#having said that. the witcher community here on tumblr is amazing. generally people here are great. not only in this fandom.

[widevibratobitch]

Polish Witcher fans are just evil fucking people and i hate them so much <3

[yangtuakesini]

Comic Fiesta 2017: An Op-Ed & Interview With Local Malaysian Artist, Adibah Balqis.

December Saturday mornings are usually quiet, especially at 8 a.m when one would be resigned to believing that most people would be sound asleep, knowing it was a weekend. Yet this Saturday was different as train cars were packed with fans, young and old, dressed in elaborate cosplay or sporting their favourite anime characters on their t-shirts. Indeed, this Saturday morning saw the city center flooded by otaku, the delightfully Japanese term given to fans of anime or video games and taken colloquially to mean a “nerd”, even derogatorily so. For the attendees of Comic Fiesta 2017 though, the term carried a sense of pride, as fans of everything from video and board games to anime and manga queued up for tickets, expecting a long day filled with anime, manga and games.

The Saturday morning of the 16th of December 2017 was the 16th time that Comic Fiesta, the biggest otaku and animation, comics and games (ACG) convention in Malaysia was held, returning to the heart of Kuala Lumpur at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center for the 5th time since its inaugural convention was held in 2002 at the historic Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall.

Comic Fiesta is the largest and inarguably, the most well-known event of its kind in the country, drawing in over 55,000 people over the weekend of its last convention in 2016, held at the Putra World Trade Center. Even to youths or adults alike who aren’t fans of ACG media, Comic Fiesta is still known to many people. This year, it drew crowds from as far as Singapore, Indonesia and Penang, which had it’s own Comic Fiesta Mini at the Straits Quay Convention Center last September. With its massive turnout each year, it’s clear that Comic Fiesta has grown a following not only locally but regionally as well.

One of the main attractions at Comic Fiesta is their Creative Art Market, a staple for Comic Fiesta-goers time and time again. Divided into 2 areas, the Premium Artbooth area and the Basic Artbooth area, it sees vendors of manga, anime and video game merchandise, sprawled across the entire convention center floor selling to thousands of fans and enthusiasts of various forms of media like animes such as ‘One Punch Man’ and games like ‘Assassins Creed’ or ‘Overwatch’. From branded merchandise, books and posters from movies, TV shows and games to fan-created art from equally-passionate artists from all over the region in the form of gorgeous prints, pin badges, and fan-created merchandise, the art market at Comic Fiesta, although frequently packed over the weekend, is always a highlight for the Comic Fiesta attendee.

The Basic Artbooth area houses one of Malaysia’s largest gatherings for local online artists, all of whom are just as enthusiastic about anime and video games as the customers they meet. Comic Fiesta’s motto: an “event for fans, by fans” definitely holds true here. Event attendees can always strike up a conversation with artists selling their creations about their favourite episode of the anime Yuri On Ice or a bad game mechanic in the popular battle-royale video game, ‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’. And it’s a true testament to the enduring nature of these fan communities that these artists keep creating marvelous pieces of fanart to be enjoyed by other fans. For most artists though, selling their creations amounts to a living for them. Scraping by on commissions or prints and unofficial posters. Comic Fiesta acts as one of the few times in a year that these artists can sell a large portion of their work, face to face with fans of not only the art’s subject, but also fans of the artists themselves.

One of these artists who was at Comic Fiesta over the weekend was Adibah Balqis, known online as ibahibut. Having a substantial following on platforms such as Instagram, Tumblr and DeviantArt, which is an online platform for sharing and selling visual art, she’s one of the many local and regional artists who came to Comic Fiesta to both enjoy the convention and to sell her creations. As a 23-year-old student attending Kolej Komuniti Selayang, she studies games art, a choice which stems from her love of video games, the popular Polish role-playing-game ‘The Witcher’ being one of her favourites.

