Possibly the most awkward and amazing photo I took all weekend. An accurate portrayal of conventions everywhere.

…Yup. Still am. 3569 words. I’M NOT SORRY.

THURSDAY

There was no particular rush to leave early Thursday since Artist Alley setup went well into the night, but I packed up the car a little past three, picked up a poster order at the printer, and picked up Chuck in Sealy on the way to Austin. It was an easy drive, especially since IKKiCON moved from the Hilton to the AT&T Convention Center, which, sitting on MLK between University and Whitis, is right on the edge of the University of Texas campus. How terribly nostalgic. :> I could have walked straight up Whitis to my old dorm.

That said, I didn’t actually ever drive when I attended UT, so the secrets of cheap parking eluded me. I knew going in that parking at the convention center’s garage was going to be ridiculous, but I wasn’t familiar with the rates at Dobie Theatre’s garage across the street and had no idea if they allowed overnight parking, etc. It wasn’t something I felt like figuring out when I got there though, so I just parked at the con garage. At least I got a really convenient spot close to the elevator, even if I parked about three inches from a pillar on the driver’s side (I’ll deal with it on Sunday??).

Chuck and I wandered upstairs and found Artist Alley on the third floor outside the Dealer’s Room before going back to unload. Somewhere in there I suddenly realize that I’d left one bag at home — the bag with all of my posters, my button display board, my bookmark stand, all of my signage, and all of my plastic sleeves for posters/prints. Maaaaan.

Fake Lemonade Stand @ IKKiCON 6 (picture taken Friday).

Check-in was pretty painless. Find your name on a list, go find your assigned table. They didn’t have badges ready for us, but promised we’d get them Friday morning. No one checked for tax permits.

Yume was setting up when we arrived and graciously lent me a spare piece of grid cube and some felt with which to make a new button board. I converted my new bookmark storage unit into a display… thingy, and I redid a majority of my signs. But you see how awfully bare the vertical space at my table is without the posters? ;_; I only had the Pokemon one because that’s what I picked up from the printer on the way out of Houston.

There were other concerns too though, like how dark it was in that hallway. The ceiling lights were meager, and it was obvious that the hallway was meant to be a hallway and not a market. I could only hope that this was because Thursday was just setup. Surely they’d be brighter on the actual  nights of the convention…? The tables were also pretty crowded — there was hardly any space behind the tables (though it wasn’t nearly as bad as Anime Matsuri), and there were very few gaps in the lineup, making it hard to go back and forth from the front and back of most tables. Also, all of the tables were 6′x2′ but had an extra six inches width-wise that was folded down and locked. I would have liked those extra six inches!

I think there was some minor drama involving table placement (spaces were pre-assigned based on requests) further down the hall, as well as some drama regarding table displays, but I don’t really think those are my stories to tell. :x Either way, I did hear that staff worked pretty hard to be accommodating and flexible, so there’s that. I got the spot I wanted next to the people I wanted, so all was well for me.

IKKiCON 6 Artist Alley Map

Most of the tables around me were artists selling unrelated wares, which is excellent, even if it meant most of my friends, as print artists, were elsewhere in the alley. Table #3 was Awesome Badges, and #5 was my awesome friends and repeat customers, Kawaii Ribbons (they don’t have an online store and only sell at conventions). #1 and #2 were La De Da’s, the wig vendors, who also had tables in the DR. #6 was a girl selling leather masks, and there was actually another table between 6 and 7, Little Blob of Green and his custom metalstuffs. Chuck was #33, and my hotelmates Yume, Kiiyame (White Oblivion), and StarHettix were #37 and #36. Kevin (Yanimator), Jinny (Nayuki-chan), and Tod (Uniique) were also in attendance, along with a handful of other Texas regulars I don’t know too well. Sadly, a lot of artists did poorly at IKKiCON last year, so many of them didn’t come back. :c

We got into Austin a bit past seven, I think, but I didn’t head up to the hotel room until past nine. There were three different pizza places within walking distance, but my hotelmates and I were lazy and just ordered delivery from Domino’s around ten. And then I doodled some in my sketchbook. And then we talked forever about nothing, and then we went to sleep!?

