Brodarrfest and Five Points report card. A solid B
bwana spoons
What is Brodarrfest? And what are the Suns Of Brodarr?
Brodarr is a planet… somewhere in our galaxy. The Suns of Brodarr are the hundreds of brothers and sisters from just one mommy on planet Brodarr.
The Suns of Brodarr are aliens, who heard tale of earth and it’s tasty melty core. So they want to come and eat the Earth, but they can never find their way as they fight, and make love, and play dice, and drink, and get into trouble.
Brodarrfest is a celebration of all this through art.
We held the first one back in 2015 at FOE Gallery. Now the second one over in NYC at Five Points.
Five Points was to be a melting of comics and designer toys, something to give the indie crowd an alternative to NYCC. The first year was pretty amazing, good crowd on Saturday, and most everyone in attendance was a-ok.
Now let’s pick it all apart, so we can make the next one even better.
Brodarrfest. Having this held inside another event was a fine idea.
But I overthought and stressed about display WAY too much. coming from the west coast I had to think… how would I build and display everything. Should just bought some ikea junk and called it a day.
A weird and slightly frustrating thing was Saturday having multiple people AT the event, letting me know they were sorry they weren’t able to make it to my event the night before, or weren’t going to be able to make it that night. So either the display, or the way I was getting out the word, or maybe both were sorta lacking:)
Luckily I had scores more people tell me how much they enjoyed what they were seeing, flipping out on a painting, or a one-off they are looking at.
Preaching to the choir. This has been a big issue at SDCC, and then NYCC. I think the big issue here is exclusivity through cost. Your entry price is just WAY too high. So they only people going are already “all in”, and frankly this is a good way to make things stagnant, or even shrink the pool of people interested in these mediums. I am fully aware that Left Field Media, the promoters, and money behind this event are in it to make a profit. But the cost needs to come down in order to make it work for everyone. Saturday had a fair crowd, but Sunday attendance was pretty dismal.
I even have an idea, rather than just whining about it. If you just slashed Sunday’s price in half, I think the amount of ticket sales would increase tenfold, therefore making LFM more profit. this way more locals who are curious, and maybe only have $100 to dedicate to the day, including parking, and food, ect… might give the event a try, and enjoy what they see.
Toys vs comics. These are two avenues that would seem to make the perfect intersection. At this event, toys for some of us, did quite well. I think comics, maybe not quite so much. Maybe because NYCC already has an entire hall dedicated to indie comics, and rows and rows of long boxes already, comics people didn’t come out for this quite as much. The longbox dealers were visibly, and audibly irritated with their lack of sales, creating some of the only bad vibes i witnessed at the whole event.
Again, I have ideas instead of just whining about it. Still invite and include any comics people. But put more focus on art, and attracting more illustrators. Follow the DCON formula more closely. Five points worked with Kano to do a gigantic beautiful mural in NYC, just bring more of THAT energy inside the convention. I was supposed to do a minigolf course, and fell short. So next year, with the help of Clutter I will make it happen.
Along the same lines as above. There was ONE dealer who had vintage Japanese sofubi, and I think he made a killing. Next year let’s see some more vintage dealers. The vintage sofubi dealer, Rob… made my day.
Both Brodarrfest and Five Points were a success. Please feel free to dialog here, so we can make next time even better.
Big fat thank you to Clutter for everything you do. I’ll most definitely be back next year for year two. Anotehr big thankyou to Jimbo and jumi and jet, my hosts. And double plus seven billion thank you to all the artists that came through, and everyone that rolled through, said hi, and picked up a goody or two. The cost to come from the west coast, and set this thing up was big, and you guys all made it worth while.
Bwana.