OzTAKU
OzTAKU is an Australian community for manga style artists and cartoonists. Whilst spread out along the Australian East coast, it is centrally administered from Melbourne, Australia.
Community
OzTAKU is now primarily run as a community for the development of manga style artists and cartoonists, and the furthering of creating a manga reading culture in Australia. The community has an online forum, and is involved in various social networking sites such as Facebook the general purpose of which is to provide a feedback mechanism for artists currently engaged in projects involving manga style illustration. It also has a real world presence that regularly engages in both social activities and creative workshops. The ultimate aim of OzTAKU is to become another resource and Australian manga community, with publishing and merchandise merely as monetization methods that keep the community afloat.
Publishing
OzTAKU are responsible for OzTAKU magazine, with stories in the first series (#1-#3) including E-Pioneer, Legend and Replica and, in the current series, (#1.0 to current), Always Play, Rock Salt by Mark Withington, Rivers of Oblivion, Shadow Play, Magi by David Li, Tomorrow Yesterday, Days of Asha by David Kerr, Moth & Tanuki by Ian C. Thomas, Hakori, Souls Forgotten by Madonna Spelta and OzTAKU No Brain by Avi Bernshaw and Kenneth Chan. The magazine itself fell by the wayside in 2007 due to the financial burdens it placed on OzTAKU as a whole.
In place of the anthology magazine, as of 2008, the group is now focusing on publishing independent Australian manga, such as The List and Rocksalt, hosting the official Australian "Iron Artist" tournament and strengthening its popular manga drawing classes.
DoujiCon
In 2006, as a response to artists complaining about poor sales when forced to compete with known stores and brands, OzTAKU held the first DoujiCon (an abbreviation for Doujinshi Conference). The event was successfully held at Monash University's Caulfield Campus, in Melbourne, Australia, on 29 July 2006. It was intended to be a convention dedicated to manga doujinshi, but quickly ballooned into all self-published graphic narrative styles, including Western comics, "fine" pop art illustration and cartoon abstracts, as well as locally-made animations. Attracting approximately 500 attendees and 75 exhibiting artists, it was considered a resounding success, as the entire event had been organised by OzTAKU and all the advertising material had been printed at home.
The event was held again in 2007, and was not quite as successful as the first. This was due to a number of factors, notably that every door the venue was open, thereby allowing nearly one third of the attendees to sneak in for free.
In 2008, The DoujiCon: Part 3 was being held over two days, on 26 and 27 July at the Victorian Trades Hall in Carlton. Unfortunately, due to the timing of another two anime conventions, many cartoonists from outside of Victoria were unable to attend, and this greatly disrupted the attendance of interstate exhibitors. It still managed to host approximately 40 artists.