Kuma Studios

It's been hectic few weeks since our last post. The first weekend of September we attended the Anime League Convention (AlCon) in Leicester followed a week later with the Super Versus Battle. Thanks to all of the exhibiting and travelling alongside our usual workload we've been kept very busy.

AlCon

AlCon provided an interesting contrast to our previous convention experience exhibiting at AyaCon. The dealer room was significantly smaller with a much tighter selection of tables and with an attendance roughly a third of the size of Aya. What became apparent during the three day event was the friendships formed due to the intimate setup. Everyone seemed to know one another and an unbelievable amount of people had travelled across europe to meet up - for one weekend Leicester had become the anual meeting place for anime and videogame fans from all over Scandanavia. Attendees were happy to talk (for hours on end sometime) and we've made some great new friends who have been lighting up our DA. Once again we were snapping away for our Facebook group, but thanks to gremlins I've lost all control of the group for some unknown reason - once this is resolved I'll get the pics posted for your tagging pleasure.

As well as all of the new faces we had a chance to catch up with a lot of 'old' faces - by old I mean people we've met once, three weeks ago ^-^  Highlights for me include comparing service station and shopping centre loos with Phil from Genki Gear; Martin doodling away with Hui from neighbouring dimensional; geeking out about vinyl toys with Neo Martian; frequent visits from our Ganguro'd friend (sorry, I've forgotten your name - but never the face); chatting with Sonia from Sweatdrop (and trying not to get scared when she gets riled); and of course chatting with the ever friendly Gurinder. And throughout all of this the fantastic Cosplay Cafe kept us topped up with tea and cake - ace!

Our fan artwork for the Super Vs Battle featuring characters from a variety of fighting games, can you work out who they all are?

Super Vs Battle & The Big Smoke

After AlCon we had half a week to get ready for Super Vs Battle, a massive video games fighting tournament held in London. Due to our round-the-clock workload and the hardcore gaming focus of the event we chose not to attend the event as dealers. Instead we provided the event organiser with some of our videogame fan art to be used on event posters. We also compiled this into a short animation which played during the event to hype the final battles, we'll try and upload this sometime soon. This allowed us plenty of time to talk with some insanely good Street Fighter players, have a pop at some currently unreleased games, and chatting with some of the industry guys.

But having a few days in London is always good so we took the opportunity to have a look around; spend some money; eat out; drop in on the guys at the Animation Art Gallery (at the County Hall Movieum); visit a plethora of comic shops; irritate and amuse fellow undergrounders by heafting around my new ridiculously oversized Van Orlax (Pete Fowler) Vinyl Toy (+ box); haggle in China Town; Explore the bits of Camden I've never seen before; and generally wear ourselves out being little kids in the big city. If only there where enough hours in a day to squeeze in a visit some of the amazing museums and galleries - it's been too long since I saw those dinos.

What's Left of the Year...

The convention season seems (by and large) to be coming to an end now. We have the delights of the massive London Expo to look forward to which will mark the end of our convention year. It's been an interesting introduction into the scene - we've learnt a helluva lot and have some big plans for 2010. But, with one last (BIG) con left this year, we're going to try out a few new ideas providing we find the time between now and then. So if you're in London on October 24-25 then definitely try to make your way over to the Excel Centre and Check out the MCM Expo - you'll find us hiding away there somewhere.

We look forward to seeing you  ^-^

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Kuma Studios Convention Debut at AyaCon 09

It can be hard to find people who share your interests and hobbies, especially when you have an insatiable appetite for toys and cartoons. Thankfully conventions bring like-minded people together on a semi-regular basis throughout the year. We made our convention debut as dealers at AyaCon '09, a three day event held at Warwick Arts Centre.

We arrived at event with a car full of our dealers stuff disorientated from navigating unknown roads clinging to roadsign directions - but had definitely found the right place. Crowds of colourful cosplayers surrounded the arts centre looking eager to get into the convention spirit. Without too much hassle we caught up with the convention organiser Tom Kneebone who showed us to our table in the empty dealer room.

By the time we'd set up our table many of the other dealers had arrived and were unpacking all sorts of interesting wares, from manga comics and books to anime DVDs and toys. We snuck out of the dealers area in time to catch the opening ceremony where we got to see all 1000+ attendees, the majority of which where cosplayed up and excitedly interacting with the event hosts. It was great fun to be surrouned by such an enthusiastic and friendly atmosphere.

