Super-powered generosity raises charity funds at Comic Expo
Thanks to our ever-donating players, more money than ever was raised for Draw the World Together at this year’s Comic Expo…
They came, they saw, they gave money - again, and again, and again. Once again, NCsoft’s players proved their generosity knows no bounds when they visited NCsoft Europe’s stand at this year’s Bristol Comic Expo.
Why so generous? Well apart from the fact that they were giving to a very worthwhile charity (EveryChild, who work with disadvantaged children all over the world) they also got something in return: sketches! Loads and loads of fantastic sketches, usually of their characters from NCsoft’s games.
All this happened thanks to the ever-talented team from Draw the World Together, the charity project set up by comics artist Andrew Wildman. For the third year running Andrew and other artists set up shop on the NCsoft stand, sketching all weekend to bring player’s characters to life. As well as Andrew sketching on Sunday, Neil Edwards and Mike Collins created loads of fantastic sketches all weekend long.
Why stop at a black and white sketch though, however gorgeous? For the first time ever at this Comic Expo we began to colour our sketches! Thanks to the wizardry of colourists Kat Nicholson and Jason Cardy, sketches drawn on the stand could also be coloured digitally for an additional donation - which meant very happy players went home with both the original pencil sketch, and a coloured print! Demand for this service was extremely high, which has hardly surprising when you see the results - check out our Flickr stream for close-ups.
On top of the live sketching and colouring, we also had some very special limited edition items to sell for charity. The most popular item all weekend was the first-ever Draw the World Together Sketchbook, featuring classic City of Heroes/City of Villains characters drawn by some of the biggest names in the comics business, including Dave Gibbons, Doug Braithwaite, Ian Churchill, John McCrea and many more!
With only 500 sketchbooks produced, and selling at just £5 each (with every penny going to charity) it was no surprise that these moved fast… but fear not, if you didn’t manage to get to the show, we still have sketchbooks left which we’ll have on sale at future shows including this months’ UK Games Expo.
After two days of sketching, chatting with players, eating the occasional cookie, colouring and then sketching again, the only question left to ask is: how much did we raise? We’re very happy to announce that a grand total of £1,666 (€2,095) was in the kitty at the end of the weekend, and every single penny of that will go to EveryChild. Thank you to every player who came along, who donated and who gave us food!
If you’d like to see more imagery from Comic Expo visit our official Flickr set. All of the latest sketches - both pencil originals, and colours - are also in our photostream.
Don’t forget, if you’d like to immortalise your character in a sketch, you can at our next show - UK Games Expo. We’ll see you there!
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