First, IndieCade. IndieCade was held in early October this year. As a brief background, IndieCade is an independent game festival held in downtown Culver City every year. It's fairly young, this year was it's fourth year. This year was my first, and I was pleasantly surprised. At IndieCade, there's a check-in point where you get the essentials for the event: festival program, event listings, map, etc. From there, you have a number of places that you could go to. The way it works is certain stores/locations in Culver are specifically open as a gallery for game creators to showcase their games. The whole festival isn't contained to one big location. It was spread out all over downtown Culver City. The best location, in my opinion, was the Fire Station. Check out the pictures below!
IndieCade
There were these enormous Space Invaders replicas all around Culver!
The coolest venue of the festival, the Fire Station. It was filled with great games and independent game enthusiasts of all kinds: gamers, creators, execs, producers, etc.
The best game I saw there was a game called Bridge. We got a chance to talk to the creator, Ty Taylor, really cool people. The game has a brilliant concept and amazing mechanics. I highly recommend it. I know the picture I took sucks, but you can check the game out here http://thebridge.hypercubegames.net/.
Next, Designer Con. Designer Con was pretty damn awesome this year. It's held in Pasadena every year in November. It's a convention for Vinyl Toys, Urban Art, and Designers. I've been to a few and it gets better every time. This one was by far the best. There were rows upon rows of booths with amazing toys, artwork, and artists. Toward the front, they were shooting webisodes interviewing some of the top designers that showed up this year. Towards the back, there was a stage for featured artists to do live painting. This year I picked up some vinyl toy Mp3 players and some prints. Very cool stuff, check out the pictures below!
Designer Con poster designed by Ragnar (sorry for the quality)
Inside the convention hall
Just a couple among thousands of incredible Vinyl Toys that were there.
Spanky Stokes monster! Looks like a cross between Mike Wazowski and Sully!
The very thing that makes time travel possible,the Flux Capacitor.
Ragnar doing a live painting at the back!
A booth with amazing lego displays!
Star Wars Mural
Star Wars chess sets
Lord of the Rings display! This is a recreation of when the Ents marched on Isengard.
Designer Con, until next year!
Lastly, the Joe Ledbetter signing. Poly Imaginative recently released a line of Chinese Zodiac toys designed by Joe Ledbetter. Joe is probably my favorite designer, so when I heard there would be a signing at Munky King LA, I was as good as there. I picked up my respective year's vinyl toy, year of the Dragon. I got that signed as well as a book that I bought of Joe's a while back. Check out the pictures below!
Well, that wraps up our adventure! Thanks for joining me on this trip. Hope to see you all again soon. Until here, Peace! Happy holidays!
Stephen
