We’ve finally arrived at the expo’s last day, which was also the day we returned home. But before doing that, we, of course, had to play around with the Storm troopers!

Woops! You can’t play around with the troopers without getting punished, apparently! Kajfa had to do 20 push ups to soften them up a bit.

It would turn out that his efforts were in vain! Exhibitioners leaving their positions were frowned on. Ouch!

How can you resist, it’s the Storm troopers after all!

With our tails between our legs, we returned to the hall entrance, which was guarded by these two rather intimidating precences.

*cough* Back to work! There was quite a bit to be done even on the last day, but time went by quickly. Perhaps too quickly.

Soon, it was time for us to head to the airport to catch our flight. Before starting to pack down our stuff, we took a last picture of our beautiful wall, filled with entries to our Yokaj design contest.

And a last picture with Misako. We hope to see her again soon!

And a hug to Sofia!

A picture of the expo entrance, for memories’ sake.

And a last one with the whole studio just right by the expo hall. Au revoir, Bristol!

Summary
Our first convention abroad far exceeded our expectations! We felt very well taken care of, and had the opportunity to get to know many nice artists, publishers and con-goers. We look forward to going to more conventions abroad and hope to be able to return to the Bristol Internation Comic Expo sometime in the future!

Thanks
We want to thank Sean Michael and Mike for inviting us over. Extra thanks to Sean Michael because he, so very generously, introduced us to so many new people in the trade. Thanks go to Fredrik Strömberg and Sofia Falkenhem for making the discussion panel we had together such a nice time. Also, thanks Misako Rocks!, (our tableneighbour) whose energy always seemed to pass down to us as well! We also want to thank all visitors and professionals who took their valuable time to speak with us. A last thank you goes to everyone who participated in our Yokaj Doll Design contest! Thanks everybody!

We’ve finally reached the day everyone’s been waiting for, and what we at Yokaj Studio came to England for! On the third day of the our trip, the doors to the Bristol International Comic Expo were opened to its visitors. It was the studio’s first time to attend a comic con outside of Sweden, and it would turn out to be a hectic day for us, participating in discussion panels, mingling with people in the trade, and running around between other exhibitors’ tables!

When we got to the exhibition, we were greeted with a long line of enthusiastic con-goers.

Storm troopers patroled the area to keep it under control. To everyone’s delight, one of the visitors got stopped by the troopers!

The calm before the storm. We were all set by our tables, ready to take care of the visitors.

By the end of noon, they started accepting people and the hall was quickly flooded with enthusiastic comic lovers. Here we see a couple of them exploring our table!

Right next to us sat the energetic artist Misako Rocks! (even her name radiates genkiness!). We got to know Misako at the ISV comic fair last year, and we clicked immediately. We were really happy to be able to meet her again in Bristol!

By lunchtime, it was time for the manga people (both artists and publishers) on the expo to introduce themselves up on the stage. Together, we marched to the conference hall at the Ramada hotel closeby. Pictured: Yosh next to to Ilya, editor of Mammoths best new manga.

Since we were 12 persons in total, we had to take turns in introducing ourselves, switching chairs with eachother. From the left: Chie (comic artist), a writer/publisher from Dimensional manga, Fredrik Strömberg (Swedish comics journalist) and Misako Rocks! (comic artist).

Yosh presenting the studio.

After the introduction, the studio, Fredrik Strömberg and Sofia Falkenhem ran a discussion panel about Swedish manga. It went very well, partly because we had a nice time, and because the listeners asked many interesting questions!

After that, Yosh and Soya went away to hold a mangafyingsession elsewhere, while Kajfa and DoraJen went back to our tables to continue acquainting themselves with the people at the expo. On the photo: Soya and Gam (Soya’s friend). When the whole studio was gone, Gam helped us man the table. Thank you Gam!

Back from the mangafying session, Yosh took the opportunity to mingle around. She shook paws with, among others, Sonia Leong and Emma Vieceli, both of whom are a part of the British artist collective Sweatdrop Studios. Sweatdrop Studios have made manga adaptions of Shakespeare’s works.

Con-goers playing Sumo. Due to having too much to take care of this time, we couldn’t record any fun videos of Sumoplayers.

A whole family designing Yokaj dolls!

To our great surprise, there were actually people who wanted to buy our books, despite them being written in Swedish! We didn’t plan on selling any books because of the language, but we were certainly positively surprised by this turn of events!

Ian here, who bought a Yosh! Teckna manga”, had his portrait drawn in the book and signed, of course!

