Creative Market 2014 at National Library at Bugis

Creative Market is a local event to promote artists and their work to the public. This inaugural event was held at the open space at the National Library at Bugis. I only found out about this event last minute through the facebook status update of a friend. I forgot all about it until my colleague reminded me again yesterday.

So today I went down to check out what's happening there.

Creative Market (facebook | twitter) is organized by TCZ Studio (facebook | Twitter) which is a company set up by veteran comic artist Mr Wee Tian Beng, known for The Celestial Zone and The Return of the Condor Heroes comic series.

I learned that the booths there are actually free. I'm not sure if it's because the main event sponsor is National Arts Council (NAC). That's pretty cool for the artists!

That's my friend Ray Toh, comic and concept art artist, on the stage. Most of the crowd are just hanging out at the booths so Ray is almost speaking to no one.

These are two independent graphic novel titles Ray is working on currently, Fractured Thoughts, which is a collection of five short stories.

This is NAC's booth where they are promoting their MATCHBOX platform to invite art project ideas from the public. I wrote about it last year.

The lady at the NAC booth handed me a brochure containing the works of some upcoming local artists and events.

Kev!n and Libera Nos a Malo booth from Comixmag, a Singapore online comic magazine.

Rixou Liu Jiahui is the lady working on Pandora's Scar, an original full length graphic novel inspired by Greek mythology. I can see the Japanese manga style is a pretty strong influence.

This is at Wee Tian Beng's booth but I didn't get to see the artist himself. I found out only much later that he has a talk on creating comics later that day in the library.

Some of the characters from The Celestial Zone graphic novel series.

There's the artbook of Wee Tian Beng, and the Celestial Zone spin-off comics (I think).

That's the Creative Market info booth.

Unfortunately, the event is only for a single day on 22 November 2014.

I met quite a few new creators today, many of which are not at STGCC 2014.

This is Germaine Lim who's promoting her online comic.

There's also a booth that's selling some display tablets, namely the Huion GT-220 and Bosto 22HDX. I met the distributor and he's the same guy who loan me a review set of the Huion GT-220 which I reviewed last month.

This is the Bosto 22HDX. I've tried it for a while and it is much better than the Huion GT-220. By much better, I mean the finishing of the physical set looks professional, the stylus just glides smoothly on the screen, response rate is instantaneous, cable management is also neater.

I'm going to borrow a set for a more thorough review. It cost about SGD $200 more expensive the the Huion, but it's at least $2000 cheaper than the Wacom Cintiq 22HD. The pricing is really insane. Performance wise, I've to say that the Bosto is an incredible deal for the money.

That's concept artist Calvin Chua who works at an animation studio. His booth is filled with beautiful concept art prints. Check out his website for more artworks.

Purrballs.

Steven Jap

Ye Zhen live painting on a t-shirt.

My friend James Leong with his paintings.

I often wonder if these badges and prints sell well.

These two ladies are nighyee and Grace Zhan. Their artworks are quite different from the other artists.

Here's a close up at Grace's artworks.

Grace using watercolours on her sketchbook.

Epigram Books is there as well.

Cartoon instructor Ho See Kum from ComixGuru.

These are some sketch postcards from Mr Ho.

The dudes from Association of Comic Artists (Singapore).