Her roots in art began from her primary school days when a young Adibah enjoyed doodling chibi characters in class. Her beginnings in creating art in exchange for money, though came in around 2010 when she started taking requests on her social media pages. Back then, she would draw on pen and paper as buying a graphics tablet was financially out of her reach. Yet it didn’t stop her from drawing fanart from animes such as Naruto and posting scans of it on her DeviantArt page. 6 years of taking commissions and selling her art online finally gave her enough money to buy her first graphics tablet, a Wacom Intuos. Although basic, this finally paved the way for her first foray into graphic art and she hasn’t looked back since.

Even though switching from pen and paper to digital art has presented a learning curve for Adibah, like drawing physically, she says that enough practice always helps to hone artistic skill. For her, it was watching speed-art videos on YouTube and and copying other artists and their creations as a way to compare and improve her drawing skills. A devoted fan of the work of the all-female manga artist group ‘Clamp’, her passion for art ran deep to her core. For her, art was both a way to make a little bit of money and to express her love for her favourite anime, manga and video game franchises. Although she now creates art for money, it still hasn’t stopped her from drawing leisurely in her free time from bored doodles or sketches during lectures to gorgeous and masterfully coloured fan drawings posted to her Tumblr page. Seeing it as an artistic outlet, she also posits that her art is equally influenced by music as it is by subject matter or personal style. Adibah frequently listens to music while drawing and the type of music she listens to is reflected onto the page as she draws. Explaining it with an analogy, she says that cute or romantic music would translate to a cute or loveable drawing while brooding and dark music would create a darker and more intense creation.

Although successful, Adibah still doesn’t create art full-time. When asked if at her present workload, being an artist full-time would give her financial stability, she answered with a fast and assuring ‘No’. She receives a request for commissioned art every one or two days yet at her pace and the rates at which she charges for each commission, the money she earns doesn’t amount to much and this is a reality faced by many of our generation’s best, brightest and talented artists. Art is, unfortunately, a labour of love that takes time and passion, something that is almost unquantifiable by mere monetary value. For artists like Adibah and her contemporaries, art is a passion yet one which faces its fair share of challenges and hardships and takes as much dedication, as it does talent, to transform into a sustainable living.

The art scene in Malaysia and indeed in the region is still stigmatized by views of its relative uselessness or inability to be profitable. It is the result of these views that have led to the greater artistic scene in Malaysia to be one very small, underground and tight-knit, confined to groups of enthusiasts and fans alike. Adibah herself sees most of her commissions come from the United States and Europe. Yet when asked if she thinks that the graphic art and fanart communities in Malaysia will gain broader recognition as it currently does in the West and even in Japan, she confidently answered that she believes that it would happen. She believes that a generation shift in Malaysia will pave the way for the popularization of graphic design and art media. With events like Urbanscapes, various games conventions and indeed Comic Fiesta gaining broader recognition as of late in the country, especially among urban folk, it wouldn’t be wrong to think that a generational shift or at least a social change is occurring within our country toward a broader acceptance of art, literature and music and one definitely hopes that the stigma against such media would sooner, if not later, be a faint opinion of the past.

When asked whether she faced burn-out like many other young artistic minds, she says that it had occurred frequently during her time drawing art. Recalling a depressive episode she had in 2015, she said she stopped drawing both professionally and leisurely for an extended period of time and lamented how it affected many more artists, including many of her friends. Mental health is just as important to artists as it is to everyone, and it bears remembering that it affects many people and unexplainably, stops people from doing even the things that they are the most passionate about.

Comic Fiesta is an event that is impatiently awaited each year by regular attendees, fans and creators. Yet it bears remembering that Comic Fiesta is almost always viewed by Malaysians as a niche event for enthusiasts of a niche kind of media. Yet amongst fans and attendees, the sense of belonging that one feels when walking through Comic Fiesta’s packed halls each December is anything but foreign. For artists like Adibah, it presents an opportunity to find others that share her love for things like video games, anime and manga.  The highlight of Comic Fiesta, according to her, is meeting people face to face who share her love for video games and art as well as meeting fans of her work, something quite rare in her line of work and Adibah definitely, just like most others, looks forward to attending Comic Fiesta each year.

One can find Adibah and her amazing artwork on her Tumblr page and DeviantArt as well as on Instagram and Behance.