News

Special Guest: Calypsen Cosplay

16/08/2017 by

Photography: Studio Zahora

Cyprus Comic Con is proud to announce Calypsen Cosplay as our first Cosplay Special Guest for CCC17!

Marta Nowak is a young cosplayer based in Poznan, Poland, where she is currently studying graphic design and animation. She has only been making costumes for the last three years and in such short time, has gathered over 60k followers on Facebook and collaborated with game companies like CENEGA, for which she also created costumes. She also attended the Overwatch All Stars event in Warsaw, Poland as D.Va!

She loves creating fantasy and sci-fi armours and has made costumes such as Nova from StarCraft, Diana from League of Legends and Mercy from Overwatch. Her main goal is to spread the craft of creating handmade costumes to the world, encourage people to respect each other’s work and have fun with cosplay! As a Special Guest at conventions all around the world, Marta always tries to help new cosplayers with how to go about creating their own costumes and loves to offer her advice. She is not afraid of the heat gun or the hard, long hours of work that come with the art of cosplay! Her favorite part of a convention is being a judge for the cosplay contest, where she also gets to meet many talented people!

She has received several awards for her cosplay, including 1st place prize at Hall of Games 2014 and 1st place for Best Costume during Animatsuri 2015 in Poland.

You can follow Calypsen on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!

Photography: Dobrochna
Photography: Dobrochna
Photography: Makks Tobi

Calypsen as a judge at CCC17’s EuroCosplay Qualifier

Photography: Foto Czarny

 

Marta will be one of our Special Guest judges for the EuroCosplay Qualifier on Saturday and will also be sharing her expertise with us at the following lectures:

 

Lectures

 

Saturday:

Topic: Crafting Armour with EVA Foam & Thermoplastics (joint lecture with another Cosplay guest)
Duration: 1h30m

 

Sunday

Topic: How to Start Creating a Cosplay Costume
Duration: 1h

 

 

Artist Profile: Demetris Panayides & Marios Yiangou

16/08/2017 by

Cyprus Comic Con’s Artists Alley welcomes back illustrator Demetres Panayides and writer Marios Yiangou, co-creators of comic book DÆMONIUM!

 

The Artist

Demetres Panayides is a young comic book illustrator from Nicosia and his work has been published both in the US, as well as Cyprus. He describes himself as a “keen movie freak” with a special love towards horror, thriller and sci-fi movies. He is also a comic book geek and his favourite comic book titles are Spawn and Watchmen. Demetres loves dark and horror themes in art and he tries to incorporate those elements into his own personal art style. Some of his greatest influences are Alex Pardee, Ashley Wood, Todd McFarlane and Ben Templesmith.

Demetres notably designed the cover for local metal band Blynd’s first full-length album, titled ‘The Enemy’ and illustrated the mascot “Rusty Goblin” for the fantasy game workshop Isengard. In 2014, he was one of the ten runner-ups of a worldwide talent hunt held by American comics publisher Top Cow and his first comic, Artifacts: Lost Tales #1 was published through them. More recently, he illustrated a short story for local band Winter’s Verge, titled “The Tale of Adamar of Calthorn”.

He is currently working on a new collaborative comic book project called DÆMONIUM together with writer and illustrator Marios Yiangou. The story of DÆMONIUM is based in Cyprus and the comic will be completed just in time for CCC’17!

Make sure to follow DÆMONIUM on Facebook!

The Writer

Marios Yiangou works as a graphic designer for an offshore company in Cyprus. What he loves more than writing is talking about himself in the third person. Marios has been writing for more than 15 years, from poetry to prose to comic book scripts, although never professionally. An avid reader of history and mythology, he tries to incorporate elements of both in all of his writing, along with noir, fantasy and horror themes. And ranting – he loves to rant! He fancies himself a cinephile and a huge comic book geek.

His major non-comic book literary influences are Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Tom Wolfe, Jack Kerouac and Nick Cave. As for comic book creators – not that there’s any difference – Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis and Michael Carey.  DÆMONIUM is his first attempt at collaborating with another artist and presenting his work to the public. So, you know, be gentle…

Artist Profile: Christofis Agathokleous

15/08/2017 by

Cyprus Comic Con welcomes back sculpture artist Christofis Agathokleous to its Artists’ Alley.

Christofis was born in Limassol in 1990, more specifically the village of Agios Tychonas. He graduated from Linopetra high school, where subsequently he enlisted in the National Guard, and served on the Green Line. He studied Sociology at the School of Humanities at the University of Crete and subsequently completed his master’s degree in Criminology at the University of Nicosia. Christofis is an amateur sculptor that creates themed pieces inspired from myths, legends and pop-culture.

