Home > ASU student cartoonist wins top MTV award

ASU student cartoonist wins top MTV award, development deal

He’s funny, all right. He’s also clever, original, and downright irreverent. ASU senior Tony Carrillo, cartoonist for The State Press student newspaper, has won Best College Comic Strip from MTV for his “F Minus” strip. He’ll get a development deal with United Media, a major comic syndicate.

Carrillo’s comic strip, which has run for the past two years in The State Press, gathered enough online votes to push him to the finals of mtvU Strips, a contest sponsored by the largest TV network for college students in the country.

The winner was selected by online voters, United Media representatives and judges Scott Adams, creator of “Dilbert,” and David Rees, creator of “Get Your War On.” United Media syndicates many of the country’s most well-known comic strips, such as “Peanuts,” “Get Fuzzy” and “Luann.”

Carrillo graduates from ASU this week – on Dec. 16 – with a degree in fine arts, with a specialization in drawing. Soon he’ll begin working with professionals to develop his strip for syndication, while receiving a stipend for six months.

“Tony is very talented and deserving of this award. I keep telling him that he’ll be famous someday, and I can say that I knew him when,” says Kristin Gilger, director of ASU Student Media. The State Press is an award-winning independent student newspaper published five days a week.

Carrillo has produced a book, “The F Minus Book.” More information and an archive of his comics are online at www.fminus.net. For more information on the contest, visit www.mtvu.com/contests/mtvu_strips/.

Auffret, with Marketing & Strategic Communication, can be reached at 480-965-6991 or (sauffret@asu.edu).