FRIDAY

According to the IKKiCON website, Artist Alley was to open Friday at 10 am. Like a crazy person, I was up at 7:30 am. I don’t even get up that early on days I need to be at the client’s office by 9:30 after a one hour commute. :| But hey, it was an unsecure Alley as far as I knew, which meant attendees could start walking by at any time, so earlier is always better, right? Besides, I still had some signs to remake.

I also passed the time drawing new badges for characters from new, esoteric series that no one else is watching. :>

The best table neighbors ever, Stacy and Michael of Kawaii Ribbons, showed up a little after eight, but I don’t think there were really any attendees until after nine. It was a pretty slow morning in general, probably because I had giant windows behind me ( they looked over the courtyard between the convention center and the hotel) and the glare from the sun was awwwwwful until around noon when the sun moved on — things picked up significantly in the afternoon and stayed steady through sundown. That’s why the above photo is so washed out. Too much light and at such awkward angles! You can also see how harsh the lighting was below:

My hotelmate Star as Taichi on Friday!

Merchandise sales were pretty typical, though I did a lot more badge commissions than usual on Friday. Thankfully, I had replenished my supply of badge holders and clips since San Japan, though near the end of the day I was running dangerously low on pre-cut bristol… In between commissions, I did random sketches and made more sketch card examples since all of those had been left at home as well. And man, with all the bronies running around, I was really missing my Panty and Stocking pony posters. :c Did these badges though!

Generally, I can’t do commissions of characters I’m unfamiliar with, or don’t know well enough from memory. This is lame because a majority of con-goers don’t think to carry around references. You’ll have a handful of prolific commissioners that have entire binders of printed references and character descriptions, but those are pretty rare. I’m so used to turning people down when they can’t provide a ref or don’t have a smartphone to look things up on. But halfway through Friday, Stacey and Michael let me use their iPad to look up various references. It was the Best Thing Ever. o_o Even for characters I did know, like the ponies, it was really, really nice to be able to double-check details. Aaaa. They also shared pizza with me later. Best neighbors ever or best neighbors ever??

It was the least I could do to not charge them for this commission. <3

The sun started to set around five, and it became clear pretty fast that the lighting was once again godawful. Indoor lighting? For hallways? Hahahaha! By the time the sun was completely gone, there wasn’t enough light to do commissions by. Pencil sketches were nearly invisible, and it was too hard to guess what the true color of anything in the dark. It was also more or less impossible to see behind and under my table, even with the light of a cell phone. There didn’t seem to be a lot of staff milling around, but the one I did manage to grab said they would call a higher up to see if anything could be done about the light. They never got back to me and the lights never changed. :\ Attendee traffic dropped off visibly after the Dealer’s Room closed. It was just too dark to browse, and the Alley was dead by eight. Tragic, considering we were supposed to be open to midnight.

Not that anyone seemed to know we were supposed to be open to midnight. A lot of the artists had left by then (no doubt because of the lighting issue), but staff started telling attendees that the AA was closed and cutting them off at the top of the stairs at 8:30 pm. Um, what? No? La De Da’s complained about this… after which staff started telling people that AA was closed at the first junction of tables (between #7 and #34 on the map), instead of at the top of the stairwell. This meant that the AA was closed except for the first little ring of tables. :\ Not that it really mattered. When you tell attendees that “Artist Alley is closed,” then they will wander off and tell their friends that “Artist Alley is closed” and then it doesn’t matter at all that technically the first ring of tables is “open.”

But here is a Matt and Sora to go with the Tai. :3

Considering the terrible lighting, it didn’t make much of a difference that they closed us prematurely, but I was still pretty irritated about the whole thing anyway. Clearly the staff needed to be better informed and more communicative. And man, the lighting better not suck for Saturday, too. I went back to the hotel room and passed the few hours before bedtime with sketches, including some doodles of Avatar: The Last Airbender characters that Kiiyame managed to grossly mis-guess while her glasses were off (that is Katara, not Iroh, omg. ;__; I don’t even remember who you mistook Sokka for).

