It’s mandatory for me after every workshop to come to my blog and write about it and hopefully, convince a few people who don’t know about these sort of events or are skeptical about them to give them a try. Of course there might be some not so successful workshops out there but I’m glad so far all I attended were extremely inspiring and THU 2014 was not only that, but even more.

The location of the event is great, a little peninsula with a few hotels, houses restaurants and shops ideal to feel for a few days like being in a city exclusive to artists. Unfortunately this year we didn’t have the best weather, quite unusual in the area but still good enough. If you want to see everything in the schedule you don’t have time to go to the beach anyway.

I was lucky to arrive to Portugal with some friends a few days earlier. The first day, the main head behind the event Andre Lourenço gave us a warm welcome and invited us to join dinner with his team. From first moment you could see their dedication, I feel grateful to them for not only organizing the event but managing it so nicely and well.

2 days before the official start most people arrived to the peninsula and we were able to have dinner with some of the speakers. It was good time to introduce yourself to new people and exchange stories with them. The day after with even more people arriving to Troia the networking kept going, specially with the hour reserved in the evening with free beer and wine before watching “Gramma Wray” by Loic Zimmermann in premiere, a movie/documentary on the painter’s journey of William Wray.

And then the official 1st day of the workshop, as mentioned before, the schedule covered a time frame from 9am in the morning till 2am at night, when the party in the casino would start! In my case I was going to sleep at 4am every night and get up at 8am. I was extremely tired when I got back home but it was worth.

First thing in the mornings were the workshops. You had to sign up for those because there were limited seats and the difference with other lectures were the “interaction” since some of them required you to take your laptop or buy clay to sculpt! At the same time for those not interested or unlucky in the workshops Life drawing with suicide girls. I had to skip a couple of hours of my workshop to go and draw them. I miss the life drawing sessions I was attending early this year every week.

After that, for 2 hours before lunch a few lectures/demos/talks in parallel in 3 different rooms. You can still check the list of guests on the website

https://trojan-unicorn.com/pages/speakers

Overall the talks were very inspiring and went from the background of the artists to current situation of the industry, tips and many more subjects. There weren’t many demos but people already suggested that and I know the organizer took good note of that (get ready because next year might be even better).

After lunch another 2 hours on the same line and then happy hour! One hour to socialize with beer and wine. It was very funny how Andre kept encouraging us to drink. IT was a good hour to talk and hang out with old and new friends. Sometimes you could be just listening to fascinating stories.

Once the bar was closed time for the mentorship. Same as the morning workshops you had to sign up and wait to see if you were fortunate to be part of one. I personally think it was a good idea the way the mentorships worked, every mentor (over 10 in total) had 10 people around and would go wherever they wanted to sit for a bit and have a talk about the industry, experience, something else, portfolio review, anything. It was a friendly environment specially for those beginners who sometimes are shy to talk to the pros here you had no scape because the pro would ask you straight.

And then the legend’s time, with everyone in the theater (unless you decided to join a side private group somewhere else as I did during one of the sessions and was still greats) split in 2 sessions with a break for dinner in between.

With everyone fed of inspiration and being midnight, art battles! It was such fun and stressing thing. Also embarrassing to me for losing both days I took part of. Basically there were 2 cintiqs and 2 captains. 10 people from the audience would join each captain and the teams would have to paint or model something together, having 5 minutes each member, and 10 the captains. Aside from being fun, made me think of a few things when it comes to teamwork and time management.

All the people who survived to all said before were still hanging out in the casino till the close of it at 3am. I also must mention the accommodation options in the peninsula were great, near and comfortable, very convenient to get good sleep and recover energies for next day. Only issue in our hotel the wifi only worked at the lobby and was extremely slow.

I think with that I pretty much covered everything, I met friends I’ve been talking to for years online, I made new friends, I met some professionals I’ve been following for long, got an important job offer, got inspired by all the talks, and bought a super cool hoodie I’m gonna be wearing this winter.

If I get a job in Japan I’m not sure if I’ll make it to the next edition, but will definitely ask because I wouldn’t like to miss it!!

Tomorrow I’m flying to Portugal to attend The Trojan Horse was a Unicorn workshop, but before that, I wanted to write a post here about the other workshop I attended a couple of weeks back in London but couldn’t before because I’ve been enjoying my time in Romania.

With an impressive list of instructors (Levi Petterfy, Jon McCoy, Emrah Elmasli, Bjorn Hürri, Jama Jurabaev, Jonas de Ro, etc.) working for some of the top companies in the video game and film industry the event was speaking by itself but the organization and the environment felt being there is what pushed the success. The price of the ticket was 180GBP for the early bird (if I’m not wrong because I purchased it later) and 250GBP for the normal ticket. In my opinion, it was absolutely worth.

There were 2 venues for the lectures, quite wide rooms but the amount of people attending (I would say over 200) made them quite cozy sometimes. There was also a cafe with free coffee, tea and water all the day and we were getting a delicious and heavy breakfast every morning. At the end of the day most people to head to a pub nearby to keep hanging out with all the lovely people around. There were also a few restaurants, bars, supermarkets in the area but a tight schedule didn’t allow you to spend much time on that if you didn’t want to miss anything.