We found our way back into the dealers room to straighten up the last few bits of our table, have a chat our neighbours and make introductions to some of the other dealers before heading off into the sunset.

Our new banner 'I Love Spaghetti'

Dealer Days

The dealer room was open to everyone at the con both Saturday and Sunday throughout the day. We arrived 15 minutes before the doors opened, sneaking past the snaking que of curious attendees.To our utter delight we found a note on our table from the Sweatdrop girls; the previous afternoon we'd been chatting away with Sonia Leong and Emma Vieceli as they set up their table and had urged them to have a peek at ours before they got too busy with conventioning. The letter put us in high spirits as the doors opened and hundreds of people flooded the room.

A letter of confirmation from the lovely Sweatdrop ladies

From here on it was an exciting game of meeting many new faces and chatting in geeky detail about comics, art, anime and videogames... and selling some prints, posters and t-shirts too. Emma (from Sweatdrop) dropped by to invite us to their panel so we left our trusty friend Steve to hold fort.

The panal was great. The Sweatdrop girls know how to be insightful and entertaining (in equal measures) giving great advice drawing upon their years of industry experience. It was fun to be in an active audiance who were full of interesting questions and seemed to know the girls work incredibly well - even Emma was surprised by some of the obscurity.

Martin's sketch of/gift to Sweatdrop's Sonia in full cosplay mode

After the panel Martin returned to Steve and I headed out on a Subway mission. Interestingly our busiest sales period seemed to be as we tucked into our subs, so I conclude that if you want to make sales - stuff your face full of sandwich.

I wish I could properly explain this. But apparently this sort of cosplay has something to do with 'Furry'... Amazing, and slightly intimidating. Great talons though.

Making Friends

Being new on a scene is an interesting experience, having never taken our work to a convention meant that there was a lot of unknowns. Thankfully everyone we met seemed to be friendly and well humoured. Convention veterans Genki Gear were set up opposite us and were happy to chat with us and give advice throughout the weekend. The guy from Neo Martian supplied us with parcel tape and let us pick their brains about toys on and off all weekend. Gundam guru Gurinder (Gundam Nation) was a friendly face from the beginning and was happy to chat and offer advise throughout the con. I spent a fair amount of time chatting with Huy from Dimensional Manga about their awesome Pwanda series and got a sneak peek at their incredible new kids book. We also hooked up with Dil, the big boss man at Dimensional, who was super supportive of our work and mentioned some possible future collaborative projects. Terratag were also really accomodating, and happily answered our questions and showing us all their new tees. And of course Sweatdrop, who were really cool and supportive throughout.

My favorite costume hands down - duct tape, poster paint and cardboard mecha madness. Sweet.

If that wasn't enough we also met a whole load of super friendly attendees who chatted away with us, posed for photos and gave supportive feedback - thanks guys. And as we left with a camera full of photos we decided that it was probably best that we share those with everyone so we've just set up our Kuma Studios Facebook group. Feel free to join the group, take a look at the photos, tag yourself, your friends and keep in touch.

More Conventions(!)

Whilst chatting away with people one of our favorite topics was "what conventions would you recommend". London Expo seemed to be on everyones lips, and thankfully our new friend Emma Vieceli is a big wig in the Comics Village there and was more then happy to help us get involved. We also found out that there is a convention due to be held in Leicester (our hometown) in the coming weeks and Gurinder promised to put a good word in there. A few emails later and we have the following cons confirmed:

Alcon 4-6 September, Leicester

Super VS Battle 11-13 September, London

London MCM Expo 24-25 October, London

If your going to be at any of these events then please stop by and say hello. If you saw us at AyaCon please comment or join our Facebook group - we'd love to keep in touch.

I'll be back with a new blog soon, I'll try to keep it shorter. Have a nice day all  - Pete  ^_^

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Welcome to the new Kuma Studios website. We've been working closely with Clear Networks for the past few months to create a new site that is simple, easy to use and with a clear division between our different illustration and graphic design offerings. Thanks to their wonderful content management system (CMS) our site is now very flexible so expect regular updates throughout the folio, case studies and blog sections.

Over the following week's we'll be updating this blog with our news, tips and sketchs as well as other interesting tidbits from the wider world of illustration. In the meantime be sure to check out both the illustration and graphic design sections of our site and the case studies sections for an in-depth explaination of some of our projects.

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