Prepare for the Fight Scene!

So, GenCon is over. All in all, it was a good con. A brief summary:

-Thursday, I set up early, right around 10 am. The alley was very slow at first, but picked up, and my masks started selling like hotcakes. This was I think both because they were very different from anything there... and also because the con was hosting a Masquerade Ball on Saturday night that I previously had not known about. I sold a few prints, met up with msquaredprime and Neal, neither of whom I'd seen in years, and got to catch up a bit; met John's friend Chris, and a few other people, which was nice. Unfortunately, I hadn't been feeling well all day, and the extra stress kind of did me in. I went home and was rather sick.

-I took Friday off from selling because I'd been feeling so poorly the night before. Couldn't manage to sleep in, but I did take it easy during the morning. I did stop in at the convention later in the afternoon with John; we cruised the dealer's room and I purchased my two small souvenirs: a set of very shiny purple-blue dice, and a steampunk-esque potion flask. Went home and rested a little; later we went to go celebrate castlejune's birthday at Symphony on the Prairie, which was playing Queen. It was a fun show, although I thought they could have used less rock and more symphony. Still, enjoyable.

-Saturday I went in later, since it had become apparent that nobody showed up in the artist's alley at 10 am. (This may have had something to do with the fact that none of the anime events started until noon. I'm just sayin'.) So I set up around 11, after spending half an hour looking for cheap parking. Unfortunately most of the close meters were blocked off for the weekend, so I had to park in the garage again... but at least it had a scale system, rather than the one I got stuck in on Thursday, which had two options: $5 or $25.

Business started slow on Saturday, but picked up by the afternoon, and was especially helped after the lovely abbakdabba brought over the masks I had at the IRT so I could sell them at the con. One of them actually sold so quickly that I didn't even get a chance to re-take some pictures of it. I sold more prints than Thursday as well, and all in all it went quite swimmingly. I felt a bit better too, and that was all to the good.

-Today I went in at noon and set up. Sundays are always slow, but it was even more so in the alley. There was no one around, few or no events to draw customers (I saw Vic Mignogna doing autographs again, but even those people didn't come to see us) and honestly, I was glad I'd brought a book. I sold one mask and a few buttons, and that was it. I was happy to leave at four.


I think next year I will do what I can to spring for the art show; it's much more expensive, but I think the greater traffic and better chance at networking with other artists will be worth it. Chris described the area as the "anime ghetto," and that was fairly accurate. It was kind of shunted off into a side area, and while that's understandable for an anime section in a gaming con, it didn't generate a lot of traffic for sales. Traffic was better than expected, and my masks were quite popular, but if I hadn't had them, I would have barely made back my badge cost. The alley also was never full; people were still buying tables as late as Friday morning, and only on Saturday were all the tables occupied, and even then it was not always for the whole day. I would have liked to have gone Friday and skipped Sunday instead, but I don't regret taking it easy, since I was feeling rather terrible.

Overall though, I did do quite well in sales, and I generally enjoyed myself, health issues notwithstanding. I also did something like a dozen pages of sketches, which I will upload in a second post.

Verdict: Good

So I promised an update on my recent doings and then lo! I failed to produce one.

It's hard for me to update sometimes because I feel like I'm not doing anything, just sitting around the house. Of course I am doing things, but as most of it involves thinking it doesn't seem very exciting to describe.

Still, though the job hunt continues unrelenting, I've been managing to work on a few projects to keep myself busy.

( Warning: Art Talk Ahead! )

And of course, there's prep for GenCon and all kinds of other stuff-- like First Friday tomorrow, and then the 4th of July parties Saturday. And D&D Sunday. ...Yeah.