Weird Market opens registration and announces programme details
Skwigly
Image: Weird Market
The 16th edition of Weird Market is gearing up to welcome hundreds of professionals from the animation, video game and new media industry. Registration for professionals is open as of today and will close on September 24th, while the organizers continue to provide details on the content of the 2024 program. Every year, the event attracts a large number of industry players, and spots are sold out before the deadline, confirming the market’s appeal. Those interested in attending should fill out the application form on the event’s website: https://weirdmarket.es/en/
This benchmark meeting, a reference at the domestic level, takes place on October 1st through 6th in Valencia, being October 3-5 the days dedicated to professionals in the sector. Among this edition’s novelties is the expansion of the professional area with Weird Invest (Thursday, Oct. 3rd), a day organized with the support if ICEX, Animation from Spain, and Games from Spain, where new funding models will be presented, case studies will be examined, and disruptive technologies will be discussed. Investors, publishers and institutions that have already confirmed their presence include: Triple Dragon, Animond, Claynosaurz, Blue Bits, Raw Fury, Startupexplore, Veemkade Capital, Wandermoon Finance, Elipsis Capital, Morgana Studios, Final Frontier, and Spain Audiovisual Hub. Aside from the conferences and case studies, there will be B2B meetings and networking dinners.
Registrations can be obtained for both the conferences and the networking sessions that take place on October 4-5, and they will allow use of the meetings app, available for companies and creators with projects selected for this edition. This is a key tool in order to see the list of participating professionals, promote interactions and facilitate communications among the participants, all of which are core features of Weird Market.
One of the highlights of this edition is the inclusion of new venues such as La Harinera and Las Naves, in addition to the traditional Filmoteca Valenciana. Activities will be split among these three venues, with the first one hosting the conferences and the second the recruitment interviews and networking area. Located between the two the venues, the urban art alley will be “Weird Plaza”, a meeting point for participants, lined with the Showroom stalls. The Filmoteca Valenciana (Rialto Building) will once again be the “home” of the Wfest short-film festival, with screenings on October 1st through October 3rd.
Along with all these activities, there will be the classic recruitment day on October 2nd, and the “beerworking” session on October 4th.
This multidisciplinary event puts Valencia in the industry’s spotlight. Some of the activities, such as the WFest and the recruitment day) will need separate tickets and registrations. Information will be timely provided once the details of each event are announced.
INNOVATION: THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF ENTERTAINMENT
One of the case studies to be examined during Weird Invest is “Claynosaurz: How innovation is creating the future of entertainment”. Claynosaurz IP has opened up a way to finance and create global audiovisual products, relying on innovation and blockchain and NFT (non-fungible tokens) technology. This is a revolutionary new approach and a strategy of affiliation with viewers where quality is combined with quantity, seeking to increase interaction (a structural trait in the video game world) while pursuing cost savings.
THE SERIES/BOARD GAME INFINITY AND THE COMEDY QUERIDA CONCHI AMONG THE FEATURED CONFERENCES
Some of the selected projects for the 2024 edition will be presented on Friday and Saturday, and most conferences will take place during these two days, including “Infinity, from Board Game to Screen,” and “Querida Conchi” in the “Bastard Formats” section.
The first one will look at how the prestigious international company LEX & OTIS noticed the tabletop miniature game Infinity (by Corvus Belli) and turned it into an animated series that just launched on Comic Con.
The second conference is part of the “Bastard Formats” section, which includes disruptive, singular, experimental and generally different works which are hard to label due to their format or storytelling style. Querida Conchi is a surrealist animated comedy that follows the life of an elderly couple in their home, and its author, Rafael Esteban Trujillo, will tell us first-hand about his creative process.
The 16th edition of Weird Market is co-organized by the Valencian Institute of Culture, attached to the First Vice-Presidency and Department of Culture and Sport of the Generalitat Valenciana. It also has the main sponsorship of Europa Creativa MEDIA, the Valencia City Council and the Valencia Provincial Council; the participation of the Ministry of Culture, ICEX, Valencia Innovation Capital, Acción Cultural Española through the Program for the Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE) and the ICAA; it is also sponsored by HP-AMD, and has the support of IndieDevDay, AVEPA, Animat, Movistar Plus+ and RTVE, among others.