SATURDAY

According to the IKKiCON website that apparently no one else checks, hours for Artist Alley on Saturday were from 9 am to midnight. No hours were included in the con program. I was downstairs by 8am or so, and Stacey and Michael had brought me 1) coffee, and 2) a lamp. I don’t even. Just. Aaaaaaaa. They are the best. ;A; I also managed to use one of their extra displays to pin up my spare table cloth thing against the window so there wasn’t as much sun glaring over my shoulder in those awkward morning hours.

Such an awesome Master Roshi.

Saturday was actually oddly slow in terms of merchandise sales. It was definitely slower than Friday, but this was balanced out by endless commissions. I bet Michael and Stacey regretted letting me use their iPad because I kept needing it. (They bring it to watch anime (and to play Plants VS Zombies??) during slow hours behind the table.) Once I knew I could look up reference, I accepted All The Commissions. By my haphazard records, I did over 45 individual commissions Saturday. If there’s any miscount, then my count is lower than it should be. o_o

Not much else to say about Saturday, honestly. It was one of those “sit at a table for fifteen or so hours and draw!” convention days. Saw a lot of familiar faces though! Lots of repeat customers from other conventions, which is always awesome, even if it makes me sad to leave. <3

When the sun started to set, I plugged in the lamp Michael brought me and lo! My table was lighted just enough for people to see by and just enough for me to continue working on commissions well into the darkness hours. Have I mentioned yet how awesome my neighbors are? All around the Alley you could see other artists with impromptu light setups though. People had Christmas lights and random little lamps and tea lights. It was kind of neat how resourceful people were. All the same, I found it frustrating that none of the staff had directly addressed the obvious lighting issue with any of the artists.

When 8:30 pm rolled around, volunteers/staff again started telling both attendees and artists that the Alley would be closing at nine. What. :\ This time, I complained about it, and the volunteers backed off to the extent of “sorry, we’ll let the staff/people in charge know.” In the end, the same “compromise” was reached as on Friday. The Alley was closed except for the first ring of tables, which included mine. And I guess I didn’t really care to fuss more than that because again, there was no one around anyway, and I mostly just wanted to stay at my table to finish commissions. Meanwhile, most everyone else was off counting down to midnight. Oh, right, it’s New Years. Whoops. Completely forgot!

ARGH I only saw these guys (Ty Lee, Azula, Zuko, Mai; ATLA) from the window. They never came upstairs. ;____; Bawwing forever.

I finished all my commissions around eleven, went back up to the room, doodled, then went to sleep right after midnight. Staying up all night partying? Nope! Roomies and I were all boring and just went to bed.

SUNDAY

Stacey and Michael brought me coffee again Sunday morning. I wish they had a site I could plug or something, seriously, but they don’t really even hit that many cons, just the ones in Austin and San Antonio? But next time you see them, you should go buy things from them and tell them they’re awesome, ’cause they are. ;__;

Stacey and her matching friend whose name I FORGOT AGAIN even after asking. ;__; I also can't believe I forgot to actually take photos of their costumes... :|

Sunday… I did more commissions. It wasn’t nearly as many as Saturday, but it was still more than Sunday. Lots of last-minute purchases. Yup.

At some point I made a quick run into the Dealer’s Room, but I wasn’t looking for anything in particular and didn’t stay too long because then I’d have ended up buying something random. I wish dealers would carry a larger variety of doujinshi, but I realize that’s probably a huge gamble for them. Doujin is one of the few things I think are cheaper to buy in person than online, but I’ve also gotten really picky regarding figures and plush because I don’t have much room for them. It’s harder to be picky about doujin when 1) there are so few scanlations, so it’s rare you’ll recognize any single release, 2) all of them are shrinkwrapped, regardless of rating.

