GREENFIELD — Sean Fannin smiled so much Wednesday afternoon that his mouth hurt.
And he had good reason to grin.
The Weston Elementary School third-grader found out he was chosen as one of 53 state and territory winners in Google’s 11th annual “Doodle for Google” competition. Any K-12 student in the United States and its territories was eligible to submit a redesign of the Google homepage logo for the art contest.
Students had to design their drawings around the theme, “When I grow up, I hope … ,” according to a Google press release. Sean’s doodle, called “Engineer,” depicted gears, tools, robots and a light bulb inside an orange background. His drawing was selected from thousands of entries across Indiana.
On Wednesday afternoon, Weston Elementary students, decked out in red, blue, yellow and green Doodle for Google shirts, surprised Sean, 9, during an assembly near the end of the school day, where Google employees from San Francisco announced Sean as the Indiana representative for the contest.
Sean said he based the drawing on his career goal of becoming an engineer.
“I’ve been wanting to be an engineer since I could talk,” he said.
Sean drew the sketch in his art class earlier in the year. Laura Seele, art teacher at Weston, said she gave the option for students to enter their drawings into the competition. At first, she said Sean was hesitant to draw the logo. He eventually agreed, and Sean said he went through several orange-colored pencils to sketch in the background. He was also the last student in Seele’s class to finish the drawing before the deadline.
Stephanie Fannin, Sean’s mother, said she’s proud of her son being named the top “doodle” student in the state.
“It just shows him that your hard work will pay off,” Fannin said.
The national winner, which the public can vote for online during the first week of June, will have their doodle featured on the Google homepage for a day, the press release states. The student will also receive a $30,000 college scholarship, and the school will get $50,000 for its technology program.
The public vote will determine the final national finalists in the competition. Those five students will travel to the Google headquarters in California and also receive a $5,000 scholarship. Voting will be open from June 3-7: www.google.com/doodle4google/vote.html.
Google frequently alters its home page logo with doodles that commemorate events, famous people’s birthdays and other themes.
