Last September, the Polish city of Łódź teamed up with The Witcher developers CD Projekt Red to create a festival known as Promised Land. The 2 day program brought together artists that worked in gaming, film, and advertising and attempted to ‘blur the boundaries between digital and traditional arts.’ Attendees included talent behind games such as Overwatch and films such as Star Wars.
This year, the festival is now grown into a 4 day affair taking place between September 3rd to the 6th. A trailer detailing the benefits of Promise Land recently released to accompany the news of 2017 dates.
The video heavily showcases the venue of the event, the EC1 Łódź Centre. The building use to be a power plant but was revitalized to be a modern technological wonder. The huge building now houses a planetarium, science center, and offices for a comic book festival.
While the programming for Promised Land 2017 has yet to be announced, previous workshops and guest will give an idea of what to expect. Artists such as Even Amundsen (World of Warcraft) and Sven Martin (Game of Thrones) presented topics like 'Designing from within a World' and 'Making of the Dragons'.
Early bird tickets are available now for a discounted rate. 1040 zł (approx $257 USD) gets you into the event which will feature:
- Talks - Promised Land speakers will discuss and touch upon professional subjects, dry as descriptions of creative techniques, analyzes of completed projects, etc.
- Workshops and classes - These daily events will give participants the chance to learn and improve and Their skills under the direct guidance of invited speakers.
- Live sessions - invited speakers will showcase Their illustration and sculpting skills in front of a live audience, as well as discuss the creative process.
- Production focus - These meetings will cover all the aspects of the production process from the industry professional's perspective: pipelines, financing, resources, etc.
- Meet the Artist sessions - taking place at the end of every talk, they allow the public to learn more about the speaker, Their education, and Their path to artistic success.
- Portfolio Reviews - These sessions will let budding artists seek career guidance from well-established professionals present at the event.
The site also mentions that 'English will be the leading language of the event'.
It's always cool to come across unique conferences such as Promised Land while writing about gaming. If I had the time and money, I'd try to attend all these festivals worldwide to try and get a feeling for the global gaming landscape (and meet some awesome contacts).
If you're in Poland in September and have some spare złoty, I suggest you check out this event. Heck, how can you go wrong with that venue?
The trailer is below: