What a weekend! It felt like a long time coming, but we at GLUE decided to let our hair down and rolled along to the second annual Dublin Comic Con 2014 in Dublin’s National Show Centre.
We mingled with our fellow geeks and nerds to soak up the ambience and celebrate all things fantasy, even rubbing shoulders with royalty – namely Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman.
There were some really impressive cosplayers throughout the weekend, including everyone from the beloved Marvel and DC characters (too numerous to mention !), to Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Game Of Thrones to Super Mario and Mortal Kombat – we even saw an entire family dressed as characters from Team Fortress 2!?
So why a comic convention? Not only because we individually love comics and the characters they have spawned, but because the convention is more inclusive, not adhering strictly to comics alone, but has indeed espoused popular culture as a whole, encompassing Film, TV, Literature and Gaming.
It is this all-encompassing value/ethic that has seen comics go from the page, to the screen (in cartoon, live-action and game format) to the big screen and back around again.
In recent years, the world of ‘geek culture’ as a whole has become more accepted and accessible, with our cult favourites now becoming household names.
The popularity and impact of comic books on the world of Film and Visual Effects has seen our favourite heroes and villains dominate the box office, with the greatest success;
The highest grossing Batman movie ever is The Dark Night, when launched, it set a record $18.5 million for the first day and has gone on to earn over $1 billion dollars in all countries combined.
Overall, the entire Batman film franchise is worth a worldwide total of over $3.7 billion dollars!
This weekend alone, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has made an impressive $93 million worldwide, with a rumoured sequel in the works.
Considering Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy (a film previously considered too niche to see the big screen) has been released, the VFX industry just continues to grow from strength to strength.
With 33 films released since 2000 based on the Marvel universe, and another 11 films planned before 2018, the phenomena of comic-conversion films show no sign of stopping.
Fantasy and comic-conversion films dominate the top 20 records of the highest grossing movies on their opening weekends.
At GLUE, we aspire to create Visual Effects to those same high standards, constantly keeping abreast of the latest technology and trends in the industry to keep the same results attainable for your business or brand.
Check out Dublin Comic Con on Facebook and on Twitter @DublinComicCon