Friday and Saturday, July 5 & 6, The Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto was the venue for FeTNA 2013. Hosted by the Canadian Tamil Congress and presented in conjunction with ATN Canada, the event featured the best and brightest in Tamil talent and scholarship from across North America and around the world.
Naturally, the team from The Legend of Ponnivala was there to take part in the festivities. With a display area of some 2,000 square feet, we were able to introduce new fans to the ancient Annanmar legend, while showcasing interesting insights to our existing audience. The display included our 21-foot banner mural from RUNG South Asian Heritage Day at the ROM, a beautiful Sony high-definition display showing loops of some of our animated series, and a demo of our Ponnivala Parcheesi computer game, soon to be entering production.
Response to the series was so enthusiastic that we sold completely out of our Tamil editions of the complete graphic novel series, as well as our new line of children’s story books. But the real winner for the day was our newest product: a fully-interactive ebook for the iPad (engineered by Digital Maxim). This ebook version of our comic is entirely unique in that it is fully narrated along with highlighted text. Video “Easter eggs” — short clips from the animated series — are embedded in the books as well, providing even more interactive features. Of course, the audio reader can be turned off so the books function just like a normal iPad ebook. But for parents looking to help their kids learn to read and speak Tamil (or English for that matter), the read-along feature is extremely valuable.
We had a lot of visitors over the two-day event, with many of our American visitors expressing interest in seeing the show on TV in the US. The kids were having a great time playing Parcheesi on the computer (one group was even engaged in a little “tournament” that lasted most of the afternoon on Friday!), while Dr. Beck and lead animator Ravichandran put in some overtime autographing books.
Dr. Beck was on hand to give two presentations, including one on the epic and it’s relationship to the greater corpus of Tamil culture. She was also honoured with a special award for her contributions to Tamil culture and research.
In celebration of FeTNA 2013 coming to Canada for the first time, we set up a special discount store for comics and other merchandise. Stop by and have a look, but bear in mind that the prices will only last until July 15! [CLICK HERE]
