Philippine International Cartoons, Comics, and Animation Festival 2010

The second Philippine International Cartoons, Comics, and Animation (PICCA) Festival was held last Oct. 22-24, 2010. The events of the said festival were respectively held at SM North EDSA Annex building, The Block, UP Diliman, and Ateneo de Manila University.
Me and some fellow OJTs were assigned as volunteers for this year's PICCA Fest. And we were also exhibitors for Holy Cow! Animation.

With Kevin manning the Holy Cow! Animation booth

Holy Cow! Animation booth

Ronell and Kevin doing demos for Holy Cow! Animation

Holy Cow! booth with Holy Cow! peepz (clockwise from left): Audrey, Kevin, DJ, Ronell, Ejeet, Kenneth, Melvin, and AJ (yeah, he's tired :P)

To be honest, PICCA Fest could've been better. The seminars and talks were very interesting. The exhibits were also good. And I also like how well they promote Filipino arts and artists. I like it how they keep the spirit of Filipino komiks and artists alive. However, there are some concerns regarding the event.

Holy Cow! peepz (from left to right) Ejeet, Kenneth, and Kevin at PICCA's Freedom Wall

PICCA's Freedom Wall

I'm NOT left-handed. I just don't have sense of direction~ XP

Keeping the spirit of Filipino Komiks alive

A tribute to Alfredo P. Alcala

"Creation and Production of Anime" talk by Tatsutoshi Nomura and Emi Matsumoto held at Ateneo de Manila University

Uri Fink, one of Israel's leading comic book artists

First off, it's unorganized and the organizers are very unprepared. It's like they don't know what to do. The first day should've been a kick-off blast-off since it's the opening day. But no, it wasn't. The event officially started late.

Second, the venue is very much confusing and the events were held in different places, thus, dividing the people attending the events. Okay, one of the venues was The Block at SM North and far off to the other side of that is the Annex building of SM North where the booths were placed. Now, if you were a normal person passing by either one of the venues, you'll think that that is the actual venue of THE PICCA Fest, hence, you'll be missing the other one unless of course, you'd happen to drop by on the other venue by chance. And if you do find out that the other venue's at the opposite end of a big mall, chances are, you might not go over there because it's a hassle and it would be tiring. Unless of course you really want to check it out.
(btw, SM North EDSA has 3 buildings namely: The Block, the main mall itself, and the Annex building)
The talks and seminars were held at two universities respectively that are far off from each other. And, the talks were held at the same time. It would've been better if PICCA Fest was held in one big place where people don't need to go to different places just to see the event.

Third, work wasn't distributed well to the volunteers. We observed that there are other volunteers in the event besides us.
HOWEVER, these volunteers seem to be very very very lax, unlike us who were running around everywhere at the same time manning two booths (the Holy Cow! Animation booth and the booth where we did some coloring demo using Photoshop and Bamboo Fun)
One of our fellow interns even had her lunch at dinner because she got her hands really full at the front desk.
Seriously, I thought volunteers/exhibitors from Holy Cow! Animation were the ONLY volunteers there, along with a few others.

And lastly, advertising. The event wasn't advertised very well.

Bottomline is, the event was a chaotic. It would've been a good event if it was well-prepared. Hopefully, event organizers would take these into consideration so as to improve the next event and for this event not to eventually die out, because it would such a waste especially for Filipino artists, to have an event such as this to end.
There were still a lot of good things to it like how Sponge Cola rocked the closing event, the booths, meeting new people and people well-known in the field of arts and animation, getting inspiration from the exhibits, and bonding and having fun with fellow interns. Truly, being volunteers for an event was a new experience for us. It was quite tiring and a bit stressful but we still had lots of fun and laughs.