The lectures were about 2 hours with a Q&A round at the end and on the side a silent demo by another artist. You could approach the instructors at any moment and I saw many people getting portfolio reviews though that wasn’t included in the schedule.It was interesting to see the work of some instructors I wasn’t familiar with, but after their lectures and hanging out with them for a bit I’m going to keep an eye on them from now because what they do is truly inspiring.

We also had a couple of life drawings sessions directed by Kan Muftic like I’ve never seen before (and I’ve been to many in different places). He really made us think about how we approach life drawing and at the same time was really fun.

Every day ended with a 1h Q&A session with all the instructors while free beer was being provided, really friendly environment and interesting to get a variety of answers from all those years of experience in the industry.

I would have loved to speak to every single person in there but, while I made some new contacts, the nicest thing to me was to be able to see again some friends in the community, some I never met before in person and others I haven’t seen in years. At my first workshop was all about making new contacts, and though I still do that of course and I’ll continue, it makes you very happy to feel part of the community by having friends there and being able to hug them in these events.

I’m pretty sure (or at least I hope!) there will be another one next year, so I encourage everyone to attend, and to keep an eye on the news related and show your interest. You can get an idea of the environment seen by looking at this collection of pictures I took.

In 2011 I went to the Massive Black workshop in San Francisco and it kinda was the beginning of where I am today and where I want to be someday. By that time I didn’t know absolutely anyone apart from the instructors seen in books, magazines or the internet and nobody knew me. It was such a great experience that not only helped me to push it for 2 years but also to make some good friends.

As soon as I saw it announced back in September I had no doubt I wanted to be there (even the price was cheaper than ever! 250$ is nothing for what you get in exchange), meet people I met 2 years ago, others I’ve been talking to online but never in person, get inspired by the mind blowing list of instructors and so. Workshops are one of the best experiences anyone can have as part of the community, and after blaming on myself for missing some others where my friends went, I couldn’t miss this one. I didn’t, and it was awesome.

Actually my second trip to America had a pretty bad start, my train to the airport got delayed for an hour because a person got hit by a train making me run at the airport to not miss the flight, which was delayed for 5 hours due to a “minor technical issue”, and then delayed again because a person wasn’t feeling good and even puked inside the plane and we had to wait till he felt better. The good thing is I met Chris Bjors at the airport because we were at the same flight, such a coincidence, and a good one because some company is appreciated in those moments. We arrived to the hotel at 3am and only slept for a few hours before the workshop. If at any point anyone saw me struggling to stay awake, the time difference and that were part responsible.

The first day was very exciting and full of hugs for everyone. The instructors introduced themselves and the line seemed to never end. I liked a lot the layout of this workshop, so many lectures at the same time makes you want to clone yourself but being that impossible, I appreciate they arranged the different rooms in the same place separated by curtains, which made it very easy to move around. I still missed a lot it would have been worth checking from what I heard from my friends but still I feel I got fed enough.

For 3 days you could move around checking the main area with 6 big screens where some of the instructors were doing demos and answering the questions you had, jump from one room to another (or even being in two rooms at the same time if you found the right spot) or enjoy some traditional air in the area where digital was forbidden. And all of this watched by Kim Jun Gi from the skies.

The presence of the korean artist was one of the most iconic elements of this workshop, only the long lines of hundreds of people waiting for hours to get his books signed is a good example of how everyone loves him. His presentation was great having the translator around because it turned into a Q&A with lots on interesting answers from an artist not only good at what he does but with good sense of humor. He was also involved in a “pictionary” session with Marko, Wes and Ian where  people from the audience suggested topics and they had to draw them in the time given. Though the pressure they seemed to be having lots of fun (same as us watching them)

There was good variety of subject matter along the classes and demos, going for sci-fi, fantasy, realism, stylization, characters, creatures, environments, 2D, 3D, tips to make it in the industry, jokes, and much more. You can still see on the website the schedule and the list of the instructors, though sadly some of them dropped at the end. I already knew the workflow of some of them from livestream, videotutorials or courses but still feel like I learnt quite a few things I can´t wait to use for my work.

http://massiveblack.com/workshop

It was sweet to see people I met 2 years ago again, I was surprised some people remembered me for just a few minutes talking back then! The workshop was great again to do networking, it´s the place to exchange business cards. I put up to date everyone about my current situation there and promised I´ll try to stay more active again from now because I lost a bit of activity with my full time job, and after making more friends will be even more motivated. I even managed to talk to some people who looked familiar to me from the previous workshop but didn´t have a chance to talk before. I wish I had talk to more people because everyone´s so cool but there will be more workshops.

Everyday after the workshop the socialization continues having dinner with mates or people you just met for the first time ever, having some drinks and stay together till it´s time to go to bed, some earlier than others.

The last day as usual is for portfolio reviews, things get serious and you have to be ready for the critics. In my case were very useful and same as 2 years ago, was very interesting to see that everyone was pointing out the same flags in my portfolio, different professionals with that in common can only mean I need to work on that as soon as possible.

Again, I can only recommend going to these events if you´re part of this industry no matter if you just started (I was there 2 years ago!) or you are a professional with years of experience. The only sad thing of it was the time to say bye to everyone (more hugs everywhere!) I will try to go next year again, with a whole new portfolio improved. I hope to see everyone there, till then, keep it up!!

This last awesome photo is by Phil Holland