#WeirdTober Is an Open Call for Weird Art, and It Leads Straight Into a Steam Festival (Get In Before Oct 15)
Most of the big October art challenges want you to draw a list of prompts and post them. #WeirdTober wants something a bit stranger, and there’s a Steam festival on the other side of it.
#WeirdTober runs from October 1 to 31, and it’s an open call for artists and creators to share original work around weird, spooky and dark cozy themes. The important bit: it’s a feeder event. It leads into Weird Days: Dark Tales by Warm Light, an upcoming Steam festival celebrating games in exactly that register, and the organisers are watching the hashtag to find people to bring into the festival itself.
There’s a deadline attached, and it’s close. Creators who want to be considered for the Steam festival need to have taken part before October 15, so the team has time to put the programme together. That’s a week from now.
It’s Not Just Illustrators
This is the part worth stressing, because “October art challenge” makes most people think pens and tablets. The open call is considerably broader than that. Formats explicitly welcomed include:
- Illustration
- Cosplay
- Makeup
- Crafts
- Animation
- 3D art
And the brief leaves the door open to other creative formats beyond that list. If you make weird things in a medium nobody has thought to name yet, that appears to be fine.
What You Actually Get Out of It
The organisers will be following #WeirdTober to find artists and creators who could become part of the festival. Selected participants may be invited into the official Steam festival programming, which includes artist livestreams and other creative features.
Worth reading that carefully: it’s “may be invited,” not a guaranteed slot. But it’s a real route into a curated Steam event for people who make art rather than games, and those are thin on the ground.
If you’re applying as a streamer rather than a visual artist, note that the application form asks for a Twitch channel, which makes sense given the livestream side of the programming.
What Is Weird Days?
Weird Days is a recurring series of curated Steam showcases, each built around one specific and fairly odd theme. We covered the last one, Weird Days: Job Simulator, back in August, when it turned the Steam store into the worst careers fair ever assembled across 102 games.
Dark Tales by Warm Light is the autumn edition, and the “warm light” half of the name is doing real work. The framing is games that are unsettling, melancholy or just plain peculiar without tipping over into outright horror. Candlelight rather than flashlight.
The Timeline
- #WeirdTober, October 1 to 31. The open call. Take part before October 15 to be considered for the festival programme.
- Pre-festival content, October 28 to November 1. Build-up before the store page goes live.
- The Steam festival, November 2 to 9. The main showcase.
How to Take Part
To get involved in #WeirdTober, make something weird, spooky or dark cozy and post it on the hashtag through October. To put yourself forward for the festival programming, the application form is here.
And if you’re just here for the games, the hashtag is a decent place to spend October regardless. We’ll have more on the festival lineup once the Steam page goes live.
Source: #WeirdTober open call brief and the Weird Days: Dark Tales by Warm Light creator application form.