Lucca Comics & Games

Lucca Comics & Games 2009
“Evoluzione della Specie”: the market fair becomes a Festival

29 October – 1 November (showrooms: 17 October –1 November)

The most important Italian event for comics and clever gaming, held in Lucca since 43 years ago, is showing itself under the aegis of change: Lucca Comics and Games becomes a real “Comics and Games Festival”.
From October 29 up to November 1 the appointment is in Lucca with an event, promoted by the municipality of Lucca with the aid of the Province, that this year is dedicated to the Evolution of the Species, to honor the 150° anniversary of Charles Darwin’s theory and the bicentennial of the scientist’s birth.

Lucca Comics & Games, with its continual and perpetual motion, has completed its evolution right in this 2009: from a market-fair dedicated to collectors it has grown into a full blown festival that distills in four days all the things orbiting around the world of comics, games, illustrations and animation.
The event, being aimed at involving more and more of the city drawing it into its dreamworld, has been expanded with new exposition spaces (the Real Collegio, new focal point for the festival) and new areas (the Music & Comics stage, situated near the Baluardo di San Paolino).
This “evolution” also touches one of the visual pillars of Lucca Comics & Games, the flier: the 2009 edition will be characterized by an artistic crossover, a merging of styles and the presence of two entwined images.
In the skillful hands of Rick Berry and Phil Hale the flier, traditionally founded on the work of one artist, will split to create an ideal set of parallel tracks, bringing forth a strong and fiercely beautiful message suspended between a darwinian past and a technological future.
And in the middle of this, the Tuscan city, true heart and engine of this all: a place rich in history and culture, capable of giving life to an ever changing world of fantasy that projects into reality all the dreams that only Lucca Comics & Games can realize.
The Lucca Comics & Games 2009 poster?… The poster by Rick Berry and Phil Hale.

Click on the image for a larger version

Lucca Comics & Games never rests, Lucca Comics & Games confronts the global challange with a project of global communication.
Lucca is evolving, as an event and as a multi-subject communication project, in the hands of two of the greatest artists in comics, illustrations and contemporary arts: Rick Berry and Phil Hale, working together for the first time in 10 years.
A work of art as the coronation of an experience that linked the two artists to the event in Lucca in the past 10 years.
In the distant 1998 Rick Berry and Phil Hale inaugurated the Lucca Games Area Performance project with an art-show and some live action painting sessions, things that even today represent one of the core moments for fans and collectors.
At the center of the communication there’s a theme: the Evolution of the Species. The bicentenary of Darwin’s birth, but also the evolution of Lucca’s kermesse, not only just a comics and games show, but a social phenomenon, a 360 degrees event dedicated to all modern tribes of imaginary, adventure and entertainment.
Evolution of the human being, and of style.
The meeting/clash of the art of two friends and colleagues, used to mutual collaboration as well as reciprocal challenge.
Lucca Comics & Games 2009 fliers are unique objects with countless interpretations but withone clear message: in the oil painting by Phil Hale, Lucca Underway, the contemporary man seen as a cyborg descends fro the ape and dreams the city, to find his artistic home and a new perfect life, building a New Family, into the beautiful work by Rick Berry.
Thirst of knowledge and technological dream, an evolution-revolution in which the show ends the canonical one flier - one author paradigm, proposing a mix of visual art in a trilogy of fliers, united into a unique graphical frame by the art director Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini.

