PART art workshop, part party game, part unhinged comedy—it’s the first of its kind in Australia and lots of fun.

Art Wars: Unleash Your Ultimate Battle Creature is a creative combat event where drawing duels erupt into team warfare.

Players steal powers, sabotage rivals, complete art heists and gather an arsenal of weapons and superpowers before using their loot to draw the ultimate battle creature.

The quirky event was created by Perth illustrator and performer Nicola Milan.

• Nicola Milan is bringing art wars to Fremantle.

“People come in timid and leave absolutely feral with laughter,” she says. “It’s creative chaos in the best possible way and you don’t need to know how to draw to have a ridiculous amount of fun.”

Open to seasoned artists and scribblers alike, Art Wars encourages imagination, strategy, speed drawing and playful sabotage.

Every round escalates, building toward a final exhibition where the creatures are revealed, inspired by the powers teams manage to collect.

Readers might already know Milan from her Tim Burton-inspired sip and sketches at last year’s Fringe World.

“I’d been singing jazz for a while and watching Tim Burton movies and reading all manner of books on vampires, werewolves and other fantastic creatures,” Milan said. 

She’s a bit of a renaissance woman – writing dark poems, painting quirky characters and singing jazz.

She started out drawing cartoons as a kid and one of her first characters was a fat obnoxious cat called Gumtuck, a self-confessed Garfield rip-off.  

She went on to create a cartoon blog – sharing useless but interesting facts about strange animals – and then co-wrote with her mum the illustrated book Monster-in-Law: A Survival Guide, a cathartic way of getting over her engagement breakup.

But it wasn’t until she started experimenting with pastel pencils and drawing that she found her true calling.

Now she’s bringing Art Wars to the Fringe World.

Forget polite sketching circles, this is where pens become weapons, paper becomes the battlefield, and artists (and non-artists) go head-to-head in a chaotic creative showdown.

Expect shouting. Expect triumph. Expect treachery. This is art, gameified.

All art materials are provided and there is a maximum of 40 players per 90-minute session.

Art Wars: Unleash Your Ultimate Battle Creature is at Hybrid Warehouse, Fremantle on February 5, and Bayswater Hotel January 29 and February 1. Tix at fringeworld.com.au