. Featured speakers will include BAFTA Young Game Designers Ambassador, Matthew Lewis, young games designer and BAFTA Ones to Watch winner, Vykintas Kazdailis, and EA’s Harvey Elliott, VP, General Manager, Bright Light. Young people attending the event will be split into groups and additional activities will include creating mood boards to outline their games, as well as having the chance to pitch their games and receive feedback from industry experts.

I will update with photos if any appear online from this event.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard about this, but every year WWF has a campaign to raise awareness on global warming. This year’s Earth Hour is Saturday, March 27th. Make sure to be a part of this global statement. This is a very serious issue and we support it 100% on this website. Go to http://www.earthhour.org/ to check the exact hour in your country! This can actually be quite fun; last year my family and I played Apples to Apples, great family bonding time!

I would like to offer my congratulations to reader Liesbeth who was the lucky recipient of Matthew’s doodle for National Doodle Day! She has kindly sent over some photos of the doodle for us to see!  View them in the gallery and thumbnails below!

Congratulations and enjoy the doodle and the fact that you helped out an awesome charity!!!

Bidding has ended on the National Doodle Day drawings done by various actors and Matthew Lewis’ doodle has made over $100!  There were 25 bids and bidding ended at £84.11 which is approximately US $127.79! Great job Matt!  He made the 2nd highest amount out of the Potter actors; Bonnie was first making $311.46, wow!

Congratulations to whoever won his doodle, if you were the winner let us know how awesome the doodle is in person!

Matthew has taken part in this year’s National Doodle Day by drawing a doodle that will be sold for charity!

Visit the National Doodle Day website to see a gallery of all doodles that were donated.The doodles will be auctioned off tomorrow, March 5th, on eBay. (I will update this with a link to his doodle when it is on ebay)

Thanks to Leaky for the info!

UPDATE: Go here to bid on the auctions!