LUCCA GAMES XXIII

The global event for the great global progects!
This year the most important show dedicated to all forms of gaming an to the imagination will give an in-depth look at the global projects and at the creative people who realize them. Development of a winning idea, of a character, of a subject, and declination of the project on the narrative, gaming, visual and cinematographic levels.
Lucca Games, parterre de rois of these global projects, will host the main publishers and companies of this sector, their brands and their ideas, developing a series of thematic paths of exposition and formation focused on the key elements of entertainment from the past 10 years.
As usual, the cornerstone of the program will be the presence of three Guest of Honor (a painter, a writer and a game designer).
The opportunity that Lucca Games offers, unique in Italy, to meet great authors of fantay, science fiction and games has never been so powerful. The genre literature is going to be represented by maybe the greatest living master of fantasy. The author of one of the sagas that innovated this genre, introducing into the pages of heroic adventure the first anti-hero: Elric of Melniboné. It’s with great pride that we present as Writer Guest of Honor for the XXIII edition of Lucca Games: the master Michael J. Moorcock, for the first time attending a convention in Italy.
By his side there will be one of the artists that have best represented his creation in all of these years: Robert Gould who will bring for the first time in Europe his Art Show dedicated to the albino sorcerer.
As Artist Guest of Honor for Lucca Games, the name is breathtaking.
For the first time in 43 years in the history of collateral shows of this kermesse, a fantasy artist is let into the sancta sanctorum of the italian comic-book art. No one could have been better suited for this occasion than Donato Giancola.
His tributes to neoclassicism execution and composition, the greatness of his works, and most of all his role in the artistic movement for fantasy and science fiction make him the ideal subject for the first Lucca Games show held inside Palazzo Ducale.
Giancola, winner of the Gold Award of Spectrum 13 with his “Prometheus”, has been one of the most acclaimed Magic The Gathering illustrators, and with his works for the covers of many video-games (Microsoft, Lucas Art) and those for Tor Books under Irene Gallo’s direction, he earned 5 out of 9 Chelsey Awards in 2007.
After Mr. Knizia and Christian T. Petersen, the Game Designer Guest of Honor is again a Roleplay Game author: Monte Cook.
Since more than 15 years he is one of the main authors of adventures (from TSR to White Wolf to Wizards of the Coast). One of the designers behind the 3rd Edition od D&D, he spearheaded the revolution of its
rule-system subsequently influencing all the D20 based games, and then yet again pushing his creature forward with the recent Pathfinder, from Paizo Publishing.
Cool will be present in Lucca thanks to the effort of Wyrd Editions, one of the most dynamic italian firms in this sector, that has established a permanent cooperation with Malhavoc Press, the publishing company founded by the american author himself. There will also be the presence of a great european boardgame author and one of the main figures in this area, who will participate in many laboratories during Lucca Games.
He is be Bruno Faidutti, the famous author of Citadels and Il Mistero dell’Abazia, present at the event thanks to the efforts of Nexus Editrice for the launch of Ad Astra; he’ll oversee the Prototype Revision Corner and will be honorary president of the Gioco Inedito Contest.
Closing this first look at the international lineup of guests for this Lucca Games 2009, that we’ll update in September, are the authors of the promotional flyer of Lucca Comics & Games.
They are Rick Berry e Phil Hale, once guests in the 1998 edition of the show, who have devoted their works to the convention interpreting it as the evolution of the species within the world of shows.
Rick Berry, visualizer for Johnny Mnemonic and author of 20 oil paintings for the limited editions of Stephen King’s books, and Phil Hale, who went from the Halo cover art to Tony Blair’s portrait, will once again be protagonists of the Art Exhibition for Lucca Games.
An important look will obviously be directed at World of Warcraft and its many incarnations: the card, miniature and board games. The World of Azeroth is the perfect embodiment of a global project, a video game universe that became literature, comic and game.
Following this project will obviously be present Upper Deck Italy and its artists and editors, like Nexus, who brought on our tables the games inspired by the great saga who captured more than 10.000.000 players.

There will then be space for the history of games, art and literature.

The corner will become an island thanks to a project named Historical Island, that will be home for a host of shows and expositions, and one will see Italeri as protagonist, and an improved area dedicated to free gaming that’ll be coordinated by Conan Laurenzi and Lorenzo Sartori. More space dedicated to art performances, and a true gymnasium for miniature painting, and a whole exposition dedicated to one of the absolute masters of historical wargaming: Mario Venturi.

Global projects and global entertainment, Lucca Games has also become the main venue for video games in Italy.

Besides EA, Namco Bandai and Ubisoft other major publishers will be present to show their latest products, like Activision, Blizzard, Nintendo and other dynamic firms of the sector, like KochMedia and Ankama. Keep the show combined with the cultural momentum, that’s the rule of this event. In addition to the publisher’s space, the cultural one: we’re kickstarting the first edition of the Lucca Modding Contest, and also the first edition of a prize dedicated by Lucca Games to the best productions in video gaming. The latter one has been supported by the Italian Association for Interactive Multimedia Works (AIOMI): the Lucca Games AIOMI AWARDS.
Publishers, ideas and italian excellency for these global projects: as always Lucca Games poses itself, other than as an exhibit, also as an occasion for the formation of young talents and for the meeting between aspirant artists and professional realities in the highest levels of italian publishing. If the program of Lucca has its foundation in the presence of great guests who give shape and substance to the dreams of the fans, this year’s event will offer a unique opportunity for the growth and formation of young authors.

We give you: Tessitori di Sogni (Dream Threaders)

An event fathered by Italia Creativa, the project to sustain and promote young italian creativity under the Department of Youth - Presidency of the Counsel of Ministers in collaboration with ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities) and GAI (Young Italian Artists) with the aid of Workshow, will open a series of art-houses in eight italian municipalities.
For Lucca this initiative will be realized by the Municipal Administration and by Atlantyca Ent: there will be 16 guest investors (8 for the graphic area and 8 for the literary area) that will work for one year on a series of seminars, meetings and laboratories together with the international guests of Lucca Games and the Atlantyca publishers.
A new, unique and deep way to catch the new talents of our home and maybe rise with them the Geronimo Stilton of the near future.

In the area of professional meetings we’ll not neglect to renew the precious experience of the Prototype Review Corner, for the aspiring game designers that in this way will be allowed to meet the most important authors and publishers available during the kermesse in Lucca.

These are the first servings on the menù for Lucca Games 2009.
For more details and the whole menù, as always www.luccacomicsandgames.com

© 2009 Andrea Liga Ligabue

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