Chromacon Indie Arts Festival = very neat
Chromacon Indie Arts Festival is a bi-annual celebration of the arts held in the Aotea Centre in the Auckland CBD. This unique 2-day convention provides a platform for New Zealand based artists, illustrators, graphic novelists and video game developers to showcase, promote and sell their work.
We were lucky enough to be able to showcase ShelfLife to an audience of talented New Zealand artists and creatives, as well as the general public at the 2019 Chromacon, held in the Aotea Centre in Auckland. We presented in the ‘Chromacade’, an area set aside specifically for booths that feature games and interactive media. Our booth was positioned near an entranceway which allowed us to make a pretty immediate impression on the attendees (of which there were 11,000 across the whole weekend — a nice solid turnout that managed not to feel excessively claustrophobic).
Our booth included ShelfLife promo posters, stickers, prints, and Pickle Darling tapes as well as a screen with our trailer playing on a loop. We set up a small “listening station” adjacent to the TV playing our trailer we provided cassette players where attendees could sit down, put on headphones and listen to Pickle Darling music as they watched our trailer, to get a feel for our ~~vibe~~.
The simple design of our booth was a way to engage our audience in an analogue interactive experience, as our setup was less hands-on than many of the others within the Chromacade. It felt sort of appropriate for us to market our project in this way, given that ShelfLife puts a strong emphasis on story and retro feel.
We found as the convention progressed our table appeared to invite a lot of deeply positive conversations with convention goers, which was incredibly humbling and encouraging. Across our entire team, one of the main takeaways we had from the Chromacon experience was that we felt we were able to connect with our audience on a very personal level.
We also attended the Indie Game panel discussion, hosted by the NZGDA. This panel offered some great insight into different ways in which Indie Game Devs might budget their time and day jobs, as well as advice for upskilling and seeking out funding opportunities.
THE CHROMACADE
There were lots of other cool projects on display at the Chromacade, here are a few of the games our team got to check out (please support these awesome devs):
The Chromacon Indie Arts Festival was an excellent opportunity for us as artists and game developers in New Zealand. It was invaluable to gain insight into the manner in which other creatives present themselves in the public eye. Chromacon gave us an opportunity to showcase an intimate trailer which allowed us to connect deeply with target our audience and successfully show ShelfLife publicly for the first time to a very positive reception.
We’re super pumped for the next Chromacon!
Also: a massive thank you to the New Zealand Film Commission for supporting our project and our team, and helping sponsor us to attend ChromaCon as a group — we definitely couldn’t have done it without you!