News

Featured Participant: HallyuCY


HallyuCY is a growing community dedicated to the spread of South Korean pop culture in Cyprus! The group will be participating at Cyprus Comic Con for a third consecutive year!

‘Hallyu’ (which literally translates to “flow of Korea”) also known as ‘The Korean Wave‘ is a neologism referring to the increase in popularity of South Korean culture in the rest of the world since the late 1990s. Some aspects of South Korean pop culture that have contributed to its popularity, include K-pop music, K-dramas (TV-series), the Korean language and cuisine, animated comics and films, technology.

To find out more about HallyuCY, join the group on Facebook.

In the online Facebook group, members can post about their favourite K-pop music, K-drama and films, share and exchange knowledge about different aspects of South Korean culture and generally bond and form friendships with likeminded individuals.

HallyuCY organise a number of gatherings throughout the year! Some of these include arts and crafts sessions, cooking sessions, Korean karaoke where the members sing their hearts out with no shame (!), Hangul (Korean alphabet) learning sessions, K-pop dance cover meetings and cozy Korean film nights!

At the Comic Con, HallyuCY will be screening K-pop music videos throughout the event so make sure to visit their booth for a taste of South Korean pop music! The group members will also be selling low-cost K-pop merchandise and homemade, delicious pepero (also known as pocky in Japan), which are chocolate covered biscuits, a very popular and yummy treat. Lastly, cute handmade arts and crafts created by the group’s members will be on display at their booth!

Make sure you don’t miss the afternoon dance performances on both Comic Con days by HallyuCY’s members on the Fringe Festival stage, as they will be performing a fun K-pop mashup showcasing choreographies from a number of popular groups! Stay tuned for the full Comic Con schedule release for the details!

Some of the group’s future goals include growing the Hallyu community in Cyprus, to inform and educate interested individuals about South Korean culture and to hopefully one day organise larger scale events, such as K-pop parties and Korean Cinema screenings!

Featured Sponsor: GeekOtopos


10577204_1541799072799705_2943606150086604915_nCyprus Comic Con is pleased to announce GeekOtopos as one of our sponsors for this year’s event!

Geekotopos is an open-source collaborative hive specializing in bringing creative freelancers together in a co-working environment. Filmmakers, graphic designers, video gamer developers, comic book artists and anyone who works in storytelling mediums can join and take residency in GeekOtopos to develop current and future projects.

Make sure to follow GeekOtopos and its creative projects on Facebook!

The collaborative offers pre-production development assistance for low-budget feature films, shorts, documentaries video games, graphic novels and TV shows for festival circulation, potential Cinema, Web and Video-On-Demand distribution.

GeekOtopos is also an on-line geek-media aggregator with its own YouTube channel focusing in all things Geeky: Movies, Tv Series, Comic Books, Video Games and Gadgets. Through the channel, GeekOtopos residents can also create specialized content. Its social media pages acts a news hub for all geek-culture matters and also feature special reports on nerdy local events.

As a content creator, GeekOtopos focuses on alternative media creation and projects targeted at pop-culture enthusiasts and not only. Film, VOD, web, video game and app productions using our talent pool of GeekOtopos residents and off-side partners for personal or corporate projects. GeekOtopos is both a place and mind-set where you are not constrained by routine and creativity blocks. We aim at networking and stimulating freelance and small business creatives to create and distribute amazingly cool geeky things.

At this years Cyprus Comic Con, GeekOtopos co-produced CCC16 official trailer and will sponsor the Film Festival section by giving a price of 2500€ in production services to the director of the winning local short film. Furthermore, through out the 2-day event they will be live-broadcasting the highlights of the convention to Facebook and YouTube with special guest interviews and audience reactions!

Special Guest: Luca Pizzari


LUCAS (1)Cyprus Comic Con is proud to announce comic book artist Luca Pizzari as one of our esteemed Special Guests for CCC16!

Luca discovered comics and fell in love with the art of the Kubert Family (among others) when he was 9 years old and decided he wanted to do comic books for a living straight away. He never looked back once and has been drawing ever since!

Now, much to his mother’s dismay (!), he is a full-time comic book artist based between London, Rome and Rio de Janeiro.

For more of Luca’s work, visit his personal blog and profile on Marvel Comics.

After a pretty useless – according to Luca – Master’s Degree in Illustration from the Camberwell College of Arts (part of the University of the Arts, London), and A LOT of time alone locked in his room drawing, he got his first few comic jobs in the Irish scene, of all places, with the 3-issues mini ‘Glimmer Man‘ for Atomic Diner and the O’Brien OGN Queen of Storms.

Soon after, a life changing encounter with Marvel artist Ed McGuinness and editor Nick Lowe brought him his first Marvel assignment, the ‘Spider-Man Special 2015‘, followed by a year-and-half-long stint on ‘Secret Wars Journal #1‘, the ‘Secret Wars: Red Skull‘ mini series, and the ‘Black Knight‘ series which closed with issue #5.

Luca is currently drawing the ‘Sons Of Anarchy: Redwood Original‘ prequel comic series for BOOM! Studios.


Artist Profile: Leonidas Stivaktis


Meet our next Featured Artist for CCC16, comics creator Leonidas Stivaktis!

Leonidas was born in Athens and uninterestingly (according to him!), spent most of his life there. He doodled his way through school, eventually deciding to accept his fate and study comics and illustration at Ornerakis School of Applied Arts, as well as creative writing in the Kapodistrian University of Athens.

For more of Leonidas’ work, visit his page on Facebook.

He has worked in comics and illustration since 2008, mostly working for children’s books and personal projects. Leonidas has been taking part in comic conventions showcasing his work since 2013, so far counting more than eleven issues of comics and zines. He has worked as an art teacher for children aged 6-12 and a graphic designer, and currently he is freelancing as a comic maker and illustrator. Other artistic projects he is currently working on include tattooing, concept art and art journaling. If he ever decides to grow up, he wants to study marine biology and preferably make even more comics!

Artist Profile: David Selwood


Our next Featured Artist is the talented David Selwood, illustrator of the graphic novel ‘Aphrodite – The Naked Truth’, Cyprus’ very first adult comic!

To find out more about ‘Aphrodite – The Naked Truth’, visit the official website and Facebook page (explicit content – 18+ only).


The Artist

David Selwood was born in London and in the 1960’s attended Ealing Art College, London, under the direction of Roy Ascott and his team including artists such as R. B. Kitaj and the Cohen Brothers. David learned skills that were to be the foundations of his work that you see today. After a degree course in industrial design at the Central School St Martins, London, he won a travel bursary with one of his designs, enabling him to travel in Europe.

On his return he continued his career as an industrial designer, specialising in the field of lighting and received an award for one his designs from the British Design Council. After building his own natural stone house in rural Wiltshire, he was looking for a new project and encouraged by friends, David returned to his love of art and drawing.

After several exhibitions, and illustrating various children’s books, he recently completed his first graphic novel ‘Aphrodite the Naked Truth’, soon to be followed by HP Lovecraft’s stories ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ with others to follow.

For more info on David Selwood visit his personal website and follow him on Facebook.


The Author

For the last ten years, Christiane Sternberg (b.1965, Berlin), has been living as a writer and journalist in Cyprus, where she has found inspiration, as well as in the travel guides by Marco Polo, Merian and Dumont for many of her short and long stories, including them in her blog and also in her own books.

Her story about the ancient Aphrodisia inspired the artist David Selwood. And together they created the Graphic Novel ‘Aphrodite – The Naked Truth’.

Visit Christiane’s page on Amazon.