This Sunday we went to Comic Con Madrid. We had the chance of visiting the event with Alfonso Giraldes ‘Banshee’. Last year, he offered a painting demo lasting more than 3 hours. This year however, there was no painting demo from Alfonso, so we simply attended with some friends (among them, Basilisk from ‘The Chromatic Circle’ and Banshee himself) as common audience. In this video summary we have prepared for you, you can see briefly some of the things we could enjoy there.
The event was celebrated in IFEMA, Madrid’s public Conference and Exhibition complex, a much bigger and better prepared space than last year’s (the ‘Pabellón de Cristal de la Casa de Campo’). This has much better public transport access, it is very close to the airport and has good acommodation offering. This is maybe one of the best places in Madrid to celebrate events of this kind. The miniature world should explore options like this one in Madrid, probably better to make our events more attractive even to international public.
Among the many things offered by Comic Con Madrid, there were Comic expos, shows, talks and presentations, Cosplay contests and exhibits, commercial stands from art shops and companies (even stands from Madrid’s Prado and Thyssen Museums, nothing better to accompany us if we were talking about a miniature event), boardgames, movies or a lightsaber sports competition school. It was a neverending myriad of options for nerd enjoyment. Compared to past editions, in which comics where by far the main stars, it seems these are now slowly fading to the background in favour of the other nerd disciplines in the show.
Regarding miniatures, one of the most interesting aspects of the show was the presentation of the boardgame ‘Heroquest 25th Anniversary Edition’, the very controversial project from the Spanish company Gamezone. There is already a delay of 3 years in the delivery of the product and backers of the crowdfunding project are not happy. We could see the current development status of the product and it seems in line with the communication and customer treatment from the company to its backers so far. A presentation of material that is half developed and miniatures showcased with a very poor painting level surrounded by angry people complaining. No doubt this is an initiative that is not going to end well.
For us, one of the areas we enjoyed the most was the Artists Alley, a place were individual illustrators, painters or graphic designers could showcase their work, to promote it or to sell samples of it. This is a show model that we feel is very adequate, maybe to use as reference for miniature modeling events int he future. It could be also a space to showcase miniature painting in more mainstream events such as this Comic Con. We believe our industry should explore these alternatives to spread the word of miniature painting.
So apart from a very fun day we enjoyed, we conclude that the Spanish miniature painting scene should explore these events for promotion to broader audiences. If there is space for so many nerd initiatives, why not showcase what we do here?
