AVCon Anime & Gaming Festival

Did you know that 2027 marks 25 years of AVCon? That's a whole quarter of a century! Silver is traditionally used for the 25th year milestone, so what better way to celebrate than with a Silver Anniversary theme for AVCon 2027!

For Juliette's retro design, considering her history only goes back a few years, we instead decided to harken way back in history and base her look on Peppa Chan, the mascot for Manifest (Melbourne Anime Festival).

The white hat with faux kitty ears, the blue and white dress that conjures a Japanese shrine maiden, the white boots. Peppa really stood out with her quirky fun design. Since we brought back Ayvee and Switch's classic wings, it was only natural Juliette needed a pair of her own, and we think fairy style wings really fit her vibe.

Manifest was the first anime convention in Australia and AVCon's sister event and friendly rival in the early days of the convention scene. A lot of AVCon's DNA came from Manifest and in a very real way you could say we owe our existence to it. Manifest may have ceased operations in 2013, but we here at AVCon have never truly forgotten it!

Only one more left! Tune in next week for the illustrious 3 year history of our favourite robotics genius (and maybe some bonus content too)!

Has it only been 8 years, or does she look older than that??

Which Juliette design do you remember? Do you remember the events before she joined the cast? Which design is your favourite or holds a special place in your heart?

Come back tomorrow for Juliette's retro look!

Art by: Mai and ChaCha.

Has it only been 8 years, or does she look older than that??

Which Juliette design do you remember? Do you remember the events before she joined the cast? Which design is your favourite or holds a special place in your heart?

Come back tomorrow for the last 2 version of our girl Juliette!

Art by: faewisp and MangaXai.

Meet AVCon's sweet strawberry!

In 2019 due to changes with the traditional AVCon Maid Café branding 'Ichigo Keki', the café was temporarily renamed to 'Ayvee's Maid Cafe' featuring art of our green haired girl in a cute maid outfit. Though since Ayvee was already pulling so many other duties it was decided to create a new mascot just for the Maid Café, and thus Juliette was born!

Created by AVCon staff artist Alexis Harris, she featured short pink hair, bright blue eyes, and strawberry accessories. Like Switch before her, she at first had no name and a competition to christen her via email was run. The winning entry was Juliette, which is a variety of bright red Australian strawberry well suited to her vibe.

But disaster struck as her 2020/2021 debuts events were cancelled due to the covid 19 pandemic spreading across the world. When AVCon finally returned in 2023 it was without a maid café at all, threatening to leave poor Juliette as a forgotten relic of a turbulent period.

Luckily for us all artist faewisp was a Juliette fan and she was promoted from maid café mascot to AVCon headliner alongside Ayvee and Switch on 2023 key artwork, cementing her as a part of AVCon's main cast. Juliette has gone on to be front and centre on every year's promotional material ever since.

That might be her real world origin, but within the AVConverse, where did Juliette come from? How did a small, cute, pink haired anime convention mascot just turn up on AVCon's door step one year? There are whispers that Juliette speaks with a Melbournian accent, and seems to know a lot about Melbourne universities and the Melbourne Showground. Surely it couldn't have anything to do with that incident that happened at the AVCon 2014 closing ceremony could it...

Check back over the next couple of days to see Juliette's many incarnations and the reveal of her retro design on Friday!

Did you know that 2027 marks 25 years of AVCon? That's a whole quarter of a century! Silver is traditionally used for the 25th year milestone, so what better way to celebrate than with a Silver Anniversary theme for AVCon 2027!

For Switch's design this year, we wanted to give him the vibe of an early 2000s gamer boy with the aesthetics of that period.

He's gone back to his mop of a haircut with longer side burns, he's more of a skinny awkward kid rather than bulky man. He has his traditional devil wings back as well as the mischievous grin that says he's probably up to something.

While Switch never had a specific traditional outfit, we used similar fits as he appeared in old art alongside Ayvee with her current look. Simple baggy jeans and button up shirt/tee combo. We wanted to remind everyone that Switch was the OG gamer of AVCon, so he's broken out the fan favourite Gamecube controller!

We hope you love his art as much as we do, and that you're getting excited to celebrate 25 years of AVCon with us in 2027!

That is the original duo covered, but we do have more mascots (even though their history is not quite as long). Next week we'll be looking at the art and history of the sweet strawberry that is Juliette

Art by - @jettienet