I feel like this report is missing a lot of happenings, but my memory is bad (this is part of why I like writing such detailed reports), and I don’t think anything super important is missing… :c

BUT. HEY.If you commissioned me Saturday evening for an inked sketch card of your OC Basil and never picked it up. Here he is! I can email you a proper scan or mail out the original at your expense. Just let me know!

Inked sketch card -- this was never picked up by the commissioner! Please contact me if this was for you!

The Alley closed down around 4 pm. I broke down my table and packed the car, then helped Yume break down while waiting for Chuck. Yume ended up backing my van out for me since I’d parked so stupidly close to the pillar, and then the three of us went to Chili’s for dinner. (It’s tradition now; Chili’s after cons.) And then we all went home!

Color sketch card of Cave Story characters/cosplayers. :3

OVERALL

I mentioned before that IKKiCON was my first con ever, right? Not as an artist, but yeah. I think it, along with MomoCon, will always be pretty special to me because of that. This year went a lot better than last year in a lot of ways, though there are certainly things that will need to be worked, especially if they’re planning on staying at the AT&T Convention Center.

Pros:

• Having Artist Alley in the hallway outside the DR was, decidedly, better than having it inside the DR. Even though it was a bit cramped, I think the general setup and placement of the Alley was really nice. DR, AA, and the Art Show were the only things happening on the third floor, so it was one-stop shopping. Plus, attendees needed to walk through the front part of AA to get to the entrance to the Dealer’s Room, and then walk through the entire AA to get back to the stairs and elevators after exiting the DR.
• Longer AA hours (compared to last year, and compared to the DR) were good, though obviously it would have been better if everyone had actually been aware of this.
• The new convention location was something I personally liked, though I hear that the space was rather cramped for attendees. While I liked it, I don’t think it’s actually much of an improvement over the Hilton since IKKiCON doesn’t take place while UT is in session, negating the benefit of being on campus, and Artist Alley can easily be placed in the hallway outside the Dealer’s at the Hilton as well, right?

Cons:

• The lighting. There were basically only ~5 good hours of light each day, between noon and 5 pm. It wasn’t as much of a problem for people not against the windows, but the morning sunshine was blinding and made it hard for attendees to see. And after sunset, the hall lighting was completely inadequate. It’s ridiculous for artists to need to bring their own lighting. :\ The frustration is compounded by the fact that the lights could have been brighter, but disorganization prevented staff from properly getting in touch with the hotel about it. At least, that’s what I’ve gathered.
• No definitive hours. Seriously, why were there hours on for AA on the website, but not in the program? Why were none of the staff or volunteers aware of the hours?
• There needs to be more space behind the tables against the walls. I had like two feet of space and it was a pain digging myself out of space every time I needed to leave the table. I crawled under a neighboring table to get out 75% percent of the time because it was just SO inconvenient to climb over everyone and their stuff to get to the nearest table gap. I also want the extra 6 inches of depth that was folded down on all the tables. If this means fewer overall tables because the hall space would be too narrow with 6′x2’6″ tables, then fine.
• Staff communication. Because lighting and hours wouldn’t have been a problem if there had been more of this. :x It seems clear that IKKiCON is a show run by a small number of people and a lot of volunteers that aren’t always kept in the loop. Expanding the number of people that have definitive authority over specific things would spread the load around better, but I suppose this is easier said than done.

I had a good weekend though. I think the con was a lovely way to end and start the year. It was nice hanging out with folks for one last hurrah before moving out of the state, but you know what, I realized over the weekend that I could probably go back to IKKiCON if it stays close to New Years. I’ll be visiting family in Houston for Christmas anyway. And what’s an extra week anywhere for a freelancer? May as well stay for IKKiCON, right? Right? :3

