It was another successful event for Fanfaire NYC 2020 holding its third annual event at the High School of Art & Design (HSAD) on February 8-9. Fanfaire NYC is a pop culture art festival created by the Parents Teacher Association (PTA), benefiting its student body. It’s also the school’s largest fundraising event.
Located at 245 East 56th Street, New York, NY, Fanfaire NYC is an annual two-day festival featuring over 125 artists and vendors selling comics, prints and swag. Award-winning guest speakers provide insights about their careers and creative process. Additionally, fans and aspiring artists attend costume contests, panel discussions, workshops and portfolio reviews. Here are the highlights:
This is not your ordinary high school event. Fanfaire NYC can hold its weight against some of the larger conventions around the country that we’ve attended. Presenting guests like Neal Adams (character designer for Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow), Abe Audish (storyboard artist for Cartoon Network), and Bob Camp (The Ren and Stimpy Show), an artist’s dream to meet. We were very excited about this year’s program.
It was our second time attending. The event drew a much larger crowd this year, especially to artist alley.
We were shoulder to shoulder trying to check out the different talent presenting their work.
One huge draw to the exhibit area was Neal Adams, who is also an HSAD alum. Besides his modern rendition of Batman and Green Arrow, Adams is also known for being the cofounder of the graphic design studio Continuity Studios (formerly Continuity Graphics Associates), a New York City and Los Angeles based art and illustration studio. We could not help but be overly excited to see him drawing at his exhibit.
We observed a member of Allagesofgeek.com interviewed several of Fanfaire’s guest to include Bob Camp, Carl Potts, and Lucinda Lewis. According to their website, All Ages of Geek, LLC is a production, entertainment and streaming service that focuses on geek culture, producing content for kids to adults. During their interview, Bob Camp offered up his advice to aspiring comic artist and animators that want to get their works reviewed by the likes of Netflix and Nickelodeon, stating, “…just make a cartoon. If you want to make a comic book, make a comic book. Just do it yourself. It’s shown time after time that people who do that have a better shot.”
Carl Potts discussed working on a graphic novel based on his family experiences in the Philippines during World War 2 (WWII), which is being published by the Naval Institute Press. He added that his mother was a Japanese-American civilian prisoner of the Japanese, who was later rescued by a “flying column”. The flying column during WWII was a small, ad hoc, independent, military land unit capable of rapid mobility and usually composed of combined arms of military service. It’s been a long time in the making with the Naval Press Institute announcing in the fall of 2017 its new line of comics and graphic novels.
It was definitely a successful event. We are never ceased to be amazed by the creativity, the originality and the tenacity of these students and other talent presenting their art at Fanfaire NYC’s Artist Alley. We are looking forward to Fanfaire’s next event.
For more information about FANFAIRE, please visit http://fanfairenyc.com/