Just right around dinner time, the expo was closed for all visitors and exhibitors. Phew! This meant that we had the time to do other things than standing by our tables all day long, which is appreciated. We went to a nice restaurant to commemorate our first, successful day! Later, more mingling with people in the publishing trade awaited.

Next post
We’re closing in on the last day of the expo. The studio took the opportunity to play around with the Storm troopers, who were patroling all over the area keeping people in check. Don’t miss that!

This was the day before the expo would open its doors to its visitors. We went to the exhibition hall as soon as it opened to organize our tables, leaving the afternoon free for us to walk around town. But before all this, we made sure to fill our stomachs with breakfast!

DoraJen and Soya explored the hotel’s breakfast buffet. The morning rush was over and we could take our turns around our table and the buffet counters in peace and quiet.

A typical English breakfast? Fried eggs, hash browns, bacon (or ham?) and black puddings. It tasted alright! But we thought it lacked that little extra something.

“Hm!”. Kajfa seemed to have found something interesting again. This is actually a…

PANCAKE MACHINE! Wohoo! How many of you haven’t actually thought about having one of these at one point of time? Kajfa, being himself, of course wasn’t shy to try it out. He pushed the yellow button…

… and the machine printed ou- eh, made a pancake (but it really sounded like a printer/copy machine)!

After the breakfast, we brought our stuff with us and went to the expo hall.

Almost there! The exhibition hall turned out to have a very central location.

The hall (with its entrance on the left on the picture) is right next to the Temple Meads train station (the tower with the clock). How convenient!

This is how it looked like inside! We liked the high ceiling and the mood-setting pillars.

The long rows of tables after tables, booths after booths gave us a hint of how packed it would be once the expo opens to the public.

We were dying to have our touristy times, so we worked fast and effectively when decorating and organizing our tables and walls.

Our neighbours in front of us had started loading up box after box filled with comics. Another exhibitor brought a relatively big TV with them. Heavy stuff!

Tadaaa! We now had everything set up. A table for our books, another for our illustrations and pins and a third for our game Sumo. Time to do some exploring! But what are DoraJen and Soya waiting for?

Aha! Yosh was talking to Sofia Falkenhem, an awesome and cool Swedish comic artist, who also got invited to the exhibition as a guest. We had met Sofia on Swedish expos before coming to Bristol, but it wasn’t until now that we were able to have a chat with her and get the chance to know her. She’s still as cool as before!

Here, our exploring trip commenced! Our destination was Totterdown, which is known for its steep streets. Certainly exciting for us, who are used to the rather flat Swedish landscape.

We headed for the colorful houses on the hill. Our goal was to find the steepest street and climb it!

The first part was like child’s play. We’d easily climb Totterdown without breaking a sweat! Just watch!

Power lines were crossing here and there over our heads. Here you’ll see why. Telephone poles stand along the streets with lines reaching to each and every house.

On our way up, we found a girl sitting on a roof gazing out over Bristol city.

Oh, there we have it! Vale Street, the steepest slope in Totterdown! Just look at how the cars are parked! Oh gosh. We had butterflies in our stomachs. It looked a little more intimidating than we’d imagined it to be. To reach there, we first had to…

…get ourselves down a street with a steepness grade of 25%! Here’s when we started to get just a little scared. Well, not so much us, but Soya mostly! After taking the pictures, she had to be led down by Yosh.

While DoraJen was taking a picture of Kajfa and Yosh posing, little Soya could only nicely wait for Yosh’s return to lead her down.

Finally arriving at the foot of Vale Street, we started to get chills. To calm ourselves down, we sat down on the steps to mentally prepare ourselves to finish our mission.

In the end, only the brave Yosh had the guts to climb the slope! But she made the mistake of looking up, and saw…

This! Getting a little dizzy, she lost her footing and we thought she’d roll down the street! Luckily, she got her balance back and slowly started to retreat. While she pitifully, half crouchingly got back to us, there was a girl swishing past us straight down the street. On a bicycle. Respect. O__O

A curious old man witnessed our rather feeble attempt to climb the slope from his window. He wasn’t discreet about it at all! He stood there for a really long time just looking at us, and didn’t even back down when we pointed our cameras at him to take this picture!

Despite not being able to conquer Vale Street, we felt pretty satisfied with our little exploring trip. We sat down at the steps by the green house for a little while to appreciate the view before we left the charming Totterdown.

Next post
The Bristol International Comic Expo opens up its doors and the hall is filled with those in the publishing trade, visitors and comics en masse! Time to get to work!