24 Hour Comic Book Exhibition and Cartoons Underground Festival Throw the Spotlight on Local Artistic Talent

It's the last month of the year.  Eeks.

In the midst of scrambling for getting one's work done before the year ends, well-deserved and planned (or maybe impromptu) holiday breaks and party preparations, there are always this last rush of events that seem to crop up in December. Like one's boss sneaking up from behind just when one is going on an emo-rant on Facebook.

Red Dot Diva got wind of two upcoming exhibitions that might be of interest to the local geek crowd. Check these out:

24 Hour Comics Exhibition
Back in early October, the annual Singapore 24-Hour Comics Day kicked off at LaSalle College of the Arts, where aspiring comic creators and artists hole themselves up in rooms to create a story within a day.

Luchadore in a Top Hat will approve

This year, Red Dot Diva dropped by at the event to support her two favourite bearded people - Gene Whitlock and Wayne Rée - who were there making lots of distracting noises while ensuring "Luchadore In A Top Hat"  (*super-bright spotlight on* - ta-dah! -) made his exuberant return to comic book form. And by return, it was another ridiculous funny adventure in which Red Dot Diva was given a teeny-weeny cameo role. With a robot. You an check out "Luchadore In A Top Hat Returns" here in Gene's Facebook page.

She also met and gave some encouragement to Kelvin Chan and his daughter Woofer-Rae, Kelly Bender, Ray Toh and...... very regretfully, Jerry Teo.

The desire to create something personal and new has increased over the years and this year, more than 180 participants signed up for the event. About half of these were LaSalle students, who all looked really serious about their craft and were mostly intensely bent over their desks drawing insanely detailed frames on paper.

But if you are inclined to a more seriously artistic bend to your comics, then head to La Salle's McNally Gallery tomorrow and check out the other wonderful submissions by local-based creators.

The launch of the exhibition, which will run for about a week is at:
Venue: La Salle School of the Arts, McNally Gallery
Date: 1 December 2014
Time: 7 PM

(There are also some of the other comics created during the event that is available online here.)


Cartoons Underground Festival

This niche animation festival focused on locally-created cartoons is back in town for the third time this year. However, this is the first time Red Dot Diva has actually heard of it. It sure sounds like a unique event that highlights the works of not yet well-known but very talented individuals based on Red Dot Island.

Presented by Barfing Squirrel Productions & Canvas, the Cartoons Underground Festival aims to promote local animators together with recognized independent names in the industry. In this festival, the screenings will consist mainly of adult-themed animation shorts.

The festival will kick off with a showreel showdown of local animators' works will be critiqued by industry professionals like Marchand Jooste ("The Chronicles of Narnia" and "Avatar"), Dayne Cowan ("Batman Begins" and "Bourne Ultimatum") and Chung Yin Ping (Disney's "My Friends Tigger and Pooh"). This showdown is supported by the Visual Effects Society (VES) and VES Education Committee, which promotes art and science of visual effects with almost 3,000 members in 33 countries worldwide.

During the festival, attendees will also be able to meet the directors, illustrators and visit booths belong to these films. In some sort of interconnected crossover, one of these will comic artist James Leong and writer FrankenDoll, who will be showcasing their work called "Perfect World Today", a ten part series first conceived at 2013 24-Hour Comics Day.

And what's a movie without popcorn? There's also beer to be had as one watches the screening of award-winning films from Annecy, Cannes and Hiroshima Animation Festivals while hanging out with the creators. The schedule of the night's program can be found here.

Venue: CANVAS, 20 Upper Circular Road
Date: 7 December
Time: 4:30 to 6:30 PM Cartoons Underground Showreel showdown; 7 PM - first screening; 8 PM - second screening

Tickets: Book at the event page here.

Entry is free and also, by donations. If you love the animation films screened during the festival, you could drop in a small donation to help defray the costs of food and drinks.




If entering into a trippy, imaginary visual world is your kind of brain rush, this festival might just be the place you need to be next Sunday!