Vertex 2024 - our best bits and some surprises

Vertex 2024, our own live artist event held at London's Business Design Centre, has ended and as we look back on a wonderful day it's good to know the Creative Bloq team had a blast getting to talk the roster of talented speakers, going hands-on with new and exciting products from industry-leading exhibitors like Wacom and Xencelabs (we held this brand's new pen display), and witnessing the imaginative (and hilarious) sketch wall designs crafted by attendees. 

We hope you had a great time too, if you attended. And if you didn't, well there's always next year. This year's speakers included Pixar's Dylan Sisson who revealed more on RenderMan's AI tools, Pernille Ørum shared her career highlights and demoed her process, Brynn Metheney revealed her approach to creature design for film and David 'Vyle' Levy offered an insight into how to launch your own IP using Unreal Engine 5.

The day ran smoothly with talks across three stages, plus live demonstrations from the best in the business, and there were multiple life drawing sessions offering inspiration for visitors to draw from. Did we mention the amazing coffee too?

Our Ecommerce Writer, Beth, spent the day chatting to exhibitors about some exciting (and completely top secret) digital art products launching in the coming weeks, as well as posting on our social media accounts, and most importantly – making it her mission to outdo Ian and Natalie in a friendly competition of who could bag the most freebies at Vertex.  

Beth's total haul was around five pens, three hats, a very fancy desk mat, blue-light blocking glasses courtesy of AMD, two free t-shirts and way too many business cards any one person can handle. It turns out that LinkedIn QR codes are super popular, too. Anyway, Beth won by a mile and Natalie and Ian could only look on with jealousy. 

News writer Natalie was our top interviewer of the day, managing to schedule five back-to-back interviews with our industry expert speakers. She got all the details from Brynn Metheney about her thriving goat farm, and the importance of taking time for yourself. 

Natalie had a great day, and got to speak with Hazel Mead who did a live digital painting demo, Thomas Elliott fresh from delivering insights into his Warhammer art process, Leffie & Raide who flew in from Germany to share their unique illustration workflow, plus Danish illustrator Pernille Ørum who gave one of the day's most popular talks – but you'll have to wait for the exclusives on these (watch this space). 

For show co-organiser and Creative Bloq's Digital Art & 3D Editor Vertex 2024 was a chance to catch-up with artists he'd known virtually for over a decade. As the former editor of magazines ImagineFX and 3D World Ian has been commissioning artists and writing about their work for a long time, and Vertex was a chance to catch up with Brynn Metheney, David Levy, and others including Hazel Mead. This is what live events are all about, meeting people. 

Seeing new artists such as Leffie & Raide was good to see, Glen Southern's talk earned a round of applause, and game artist Anna Hollinrake was in her zone with a 'Madonna mike' and stage to jump about. Ian would particularly like to thank artists who stepped out of their comfort zone to inspire those who attended, such as Alina Fedaseyenka who shared her approach to art design for VR gaming and Nana Dhebuadze who, as a French artist, did a talk in English.

The thing Ian learnt? Live events really can't be matched. It's what we missed during the Covid years and being back together really is better than video calls and virtual talks. Maybe next year Ian and Natalie can scoop more swag that Beth (we doubt it).

We hope to do it all again in 2025, and maybe we'll see you there next year. Take a look at the Vertex 2024 website for everything you missed this year.