Monday 25 January 2016

Comics, Libraries and Games

This is a post covering a range of events in the latter half of 2015 with which I was involved, including lots of collaborations with Auckland City Libraries for their comic book month. (My involvement came about through my association with Animation College.)

First out of the gate was a 'miniature ComicCon', dubbed LibraryCon, which took place on Sunday 6 September 2015 at Panmure Community Hall. LibraryCon featured cosplay, indie comics, pop culture crafts, and interestingly a group of budding game developers, including some reps from IGDANZ or the NZ chapter of the International Game Developers Association.


Zak, Dora and Jerwin © Zak Waipara

The focus for our group was to exhibit staff and student comic artwork, and included sketches for the public from Animation College students from lecturer Thaw Naing's Drawing Club (known as ACDC). Following on from this event, some of the comic work went up on display in the Central Library for the month of September.


Thaw sketching at the booth. © ZW

I was then invited to participate in The Panel (a comics discussion panel), chaired by Neil Curtis of Auckland University. This was a broad ranging discussion about diversity in the NZ comic 'scene'. This took place on 16 September 2015 in the Whare Wananga, Level 2, Central Library. It was a chance to hear about a new comic project - Three Words, an anthology featuring 60 female comic artists, that came about in response to a lack of representation of women in curated comic events.

Michel Mulipola, who had all the best lines, coined the phrase 'mansploring' to explain this inability to locate women comic creators! Thanks to the staff at Central Library, especially Courtney Ross, for organising all of the above.

Three Words postcard and a book gift from the Library. © ZW

Finally, I facilitated a Manga/Comic drawing workshop for children and teens at Mt Roskill Library, on Saturday 19th September. The real stars were the Bachelor of Animation students – Teahi, Joanne, Taylor and Michelle, who ran segments on specialised topics and provided their own customised resources.


Joanne, Zak, Michelle, Taylor and Teahi. © Mt Roskill Library

This was a good opportunity for our students to plan a lesson and practice presenting their ideas and communicating some drawing principles clearly – which helps their own learning as well.
Many thanks to Marion and Po Yee of Mt Roskill Library for hosting this event.

It's great that Auckland City Libraries celebrate Comic Book Month every year, and always come up with new ways to engage readers and budding writers and illustrators.

Examples of student Manga art and drawing principles. © ZW

Games Event

AUT #NZGDC15 – NZ Game Developers Conference, September 2015 

Then I attended my first conference devoted to games, and was really interested to see the diverse ranges of topics, in particular Serious Gaming (games for social change). Terry Fleming from Auckland University presented her version, COMETS (Collaboration on Maximising the impact of E-Therapy & Serious gaming), realised by Maru Nihoniho of Metia Interactive (who I would eventually meet in person at a Maori Digital Cluster Hui in December). This is a fascinating project looking at serious games for mental health and healing – well worth a look. Keep up with the project on Facebook:

The following day I participated in a Unity 101 Workshop at the Conference – it was amazing to see how quickly something resembling a game level could be built.

 © Zak Waipara