Art Competition Entry Details

Please read the rules below carefully:

Each MCM Expo, Sweatdrop, Letraset and some special guest sponsors give you the chance to get your work seen by expo attendees and stand a chance of winning some fantastic prizes. How can you do that? It's easy.

There are two parts to the Sweatdrop Expo competition, both offer prizes to the best under 16 and the best 16 and over images:

Best Artist Alley piece  - This is for pieces created on the day in our busy drawing area. Paper and Letraset markers are provided, but make sure you bring along anything else you may need. If you want to draw an entry on your own paper, make sure you have the paper stamped by a member of sweatdrop before you start drawing, or your hard work will be for nothing!

Best Pre-Made - This refers to pieces you bring from home to enter, but not just any piece will make it. Each event, Sweatdrop will announce a new competition theme. To view it, simply head to www.sweatdrop.com/forum and look out for the London Expo Competition theme announcement. This is normally posted up one month before the event, to make it fair on everyone.

You can enter both categories, but of course will only be allowed to win one. We can't be greedy, can we? To enter either one, simply come to the Sweatdrop table and hand your entry into a sweatdrop member.

Oh, and we mustn't forget the special Young Star award, a prize offered to the best image received from our younger expo artists.

Best of luck to everyone who enters, we'll see you at the expo ^_^

~ A little note on entering with fanart: Unfortunately we've noticed too many entries recently that appear to have been copied from references. It also makes judging very difficult since we can never be sure to what extent an image has been copied. We wouldn't wish to ban fanart outright, but we do advise people to enter with caution. If in doubt, we strongly encourage you to create an original piece. The judges will take all this into consideration. 

 Manga's Battle against the Credit Crunch

Credit Crunch, Credit smunch! Manga fights the financial crisis with bargains galore.

We've got some spooktastic offers as halloween approaches, and our crystal ball tells us that now's your chance to improve your own future. Get all your Christmas shopping out of the way, signings, giveaways, exclusives and even photoshoots on offer at Manga's stand at this month's London MCM Expo.

Svetlana Chakova

Svetlana Chmakova was born and raised on a small settler colony on the moon, where she first discovered her love of comics when reading contraband issues of ElfQuest. When she was 16, she snuck on a berillium transport to Earth and landed in Canada, of all places. Slightly irradiated and woozy, she somehow ended up in an animation school which led to all sorts of trouble including a sudden career in comics-making.  Svetlana’s first full-length OEL manga series titled “Dramacon” was published by TOKYOPOP and met with much critical approval and offers of Pocky.  The thing even got nominated for an Eisner award and inspired people to commit acts of Dramacon cosplay!  Currently Svetlana is busy art directing an animated TV show as well working on her next manga series “Nightschool” which is being serialized in a new monthly anthology Yen+.  “Nightschool” is an urban fantasy story about a secret high school for vampires, witches, werewolves and other creatures of the night.Svet’s website:  www.svetlania.com
 (NOTE: Svetlana's family and friends may dispute the story of Svetlana's arrival to Canada, and claim that she was actually born and raised in Russia, flew across the ocean in a normal plane with her family, and that she was never irradiated at all. But that’s obvious lies and no one should believe a word of it!).

 

Who are Sweatdrop Studios?

Though springing from humble beginnings (the desire to save a bit of cash when booking a table at a convention), it cannot be denied that Sweatdrop has made its mark on the UK manga scene. But what exactly is Sweatdrop, and who are the people behind the name?

Whilst named a UK manga "studio", Sweatdrop is in fact only a studio in a virtual sense. Its twenty-odd (very odd) members hail from across the UK and their main means of contact is the mighty internet; primarily their thriving forums.

It all began as a platform for the collective to print and sell origninal comics. Five years on, and the members of Sweatdrop have found themselves working in close contact with the likes of Tokyopop, Letraset, Wacom, e-frontier and more; even running their own manga school feature in the hugely successful Neo Magazine; all this whilst maintaining their day jobs!

Though several of its members are persuing succesful illustration careers independently, Sweatdrop remains a collection of dedicated manga fans who use the group to print and distribute their own UK-grown brand of manga.

For a full list of Sweatdrop comics and to access the forums, check out sweatdrop.com

Current members:
Dock (Haden Scott-Baron), Laura Watton, Subi (Sam brown), Foxy, Emma Vieceli, Sonia Leong, Keds (Aleister Kelman), Selina Dean, Carrie Dean, Fehed Said, Bex (Rebecca Burgess), Sunkitten (Morag Lewis), Mary Beaird,Yan ryu (Stephanie Drewett), Marbles (Jacqueline Kwong), Wandering Muse (Hannah Saunders), Scorpio (Joanna Zhou), Yuriko Kihara, Cin (Ken Hoang), Wyldflowa (Chloe Citrine), Ben Palmer.

You should see a fair few of the above at the London MCM Expo. So, as some of their forum members have started doing recently, why not play Sweatdrop bingo and see if you can catch them all?