Bobby Chiu, the co-founder of Imaginism Studios and LightBox Expo, talks about creating a space for artists to showcase their work and become part of a supportive community
Creative communities have been a necessary feature of the creative life for centuries, and for Bobby Chiu the adventure of bringing together a community of artists and illustrators from around the world is a mission that he’s so clearly committed to. Bobby established Imaginism Studios in 2005, and within that he has overseen development of the Schoolism online training and teaching courses for burgeoning new artists.
In a conversation with ImagineFX, Bobby takes us through how and why LightBox Expo was created and what it means to him, and also to the global illustration and image-making community across the disciplines of concept design, illustration, and work for video games.
Our conversation begins with Bobby recalling the earliest moment in the genesis of LightBox. “I think the biggest reason is because I got discovered at San Diego Comic-Con, way back in the day,” Bobby explains. “Tim Burton was looking for artists for [his film] Alice in Wonderland, so that’s how I was discovered. But back then, you’d go on TV and wouldn’t see anything about San Diego Comic-Con. It wasn’t on peoples’ radars at that level.”
DESERVED RECOGNITION
“Comic-Con’s still amazing. I still love it. But it has kind of become an even bigger thing: that’s where you go to meet celebrities. And fewer and fewer people are going there for comic book artists in general, and so I just felt like, ‘We need our own home now. A new home. Something that will be dedicated to us’.
“So, I have a friend named Jim Demonakos. He’s incredible. He created The Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle. And when he sold it, it had over 100,000 people attending. It was absolutely staggering. But I knew that he didn’t have anything to do at this point and so I called him up, we visited a convention, and at the end of that little visit he said to me, ‘Let me guess: you want to start a convention?’ And I said, ‘Yes’.”
From that modest affirmation of his ambition, Bobby immersed himself in the creative, practical and logistical thinking about what a convention of artists could become. Of th
