Singapore Toy, Game & Comic Convention (STGCC) 2015

With nothing to sell this year, I went to Singapore Toy Game and Comics Convention, aka STGCC 2015 (12-13 Sep) as a media visitor to check out the exhibits, the artist alley and crowd.

One-day pass costs $19 and two-day pass costs $28, increased from $25 last year. Kids below 5 can enjoy free admission on Sat and kids below 12 can enjoy free admission on Sunday. Unfortunately this information was not well conveyed as many people I spoke to did not know about this.

There were so many Avengers sculpture and toys that it almost felt like a mini Avenger fair!

It was cool to see Magic the Gathering, otherwise there would be no "Game" element in the convention.

Another star attraction was Be@rbrick's limited edition "Jiang Shi" (vampire) design, which I admit was quite cute and worth to queue if you are a toy collector.

There were many cosplayers walking around, outside and inside the convention.

Stage panel was lukewarm except when it comes to heavy-weight (literally) star guests like Adam Hughes (comic book artist) and C.B. Cebulski (comic writer, but he scouts for artists too for Marvel). CB had scouted quite a number of artists from STGCC for years now. So if you want to work on Marvel covers, you should attend STGCC to hunt him down, haha.

I also met someone who queued for one hour to get an autograph from Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, artist of Evangelion.

Artist Alley

The crowd was slow in the morning (probably due to elections) but started to pick up after lunch~

Met Tomodachi T-shirt from Thailand, they are a frequent artist group to Singapore conventions, that's how I got to know them XD Their t-shirts are damn MOE (cute). #loveWefiesWithGuy #longerArmAndTaller

There were also more artists from Indonesia doing live commission work, starting from $200, which looked absolutely awesome! (Above is Yusuf Idris)

 LIVE DRAWING of commission work using ink pens and COPIC markers! So fast!!!

That was done by Iwan Nazif, who also drew for How To Train Your Dragon. He was also selling his original hand-drawn pages for the comic book between $300-600. The art was absolutely gorgeous.

There was also another artist from China doing demonstration, also fan art.

There were artists from Japan too! (Though I wasn't sure if they blocked their name on purpose?)

Australia as well.

And Malaysia of course. Above is by Loka Made, they are from Penang. Their artbook looks really fantastic as well. Initially I thought they were from Hong Kong because of the architecture and style ^^;;

Star artists were naturally very busy doing commission work and signing, time is money.

I had no problem snapping photos without the artists, who were too busy to notice me.

There was also 3D sense school, who rented the booths for their alumni to sell their artwork. It was very nice of them.

You also see studios occupying major spaces as well.

Love these figurines from 1000Tentacles. Maybe I should come out with yoga pose collection too, lol.

 Supporting my friend Wackymons, remember her from my Popcon trip?

Also Monster Little by Ziqi, another friend from Malaysia :P

My ex-classmate K, was selling his sketchbook with mixture of original and fan art. This is his 4th year? there!

There were only a few booths doing original comics.

Comix Pandora is a local group. They look like manga fan art but they do original story. There were 7 artists sharing one booth! No choice because of the high rental price!

It seems that home-bred Singaporean artists doing original comics are... Few.

Should you get an Artist Alley booth if you are an artist?

Singapore seems to be a hot attraction for conventions these days. For artists, there are 2 major conventions a year: STGCC in September that focuses on western comics and toys, and AFA in November that focuses on Anime and Japanese pop culture. Other smaller conventions that also have artist alley includes new player CHARA EXPO (held in June at Expo) from Japan focusing on Japanese content, COSFEST (used to be at Downtown East) and EOY (held at Marina Barrage) that both focuses on Cosplay.

STGCC booth rental last year with GST was $700 but it rose to $770 this year. If you use a foreign address, it will be $700, which prompted many artists (including PR) in Singapore to use their overseas home address, which may have boosted the number of foreign exhibitors. If your style is more towards Japanese style, you might consider getting booth at AFA instead, which costs only $450 (incl. GST) for 3 days.

If you are a comic artist like me, you can also consider ComiFest, organised by TCZ Studio. Unfortunately either their venue or timing is odd each time and marketing effort is always limited to social media, which is challenging to draw bigger crowds. Booth rental is free though due to government funding so it is worth trying for budding artists.

If you are a toy maker, you can also consider makers fair. Their locations are usually in the heartland and booth rental is sometimes free or by commission depending on sales. Of course the major convention would be still STGCC.

Although me and another con-goer felt there was less crowd this year, probably due to elections, some artists feedback that they made almost the same, if not slightly more than last year, which is pretty encouraging. However if the organiser wants to increase booth rental further (e.g. like $800 for only 2 days), some might just give up totally and go to overseas convention instead, like Comic Fiesta in Malaysia, Popcon and AFA in Indonesia, AFA Thailand and Taipei Toy Festival.

In Conclusion

There are much more toys and foreign exhibitors this year compared to last year. More cosplayers were also paying tickets to enter the convention. Perhaps they could rename STGCC to STCCC (Singapore Toy, Cosplay and Comic Convention). Although there was a collaboration with local artists who are exhibiting to do limited toys for charity auction, the focus is still very much on the foreign artists and Marvel goods. Hopefully we will see more original content next time!