He began to develop his skills in sculpture art at a very young age, around the age of 5 or 6. Sculpting has been a recurring passion for Christofis, who continued to practice his art and improve upon it through the process of ‘trial and error’. His creations are primarily inspired by pop culture, including movies, comics, video games, television series, etc. You can see more of his creations on his Facebook page, titled ‘Concept sculpting and hand-shaping creations CY’.

He specialises in two techniques: the first one is traditional sculpting, however incorporating his own aesthetics that approximates the characters as they appear in the comics or cartoons, as opposed to a realistic approach of the human figure. The second technique is hand-shaping, a technique he developed with time and is still developing, which is the creation of figures without the use of armature or any tools other than the artist’s hands.

Today, Christofis lives in Limassol where he currently works and develops his passion for sculpture art. His dream is to spread this type of art throughout the island, as well as to collaborate with people who have developed their sculpture art into different forms and manifestations.

Artist Profile: Orpheus Ganitis (Gun-it-is)

14/08/2017 by

CCC17 welcomes manga artist Orpheus Ganitis to its Artists’ Alley!

Orpheus Ganitis, aka Gun-it-is internationally and Doujima Gyro (銅島ジャイロ) in Japan, is a rookie manga artist, illustrator and story teller. Since April of 2017 he became a university student in one of the most historical art schools in Japan, the Seika University in Kyoto, the same university that created the International Manga Museum. His interest towards manga started with Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) and since then, Orpheus became obsessed with Studio Ghibli films and anime.

From 5th grade, he has been drawing illustrations and character designs, as well as making his own stories.  In 2013, he move to Japan, following his dream. Studied Japanese for 2 years, passed the N2 level of JLPT (the second most difficult Japanese exam for foreigners) which was his ticket to continue his studies. He then studied manga from April of 2015 to March of 2017 in Osaka Communication Art college (OCA 大阪コミュニケーションアート専門学校). After joining a real manga drawing environment, he realised that his works were still a premature attempt at drawing manga and committed to work hard and improve!

You can follow Orpheus on Instagram and Facebook!

In terms of traditional media, he prefers to draw with pens, water colours, copic-markers and brush pens, while on PC, he uses a Wacom pen tablet. His software of choice, is Clip Studio Paint Pro and some times Photoshop. In order to improve his artwork, he has been taking classic art lessons and more recently, he stared researching other famous manga artists such as Murata Yusuke (村田雄介), Morita Masanori (森田まさのり) and Asano Iono (浅野いにお) from Japanese programs like Manben (漫勉) and Jump Ryu (ジャンプ流).

More recently, he presented his work in various magazines such as Jump +, Jump SQ, Young Jump, Weekly Magazine, Weekly Sunday (etc). He was praised by all editors, especially for his latest work, who found his passion and knowledge towards bird and insects very appealing. It was pointed out as unique and promising for future work. Leaving the good feedback aside, he believes that working at his university under manga artists such as Ouhinata Gou and Tanaka Keiichi, made him more modest, grounded and helped him realise how hard the road to success is. “A dream to live by, a dream to count on“.

Winter’s Verge are returning to CCC17!

14/08/2017 by

Winter’s Verge are back at Cyprus Comic Con!

Following their appearance at CCC15, Winter’s Verge had a very busy 2016, with shows and festival appearances in Israel, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania in support of their album “IV”. The epic, melodic metal band have spent 2017 hard at work behind the scenes and are very happy to announce that they will be releasing their new EP at CCC ‘17!

Titled “The Wolves of Tiberon”, this concept work tells the tale of epic characters, huge battles, and a story that fits within the world created by Winter’s Verge that all of their music and works take place in. A new storyline within this immersive world will excite existing fans, and draw in new ones.

Tracklist:

  1. The Old Man Speaks (Narration)
  2. I am Wolf
  3. “Run” She Said (Narration)
  4. The Gift of a Curse
  5. Becoming a Man (Narration)
  6. The Pirate Hound
  7. The Halcyon (Narration)
  8. For the King
  9. A Wreath of Salt and Foam (Narration)
  10. The Wolves of Tiberon

 

Exclusive Live Performance @ CCC17!

Winter’s Verge will play on Saturday, 2nd September as part of the CCC After Party and will be performing “The Wolves of Tiberon” in its entirety as part of a full set performance for Comic Con, featuring special guests and a stage show specifically produced for CCC!

The show will be a must-see for any fan of epic, melodic metal, and indeed anyone who loves good music, great performances and a fantasy universe worth anyone’s time digging into!

Until then, here are a couple of videos for you to watch and explore the beautiful fantasy world of Winter’s Verge: