My Experience at GeekFaeries 2025

Published on 10 june 2025

The trip to Selles-sur-Cher

After a long train ride, I've just returned from the GeekFaeries festival in Selles-sur-Cher, France, and I'm still feeling energized and inspired by the experience.

Panorama of Selles-sur-Cher commune from the bridge, a classic walk from the train station to the Geekfaeries festival, the castle is on the right of the photo.

This is a photo of the castle in the morning light. The tents were being taken down on this shot, that's because I took this shot one day after the end of event, just before going back to Montauban, but it's a nice shot to show the castle.

For context: Selles-sur-Cher is one of the commune in France with a specialty cheese and its own vending machine for cheese on the street. Unfortunately for me, it was empty.

The cheese vending machine in the street of Selles-sur-Cher. So Frenchy!

The Festival

I took a photo of the bar before opening, along with a selfie of my face. You can see my artworks printed in the background.

What impresses me the most about GeekFaeries is its commitment to remaining independent and free from commercial sponsorship. The festival's passion-driven approach is really refreshing, and definitely a "one of its kind" in all the landscape of usual festivals on the same topic.

Overview of the festival on Sunday start of afternoon. No ads, no sponsor, it's rare nowadays, right?

Another overview of the festival on Sunday start of afternoon.

A last overview but I forget many parts, it was way bigger than this. This photos shows only 1/4 of it.

The watercolor workshops

One of the best parts for me was teaching five watercolor workshops. In these workshops, we painted simple scenes together step by step. This year, I led the workshops under my own tent. Many of the participants were new to watercolors and painting in general, so we covered the basics, such as creating an undetailed light pencil sketch with a frame, applying pigments to wet areas, mixing colors, and controlling the wet areas on the paper to build our picture. I improvised the themes, which were simple landscapes. The inexpensive watercolors, paper, and brushes that I bought for the festival got the job done, but the brushes are nearing the end of their life. I wasn't paid for these painting sessions; it was a personal initiative to bring animation to the festival where I could share some knowledge. It was delightful to paint outdoors for the entire weekend, and it was great to share this experience with all the participants.

This is my tent booth with the drawing workshop and my hand-painted banner.

Here is a sample of three watercolor exercises we made in the workshop, all of which are simple landscape drawings from imagination, without characters.

An overview of the first workshop and its participants.

An overview of the second workshop and its participants.

An overview of the third workshop and its participants.

An overview of the fourth workshop and its participants.

An overview of the fifth workshop and its participants.

The other guests and tents

I also have many other fond memories of my time at the festival, including my close relationship with the Mozilla/April/Framasoft tent (of course!). But also when I participated in a live tabletop role-playing game session hosted by Le Tropeur, or attended a conference about pirate women presented by Litterature Buissonière, and met the friendly Capsule team.

A quick drawing on Framasoft's paper board in front of their tent: Sepia of PeerTube!

The signing sessions

I would also like to express my gratitude to the visitors who met with me to sign their Pepper&Carrot albums or prints and ask questions during the festival. It was a pleasure connecting with you and receiving your feedback in person.

Result of a signing session inside the purple inner cover of the book 4 of Pepper&Carrot in French.

The light tags on the castle

Once again, I used my Debian KDE laptop to "light tag" the castle. I connected it to a projector and used it to "paint" artwork directly onto the castle walls. This time, I used my external XpPen Deco 01V3 with a USB connection rather than the built-in digitizer. Drawing in the dark with a full black canvas on Krita was a challenging but enjoyable experience. The result was a series of quick, ephemeral pieces of art that were visible to everyone walking around the castle or relaxing in the deck chairs around the festival. It was thrilling.

First light tag test: taking advantage of the windows for an horror theme.

Second light tag: a simple profile, line by line. he hair were also projected on the large tree behind the castle, it was beautiful in live.

Third light tag: something I forgot to do on the two previous time I was on Geekfaeries, drawing Pepper and Carrot on the castle, of course!

Fourth light tag: the Geekfaeries dragon sleeping on the edge of the castle.

Fifth light tag: an idea: let's try to sync the live symmetry painting tool of Krita on the castle already symmetric architecture. It works!

The Krita demo in the main tent

Unfortunately, I had bad luck with my Krita demo on Saturday under the Tentacule, the main tent. A power outage occurred just as I began, and it lasted for over an hour, so I couldn't do it. However, I improvised and used a whiteboard and marker to share some drawing tips with the audience. It was one of those special moments. I thank the audience for enduring this improvised "unplugged" workshop.

A photo just after I set the laptop on the main tent, 5 minutes before the general power outage...

A retro gaming moment

I had a memorable experience at the retro gaming tent, where I got to try out my Japanese Secret of Mana cartridge. I bought it on eBay a long time ago because I wanted a "real piece" of my favorite game. However, I don't have a compatible console at home, so I had never tried using it to see if it had dormant games saved on it. I was super curious about it! I knew that if there was one place in the world where I could find a Japanese Super Famicom, it would be at the Geek Faeries' retro gaming tent... and I was right!

The tent was full of all kinds of games, retro consoles, and retro PCs connected to a local area network (LAN). They even had a modified European console that could run Japanese cartridges! I was fascinated to see that the built-in battery was still powering a '90s cartridge's memory slot. There was a high risk of the battery being completely empty.

In the memory slot, we found a player who had completed the game with impressive stats and had simply named the main character "Randy." It's similar to naming Cloud "Cloud" in Final Fantasy VII. In that old game with text speech bubbles on the screen and no dubbing, you could choose to enter a custom name when starting the game. Generic names like "Randy" or "Cloud" were how the game manual usually referred to the character.

Now, I'm the proud owner of a Secret of Mana cartridge used by someone who beat the game with passion. It's an object loaded with history and a long life. Great!

under the retrogaming tent, testing the Japanese cartridge of Secret of Mana and finding finally what was on the memory slot, dormant since the 90s.

End notes

Finally, I can't describe the festival without mentioning the volunteers. The GeekFaeries volunteers are a remarkable group who work together seamlessly, much like a family. They support each other, making the festival a warm and welcoming place. I've attended many festivals, but the sense of community here is especially notable. Despite being seriously understaffed this year, the volunteers worked tirelessly to make the festival a success, and I'd like to express my appreciation for them. Their dedication and hard work are a testament to their passion for the festival.

So... What an unforgettable time! Another weekend filled with creativity, community, and inspiration. This festival has a unique blend of art, retro, rpg, technology, and passion. I'm already looking forward to next year's edition, where I can once again connect with the GeekFaeries family!

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