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AMDANI, or Amateur Manually-Drawn Animation and Novelisation International, is a yearly convention dedicated to the eponymous topic, held during the last Weekend of Autumn and the Winter's First Day (if in Northern hemisphere; the opposite if in Southern), usually in a different city each year (but often returning to previously visited cities every 5-10 years).

Over the decades, the bounds of what precisely does and doesn't count as 'amateur', 'manually-drawn', and 'novelisation' have been subject to some shifting and fuzziness.

The default assumption is that 'amateur' means that the active participants are not (yet) using the income generated from their art as the primary way to earn a living over the course of the year, though many aspire to. Admiring professional works is a normal part of the convention, but becoming a professional is seen as stepping beyond the bounds of this transient community - an event that some see as a goal and others see as selling out.

'Manually-drawn' generally includes use of modern purely mechanical technologies that facilitate production of images, but not software-generated graphics and not outright duplication of images using photography or chemicaly copying systems throughout the course of an animation. While there's some acceptance of producing and selling copies of a hand-drawn poster or wallpaper (including those of characters from professional animated videos), the highest praise always comes to originals of fully hand-drawn and often unique pieces.

Finally, 'novelisation' usually covers novels and short stories written based on already-existing animated videos, as well as spinoff stories, but there's also some acceptance of and interest in things such as scenarios of existing or planned videos, or books whose authors hope to have them adapted to the big screens.

Events at the convention usually include:

  • Sale of amateur art, whether book, drawing or video.
  • Promotion of such art through pay-what-you-want or donationware schemes.
  • Screenings of amateur animated videos (paid or free, completed or works in progress).
  • Lectures and lessons on drawing and writing techniques.
  • Karaoke, notionally restricted to songs from animated videos.
  • Amateurs masquerading as characters from animated videos.
  • Investors and artistic guilds from all over the world looking for talented artists.

By year[]

JR    GR    KR      Location
90    1550  50,339  Mnugutózh
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