Part of our mission at Gumroad is to shorten the distance and divide between hobbyist and professional, and it’s exciting to find, meet, and scheme with other groups on the same quest. There is likely no creative field more determined to teach and share than illustration, particularly in character design and concept art. Professionals with credentials ranging from Blizzard Entertainment to Dreamworks to Activision to Mattel are creating tutorials, organizing events and festivals all over the world, and happily sharing their knowledge and secrets. Essentially creating competition.
The Independent Festival of Creative Communication evolved from the Judgment Day Festival, an art and design awards ceremony where the competitors are the jurors. When the team at Boonika (more on that later) was given the reigns to Judgment Day, they expanded it into a six-day festival of talks, workshops, demos, and parties promoting art and design work in publishing, entertainment, and advertising. This May, artists and designers from all over the world will gather in Zagreb, Croatia to learn, share, and celebrate with over 60 guests from 20+ countries. After talking with Festival Director Marko Prpić – Zets, I started looking for flight deals to Croatia.
You have a background in graffiti. Now you’re planning festivals. How did that happen?
By accident, really. My colleague, Maro Pitarevic, called me one day and asked if I, together with the Boonika crew, would want to take over the Judgment Day festival (now Judgment Day Awards). As I was one of the winners from the first edition of this festival (best logo design… for my own logo), and because I thought the concept is really brilliant, I had to say yes. But we decided to change it and add an educational component, so instead of one night, the festival now lasts six days.
Tell me a little about Boonika.
Boonika is a platform for visual dialog and a non-government and non-profit organization established in order to achieve common interests in promoting art and international cultural cooperation and intercultural discourtse in the Republic of Croatia and abroad. That previous sentence was copy-pasted from our website, but it illustrates our goals quite well. Under Boonika, we develop a lot projects like the IFCC festival, Boonar.com (freelance studio), Booteeq.hr (our products) and others. We also organize at least 15 exhibitions per year and promote artists and designers in every other possible way.
And Judgment Day is still a part of the IFCC.
Now Judgment Day is an international project. It is the last day of IFCC, and awards will be given to those creative individuals who left indelible marks in the entertainment, publishing, advertising, and other industries. Anyone can submit works at http://ifcc-croatia.com/about-judgment-day-awards/.
Gatherings and conventions celebrating digital art, design, etc. are on the rise, and tutorials and knowledge-sharing of art and design are absolutely blowing up. What’s going on, Marko?
A lot of it has to do with making money. I’m not talking about artists. Artists always do art because that’s what they like doing. Most of them, anyway. The gaming and film markets are constantly growing and have significant influence on the economy’s growth. Growing industries mean bigger demands for new talent. So all those tutorials tell you take it. Learn from it and you’ll get the job you want much easier. Which is actually the truth. If you concentrate and learn you will get the job sooner than later. And festivals… I think that’s the best part of every artist’s creative life because they get the chance to meet their idols and hang out with folks they never met in person.
Have you always been interested in teaching/promoting other artists?
I like doing art and I admire other people’s work. Everyone should promote their fellow artists. I will never be as good as the IFCC speakers and I’ll never be hired, as an artist, by some major gaming company. There’s really too much stuff that I’m interested in and that was always a problem for me because I was never able to create a uniformed portfolio, as you can see at zetsology.com. But being interested in everything around me helped me to be a better organizer and coordinator. This is why I would be much better as some kind of Art Director or even a Manager/Art agent.
What can attendees expect from IFCC?
Huh… a lot! Workshops, panels, lectures, movie projections, exhibitions… and so on. Be sure to check these two links:
http://ifcc-croatia.com/program/
http://ifcc-croatia.com/about_the_program/
For an example, the above is by the great Michal Kus who will be our guest. At the event he will present, for the first time ever, three and a half hours of video which he will publish on Gumroad.
So there are 60+ guests at IFCC this year. Not to single anyone out, but who are some people that you’re really excited about?
I’ll have to skip this one because I would have invited 500 speakers if I could. But if you allow me I would like to mention some of the Croatian artists who will be there. Just to promote them a bit, which they really deserve. Most of them work for top companies like Marvel, Applibot and others. Really—their work is amazing. And most of them are traditional artists which is kinda cool these days.
Esad Ribic
Filip Burburan
Tomislav Tomic
Brajan Martinovic
Milivoj Popovic
Veljko Popovic
Tomislav Torjanac
Livio Rajh
Miroslav Brozovic
There are a lot of Gumroad creators on the roster for IFCC. Do you plan on coming aboard anytime soon with a tutorial or other project?
I also teach others but I’m not sure that I’m confident enough for doing tutorials on Gumroad. I would really like to, but just like many artists out there, I also think that I’m not good enough. I’m a bit rusty and somehow I have a feeling that my best days are far behind me. IFCC and its guests inspire me to be more active so I already started working on some new stuff. We’ll see. Maybe after I attend Anthony Jones’s and Bjorn Hurri’s workshops at IFCC. Yes, you caught me. That was my evil plan—to bring the best to Croatia and force them to teach me. For free.
There’s still time to plan a trip to Zagreb in May and be among some of the world’s great artists and illustrators. You can even get a 20% discount on tickets by entering the code gumroad#ifcc when you’re checking out. However, if such a trip isn’t in your future, you’ll likely be able to find a group of nearby (or online) creatives whose work and passions are in line with yours.
Or maybe you can take it further. What might you be able to conjure up in your city? A monthly comics jam drawing night? An indie filmmakers’ meet-up? We all benefit when we join forces and share what we know (and what we think we know). So teach, learn, boost your colleagues and competition, organize, and be a part of the next big thing.