Critical Hits Zine Fair
On Saturday the 22nd of March, me and my friend Francis attended the Critical Hits Zine fair in the Bonington gallery on the NTU campus. The exhibition included an artists alley of Zine and TTRPG writers, the Weird hope machines art exhibit, talks with people involved in the TTRPG industry and a small film showcase. As me and Francis are extremely passionate about TTRPGs this was such a cool event to attend to get to network and talk with people in this industry. On top of this, we brought along some of our own zines that we make under the HearthValley name, we were suggested by Sam to find an individual by the name of David Blandy who is quite an important figure attending the exhibition, Sam told us to give him some of our zines to have a look at and to make some good connections. I found this event not only really interesting and cool, but also very informative. We picked up some really vital information from people in this industry that has really inspired us to carry on making zines. Some of the points we gathered are:
When it comes to actually producing our zines (or later on down the line, books), we should look at finding manufacturers based in Lithuania, many of the stall holders who sold hardback books reiterated that several sellers from Lithuania have quite cheap prices with high quality products, and this is coupled with the less stressful shipping distance so that you're not worrying about your products getting lost or damaged in transport. Thinking more about our zines, we were recommended by many of the sellers to try a service called Mixam, they produce high quality paper zines for a really affordable price which is more convenient for us in the long run as opposed to hand binding and printing our zines at a local print shop.
Moving onto selling our zines and making products for an Audience, we were told that whilst Audience feedback is important, you can't make everyone happy and trying to do something that isn't authentic to you and is based more on trends will ultimately result in either a project that is soulless, or one that you just don't enjoy working on. Always remember to make things you like and enjoy. You'll be more motivated to do something if you enjoy it and you will find your audience, take inspiration from trends but just build your own brand.
Sort of tagging on to this point, explore different art styles, don't be afraid to make something that isn't your best. Your taste will always be better than your ability and whilst sometimes it will converge and you will make something that really makes you go wow, as your ability improves further you'll look back on those projects and see all the ways you could have improved. This isn't failure, rather noticing mistakes just demonstrates how far you have developed. On a whole it's important to know that you will always be somewhat disappointed with what you make, don't let that hold you back though, if you never try you will never improve.
When it comes to networking, get yourself out there no matter how good your perceive your stuff to by. Chris Bissette of the company Loot the room started giving out paper zines at conventions as an 8 year old, they were rough but full of ideas, now he's a professional with several big names such as Assassin, In the blue light and go alone under his belt.
One of the panel speakers on behalf of gamesomnivouros talked about her experiences working to Client briefs within the sector of Tabletop roleplaying games. Client briefs can be tricky, but a good challenge will motivate you to improve. Try to find something in the brief that hooks you and go from there. Incorporate your interests in your own work, be self indulgent. In her own experience she had to work on a project with a lot of robots, which is not her strong point when it comes to art, but she researched the subject and found ways to make it interesting to her, and eventually ended up really enjoying the work she made for it.
On a whole I have walked away from this event feeling very motivated to continue making games, I've taken on board the idea of it being ok to not meet your own expectations and to be ok with alleged "failure". I should be less harsh on myself and allow myself to grow rather than compare myself to others and just feel upset. I see a lot of people at these events who started out just like me and Francis are, two people who just really like to make these projects and are just starting to step out of their comfort zone and make connections. And now these people have big fan bases and incredibly creative and impressive projects under their belt, it gives me hope and motivation that I might be able to do the same some day. I certainly see where I need to go next to improve, sticking to projects, working through my fear of failure, and building up the self confidence and breaking down my imposter syndrome when it comes to the things I do. I'm very very grateful that I was suggested to go to this event, and it was so nice meeting so many individuals.
Some of the contacts we made are:
David Blandy who now follows our itch.io page
Rat wave game house owner Kayla
gamesomnivouros of whom I bought their game mouth brood (I thought this was such a cool idea for a game and has inspired me to turn my building alliances project into a ttrpg)
Here are some photos from the event (admittedly I wanted to take far more but I was spending a lot of time looking at the zines and trying not to spend all my money on the cool games):
And here is our itch.io page and the spread of zines we gave to David Blandy (we would have liked to give more out but it was a little pricey to print out enough to give to everyone)
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