The 2nd Taiwan Comic Festival held its opening press conference on October 5 at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei, with legislator Wu Sz-yao (third from right), Deputy Minister of Culture Hsiao Tsung-huang (fourth from right), and comic artist Hsiao Yen-chung (fourth from left) attending in support.
Organized by the Taipei Comic Artists Labor Union, the 2nd Taiwan Comic Festival opened with a press conference on October 5 at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, attended by legislator Wu Sz-yao, Deputy Minister of Culture Hsiao Tsung-huang, and comic artists Hsiao Yen-chung, Jerry Boy, Push Comic, and Ruan Guang-min, among others. This year's festival takes Taiwanese cuisine as its theme: one hundred comic artists created two hundred food mascots and "food beasts." The "Compendium of Food Beasts" challenged artists to paint by hand on enormous 50 x 110 cm scrolls — with Wanluan pork knuckle reborn as a beautiful chef and swamp eel transformed into an eel queen, turning Taiwanese delicacies into imagined divine beasts that thoroughly stole the show.
Why make "food" the exhibition theme? Lai Yu-hsien, chairman of the Taipei Comic Artists Labor Union, said Taiwanese comics can collaborate across many fields: "Most dishes have an original form — beef noodle soup comes from a cow, for instance. If we turn that into an image and a character, it comes alive and becomes a wonderful mascot." Such characters, he believes, can become corporate spokes-characters or logos, and even extend into merchandise: "Let food combine with Taiwanese creativity and comics. We welcome companies to collaborate with Taiwanese comic artists — the artists' work can extend outward through corporate brands and products, and the energy of Taiwanese comics can reach more people."
Lai Yu-hsien, chairman of the Taipei Comic Artists Labor Union, discusses the Taiwan Comic Festival.
Hand-Painted Food Beasts — A Challenge for Comic Artists
The "Compendium of Food Beasts," gathering one hundred comic artists, was painted by hand on giant 50 x 110 cm scrolls, with each artist's food theme decided by lottery. Lai Yu-hsien noted that in the era before digital painting, a single ruined stroke meant redrawing the whole picture — so this time the artists were challenged to return to that most primal state and paint by hand: "You can see so many wonderful strokes, and those strokes are hand painting's greatest charm." Comic artist Chang Shih-hsin drew the theme "swamp eel," set against a future of marine extinction in which eels become extraordinarily precious; scientists build a massive automated eel farm at Sun Moon Lake, only for a machine intelligence run amok to create the "Eel Queen." Another artist, Wei Chang, drew "Wanluan pork knuckle": starting from pork knuckle's rich collagen — a renowned beauty food — he created a lovely young chef wielding a spatula, painting the delicacy as the divine beast of his imagination.
Comic artist Chang Shih-hsin created the food beast "Eel Queen" on the theme of swamp eel.
Artist Wei Chang created a beautiful young chef on the theme of "Wanluan pork knuckle."
The Festival's Value: Taiwanese Originality at the Center
The first Taiwan Comic Festival was themed around postcards of Taiwan's 368 townships. Now in its second year, Lai Yu-hsien observed that few comic events in Taiwan center on Taiwanese original work: "Most are built around licensed, famous overseas comics, and at those events the artists themselves are often overlooked." At the Taiwan Comic Festival, by contrast, "each artist's work is our exhibition content. Everything on display was created stroke by stroke by the artists — that is the spirit of originality, and that is Taiwanese culture." As for the difficulties of organizing the festival, Lai said funding was the hardest part: "We started from zero, slowly finding sponsors, supportive publishers, and companies that back local comics, and gradually produced the content." He hopes more and more of Taiwan's finest comic artists will join next year. The 2nd Taiwan Comic Festival runs October 5–14 at Warehouse No. 2, Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, Taipei, with free admission.
The 2nd Taiwan Comic Festival runs October 5–14 at Warehouse No. 2, Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.
Group photo of comic artists at the festival's opening press conference.
Article reprinted from: Mirror Media: Wanluan Pork Knuckle Becomes a Beautiful Chef? Food Beasts Steal the Show at the Taiwan Comic Festival