Hilariously, the only other cons I’m definitely planning for right now for 2012 are both in Texas: I’ll be gunning for A-kon for sure, and if I get into A-kon, I’ll do Comicpalooza as well since they’re back-to-back weekends. MIGHT AS WELL. I didn’t manage to get a table at Sakura-Con and most other Seattle-area conventions seem to be in the fall and are pretty small, so I won’t look much into them until they’re closer. I’ll proooobably show up at Sakura-Con as an attendee for at least a day to say hello to Kiiyame, who will be there. And I might go to Emerald City Comic Con as an attendee as well? Man. What will I even do at conventions if I don’t have a table to sit behind. o_o

It feels weird to not really know when my next con will be, but registration for A-kon’s AA won’t be for another month at the earliest… Anyway, thanks for reading! Here’s the full photo gallery:

I hit 50,000 words a full week before December, and I managed to continue following the three rules I set last year: no flashbacks, no writing out of order, and no werewolves. Contributing factors to this success include the fact that I did a lot more pre-planning than usual. I actually had an outline this year! With a beginning, a middle, and an end! And subplots and stuff! It’s amazing how much direction using a classic seven-point plot system can give your story.

I’d known for a while that I wanted to write something in the same universe and timeline as Lehelle (last year’s NaNo project) so I could expand on and better develop the setting without continuing to obsess over the same story. But I didn’t have anything resembling a plan until the last days of October, when I randomly doodled a character I liked and built up from there. It was pretty thrilling coming up with as many plot ideas as possible in such a short time (it’s been a while, man), and I was really, really excited to get going with Tea Stains when November came around.

So I wrote 4961 words the first day. And one of my writing buddies wrote ~4700 words. And thus, a ~*Death Match*~ rivalry was born:

@Kiriska: Day one clocks in at 4961 words. o_o This is awesome, but WILL IT LAST?? #NaNoWriMo
@mefloraine: @Kiriska Dang you beat me by 200 words for the day.
@Kiriska: @mefloraine I totally wasn’t eying your word count all day and trying to top you or anything. U_U #reallycompetitive #NaNoWriMo
@mefloraine: @Kiriska I totally wasn’t doing the same for you either or anything. >w>;
@Kiriska: @mefloraine WHELP. >;3 You know it’s on now.
@mefloraine: @Kiriska And then we found ourselves at 100k by the end of the month. #welp
@Kiriska: @mefloraine I would be okay with this.
@mefloraine: @Kiriska As would I. TO THE DEATH.

Neither of us ended up at 100k, but the hilarious intensity of this impromptu rivalry was a huge driving force through the three weeks it took for the pair of us to hit 50k. I found it especially entertaining that we wrote at almost the exact same pace and took turns trumping each other in word-count. I mean, seriously, we even hit the Point of Crushing Despair at the same time:

Surely this is the way NaNoWriMo is always supposed to go — with a vague, last-minute plan (but a plan nonetheless) and a death match rivalry forcing you to forge ahead even when you hit those hard spots in your story. It was pretty grand.

In general, I aimed for “+2000 words/day or +1000 words over Mef, whichever is higher,” but this ended up being just +1800-2000 words most days. Mef was just so damn good about keeping pace with me that it was impossible to stay on top of her consistently. The pace was still a good step up from the standard +1667 words/day though, and on the 20th, I wrote 6k words, putting me at 46k and spurring the both of us to the end.

I hit 50k an hour or so before Mef on the 22nd, but we basically timed it so we’d both finish around the same time, so I consider it a mutual victory. I hope we can do the same thing next year. :3

My story wasn’t anywhere near finished at 50k though. I entertained the idea of pushing on and writing to the end of the story within November, but the momentum was gone (especially since Mef stopped writing at 50k, the slacker), and I ended up closing the month at 58k words — still no where near finished. But it’s my highest ending word count ever, and I can’t not be pleased with that.

Generated by Wordle! Lorre is the protagonist's name.

