Celebrating Award Winning, Trailblazing Independent Kiwi Creatives This June
CHROMACON, New Zealand’s largest biennial festival of homegrown illustrators, comic artists, toy designers, game developers and animators returns for the fourth time to Auckland’s Aotea Centre across 1 and 2 June (Queens’ Birthday weekend).
Free to the public, the event will be connecting art-lovers with close to 200 of New Zealand’s best independent creators, international guests and their self-produced works. To remain a free event, Chromacon is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter.
Amongst this year’s 200 exhibitors include prolific creatives such as Toby Morris (The Pencilsword, The Side Eye), Ant Sang (BroTown, The Dharma Punks), Paul Tobin (White Cloud Worlds, The Hobbit Trilogy, Avatar), Li Chen (Extra Ordinary), Dylan Horrocks (Hickville, Magic Pen), Michel Mulipola (Samoan Heroes), Ross Murray (Rufus Marigold), Mukpuddy (The Barefoot Bandits, Quimbo’s Quest), Phoebe Morris (First to the Top, Sky High, Hero of the Sea), Tanya Marriott (President Emeritus of the National Institute of American Doll Artists), Ned Wenlock (Spring Jam), T-wei, Aimee Cairns and much more.
Festival Founder and Director Allan Xia says, “The fact that our number of exhibitors has doubled from the last festival is a testament to the vibrancy and growth of New Zealand’s diverse creative community. From our youngest exhibitor Zoe (Year 9) to international exhibitors joining us from Australia, US, Canada, China to Puerto Rico, this is by far the biggest and most exciting Chromacon to date.”
Chromacon exhibitors will be showcasing and releasing for sale a range of self-produced works in the form of original drawings/paintings to zines, prints, enamel pins, stickers, tees, designer toys, comics, art books and much more.
“Many local creators are punching well above their weight and widely recognised on the global stage. Recently, Kiwi graphic novelists Katie O’Neil (Tea Dragon Society, Aquicorn Cove) and Rachel Smythe (Lore Olympus) were each nominated for a 2019 Eisner Award (often called the “Oscar of Comics”). Chromacon is the best place to meet Katie, Rachel plus hundreds of other highly accomplished homegrown creatives in person and be inspired by their craft, unique stories, as well as their innovation and passion for what they do.”
Alongside the festival Chroma Art Awards (1st June) will celebrating the best in New Zealand-made Illustration, Comic Art, Concept Design, Animation, and Video Games. Submission are currently open to New Zealand artists of all ages and backgrounds.
Chromacon 2019 is proud to host of special international guest creators exhibiting alongside Kiwi creators. After the festival, they will also present talks and host masterclasses at Chroma Connect, the creative industry summit to be held at Massey University in Wellington 8-9th June. This year’s international guests are:
Wolf Smoke Animation Studio – Cloud Yang and Clover Xie
Jeff Soto Presented by Weta Workshop School at Massey University
Nate Frizzell Presented by Takapuna Art Supplies
Andrew Domachowski Presented by Weta Workshop
For more information visit the festival’s official site here.
