On the forth day of our Portugal trip we finally visit the comics festival in Amadora. The organisers have been generous and given us three relatively free days already (but we have been working and recording the podcast in Swedish for our Swedish listeners!) and fed us with good food. Now we were ready to meet the visitors of the festival! Scheduled for the day was a dabate with Portugese manga artists, a comics award ceremony and a dinner at Amadora City hall. But before that, sightseeing and more food!

Yokaj Podcast BETA
Episode 4: FIBDA - International comics festival in Amadora, Portugal (in Swedish)

During breakfast we shared tables with the artists Korky Paul (South Africa, England), Tche Gourgel (Angola) and Natalia Batista (Sweden). We made a spontanous podcast recording which resulted in the special episode “Frukostspecial” (Breakfast special). In the end of the podcast Korky and Tche share their advice for young artists.

Episode 4: Frukostspecial (English)

The festival has arranged a sightseeing tour for the artists. They are taking care of us very well.

An ad for the Crayon Shin-chan anime by the road. Wish we had something like this in Sweden too. We get the impression that anime is bigger than manga in Portugal.

Our first stop was a calm place called Cabo da Roca, also known as Europe’s westermost point. Here, but no further.

They have a lighthouse build in 1772. Today it doesn’t serve as a guidance for ships anymore, but as a shop making touristshappy.

Kajfa taking some momorable pictures for Agim Sulay (Italy).

Kajfa thinking about the big and small things. Like New York being on just the other side of the ocean.

Yosh enjoying the breeze from the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s only 140 meters down…

See how much fun we can have with shadow play!

Our second stop was at the fairy tale alike town called Sintra. We stayed for a short while before the bus picked us up again for lunch.

A bunch of hungry artists wondering what they will serve for lunch.

Kajfa’s choice (top): No Bacalhau this time! But an eggplant with some kind of meat filling. It was delicious! Yosh’s choice (bottom): Bacalhau (it’s been delicious every time Kajfa picked it before). This time it was served in some kind of scrambled mass. It was tasty! But not as tasty as Kajfa’s choice. We have a theory Kajfa always pick the better dish. Next time we’ll let him pick for Yosh and see if that’s true.

During the lunch Giorgio (Italy) showed us his book “Sonno Elefante” (Elephant Sleep) which was recently translated and published in Portugal. On the picture you can see Kajfa discussing techniques with Korky and Giorgio.

As always artists start to play with their pens and brushes after a meal. Giorgio showed us his wonderful brushes and painted with coffee expresso.

We finally arrived at the festival! YAY! We havebeen looking forward to this. The festival is taking place in a town called Amadora, and celebrates its’ 20th anniversary. Two floors of the gray building above were reserved for the festival.

Poeple waiting in line by the entrance. It’s Saturday, which means there’re a lot of parents coming with their kids. Luckily we were handed special passes (a piece of paper) by the festival organisers to let us enter without standing in line.

We were of course curious about the outcome of the exhibition with our artwork! The organisers understood that and arranged so the artists could see their own exhibitions. On the picture above, a proud Yosh posing in front of the work of the studio in the Euro manga room. We shared room with Natalia and the Portugese manga artists Gisela Martins, Cristina Dias, Rita Marques and Manuela Cardoso.

Still posing by our work. This time with Kajfa and Tche. In the red room behind us was the exhibition of the work of the Japanese animators who were doing the seminar we reported about in the blog entry about the 2nd day. Since NCreatures were doing the launch for the Neon Genesis Evangelion movie some sketches from the movie were also exhibited in the red room.

We really loved the work and effort the festival put into decorating the rooms. Many of them were following the theme of the comics which were shown in the room. Sometimes they were scenes taken directly from some pages, other times it was characters or figures from the comic.

Lovely isn’t it?

This is a important character from one of the comics by the Canadian comic artists working at TX Comics. They made it into a plushie!

A dog, a horse and a shark.

The artists got to met the Portugese press. Some artists, like Mauricio de Sousa, was of course always busy doing interviews. Mauricio is the Brazilian equivalent of Disney. He runs the forth largest art studio in the world with over 150 employees. He’s the father of over 200 characters to his popular childrens’ comic.

And then it was time for our debate with the other manga artists! On the left sofa is the Swedish team with Natalia, me and Kajfa. On the right side we have the Portugese manga artists Rita, Cristina and Gisela. It wasn’t actually much of a debate, more like some kind of interview where the questions were like “how did you get in contact with manga?” and “how do you make manga your own?”. We had a great time on the sofa. Wish we had more time to chat with the Portugese artists.

Here you can see part of the crowd who listened to the debate. We noted that the average age of visitors is a bit higher than the general manga convention visitor in Sweden.

Afterwards we met up with Ricardo from NCreatures. He asked Yosh for a drawing and she mangafied him.

Later that night we went to the comic awards ceremony arranged by the festival. They handed out awards to comic artists and illustrators who made exceptionally great achievements in the Portugese comic market.

Agim got himself a well deserved award! He’s a political illustration artist. He’s not only very skilled with his art, his also a master of mind sweeping metaphors.

There was an art exhibition of Agim and Santiagu’s art in the same building as the award ceremony. Santiagu seemed to have got an award in the same cathegory as Agim (that’s our guess, since we don’t know Portugese, and they received an award at the same time on stage). Santiagu does fantastic politic caricatures of famous people.

It was time for a feast after the award ceremony! The festival drove the artists, organisers and other guests to Amadora City Hall to enjoy a buffet. We arrived to this fantastic place with tables piled up with good food. It was like arriving to a fairy land. We rolled up our sleeves and approached the tables!

Mingling mingling.

This is how Kajfa’s first plate looked like. Yosh’s plate looked almost the same. 

There was a big festival cake (as big as a table) waiting for us! But strangely, the never cut it up for us to eat. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be eaten? Luckily, for all the people who wanted cake (Yosh), there was another table filled with cakes and fruits. After having a great feast, the artists were loaded on the bus and trasported back to the hotel. The next day will be our last at the festival! We will be holding our Kick Off seminarium and talk about spreading Swedish culture through our manga.

Thanks to
FIBDA, especially Ligia and Helder who took care of us guests, for the sightseeing, the food and all the other fun!

NCreatures who arranged the debate. Pedro who was moderator. Thank you guys for arranging our exhibition! We are happy and satisfied.

All the Portugese manga artists who participated in the panel together with us. It was fun meeting you!

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