Our Five Years of Firefox design challenge over at the Creative Collective has ended, and I’m very pleased to report that the winner is “Happy B-Day Firefox“, by Rogelio Calamaya, Jr (aka Lucero). There were a lot of great submissions, but his stood out as one of my favorites…very creative and well-done.

Mary Colvig has a post with more information that also showcases some of the other amazing community activity that took place around Firefox’s 5th birthday, so be sure check that out.

Congrats to Rogelio for his awesome work, and BIG thanks to everyone who took the time to create and submit a design. Stay tuned for info on the next one coming soon!

When we launched the Mozilla Creative Collective last August, our goal was to give artistically-inclined members of the Mozilla community a place to share their work. Since then, our artists have uploaded nearly 800 pieces, including some very unique and unexpected stuff…as always, seeing the community in action is a very awesome and inspiring thing.

One of my favorite Creative Collective artists is Hamu, who lives in Beijing and has posted 29 Firefox-inspired illustrations so far. His work is an interesting blend of and modern cartoons and traditional Chinese styles, so I decided to get in touch and find out more about his inspirations and process. He gave some great answers, so be sure to read the interview below and then check out his full gallery at the MCC.

Thanks Hamu!

When you start working on a new piece, what’s your artistic process like? Specifically, what about Firefox inspires you?

Well, as same as other artists, before painting I need some inspiration. Inspiration in my perspective means some human feeling from one’s daily life. When the inspiration is clear and definite in my mind, I will do some imagination to decide the overall composition and construction, then I will start painting.

Firefox comes from a worldwide community. I started my Internet browsing in 1997 and witnessed “The 1st Internet Browser War” between Internet Explore and Netscape. After that, this virtual world lost the balance – IE grew bigger and bigger, but it became worse and worse.

The rise of Firefox was like new blood giving this virtual world a rebirth. It has stimulated people’s creativity. The success of Firefox is a story happening in front of eyes. In the story, Firefox experienced failure, reflection, rebirth and eventually won. It encouraged me to keep creating something new.

One of my favorite pieces you’ve done is “Traditional Chinese Style” (annotated version shown above). What was the process like as you were creating that one? What do the various symbols and characters mean?

At the very beginning of my Mozilla Creative Collective life, I tried to do something different than others. I didn’t focus on the group of keywords like “5″, “birthday” and “anniversary” – instead, I tried to express the feeling from my daily life with Firefox during this five years. With “Traditional Chinese Style” I wanted to express that with Firefox we could freely do anything on the Internet, that there were no longer any restrictions on browsing.

I have heard that, 201 years ago, an American man named Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky – afterwards he proposed “The Emancipation Proclamation”, which gave hope to those black slaves and eventually he won the American Civil War. I have also heard that, 92 years ago, a Japanese man named Matsushita Konosuke used only 100 Japanese yuan and built the world famous corporation Panasonic. 16 years ago, a black African whose name is Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ended the apartheid in South Africa and won in a fully representative democratic election. With a dream, a mortal will become a hero.

When I saw the notice of Firefox’s 5th anniversary, a Chinese proverb flashed in my mind: “海阔凭鱼跃，天空任鸟飞”. The direct translation is “the sea is wide enough that fish could swim to everywhere, the sky is wide enough that bird could fly to everywhere.” It comes from a Buddhist named 元览 (Yuan Lan) who lived in the 唐 (Tang) dynasty in China. He wrote “大海从鱼跃，长空任鸟飞” on a piece of bamboo to express his feeling. I translate this poetry as “With a dream, you could sail to everywhere you want; with a dream, you could fly to everywhere you like.” It’s a metaphor that one can be fully free to act, or freely demonstrate one’s abilities without constraints.

(editor’s note: here’s a larger version of the annotated image shown above)

Another one of my favorites is “Creative Pioneer: Protector“, which is very different from “Traditional Chinese Style”. What was your process and inspiration for that one?

All of my paintings are about my feelings. When I reviewed the past 10 years, I remembered some terrible experience at that chaos time – pop-up advertisements, unauthorized redirection, cookie tracking, malware…I think the role as a protector is the best way to represent Firefox, which has made your Internet browsing more safe, simple and secure.

If you have religious beliefs, in front of a huge statue you will find a piece of calm. So I decided to draw the Firefox as the sphinx – a huge protector who protects the tomb of the pharaoh. The feedback from visitors shows that people like the pictures with a intuitive meaning better than others, so I added some words for the major characters to help people understand it.

Lastly, what led you to become involved with Mozilla? And how did you find out about the Creative Collective?

The biggest attraction for me is the various communities of Mozilla. Here, I found many people who have the same hobbies with me. We communicate with our designs and share these to the others. It opened my eyes and let me learn a lot things which I didn’t know before. The Creative Collective is one of the web sites which I visit frequently. I heard about it when I looked for some news about Mozilla on mozilla.org and found a link about the 5th anniversary design challenge. As I said before, when I saw these words at a glance inspiration flashed in my mind. I signed up for an account immediately and started my Creative Collective life then.