It goes without saying that are a lot of problems with Tea Stains, and most of them stem from the fact that I wrote it in a month. Despite having an outline, there weren’t many specifics mapped out, and I was making plenty of stuff up as I went. In particular, I had no idea which of the secondary characters or subplots were going to be important when I introduced them, and this resulted in wasting a lot of time (and words) carrying the cast through events that ended up not being significant at all. This also resulted in my dismissing almost the entire secondary cast around 40k words because they were more interesting than the protagonist and were distracting from the main plot way too much. Also distracting from the main plot was the fact that Lehelle’s plot was a subplot/background element — I tried not to get too wrapped up in it, but it was hard. :c

Pacing and relevance to the main plot became such a problem that I ended up skipped forward about four months of story time (also around 40k words) because things were just moving waaaaay too slowly. Case in point: it took my poor tea merchant more than 25,000 words to sell his first ounce of tea. When I go back to edit things after I finish writing the rest of the story, I foresee a lot of long passages getting axed completely. It’s kind of sad, I guess, but you have to write them before you know that you don’t need them. Or something.

I’ve always had a problem getting back into my NaNoWriMo projects outside of November though. That’s why I really wanted to finish writing the story in the month even if it would have probably needed ~70k words. Next year, I’ll just need to aim for 70k or 75k from the get go. 2011 is my fourth year reaching 50k, so I know I can do that much, but now I also know that I am super prone to meandering all over the place with the story and if I want to finish it, it will probably make more sense to aim for 75k. I guess that means I need to make a third word count version of my annual NaNo calendar next year. Not quite ready to gun for 100k.

One of the things NaNoWriMo winners have been getting the last few years, aside from bragging rights, is a CreateSpace voucher for a free, printed book. I think the voucher usually expires within a year, so to utilize it, I’ll need to finish Tea Stains and edit the hell out of it before it does. I had a voucher from 2009 that I let expire, but I considered 2009′s story to be pretty unsalvageable. NaNoWriMo 2011 has been the best ever, so I should definitely try my best to actually use that voucher, right? Right?

Not that using it means that any of you get to read it though, lol. Maybe it is silly of me to write so much about writing when pretty much none of my original fiction is available anywhere to read, but oh well.

What I got this time:

• Kuretake Fudegokochi brush pen – regular
• Kuretake Fudegokochi brush pen – super fine
• Kuretake disposable pocket brush – fine
• Kuretake disposable pocket brush – extra fine
• Kuretake no. 33 brush pen – soft
• Kuretake no. 55 double-sided brush pen – hard & soft
• Uni-ball Signo Angelic UM-120AC 0.7 mm white gel pen
• Uni-ball Signo Broad UM-153 white gel pen

I wanted to see how the Kuretake Fudegokochi compared to my Tombow Fudenosuke, but ended up getting a bunch of other Kuretake pens because I was curious. And then to bump the order over $25 for free shipping, I threw in a few white gel pens for further experimentation. I don’t dislike my Sakura Gelly Roll,  but I’ve never tried anything else either.

Pen tests on cardstock. All pens are waterproof and Copic-proof after ink is dry.

Kuretake Fudegokochi brush pens

Both the Fudegokochi regular and super fine are fantastic pens. I was a little concerned when the ink in the super fine took a while to start flowing evenly — as you can tell from above –but after a couple of lines, it was perfect. The line weight variation you get from the super fine is pretty subtle because it is such a fine tip, but there are plenty of times when subtle is great. In fact, the thinnest line from the Fudegokochi thin enough (comparable to an 03 Micron, I’d say) that I may be able to wean myself off tech pens completely when drawing organic subjects.

The Fudegokochi regular is much more flexible in terms of line weight, but a bit harder to control as a result. I had to grip pretty tightly to not go all over the place when I drew that eye up there. It’s much better for writing Chinese characters though? The ink also looks a bit darker, but that may be because the ink in the super fine is still warming up or something.

I’m kind of confused as to why these pens aren’t refillable though — the shape of the pen makes you think they should be! Plus, since Kuretake also has pens labeled as “disposable pocket brushes,” you wonder why these are also disposable.

Kuretake disposable pocket brushes

The two Kuretake disposables are very similar to the two Kuretake Fudegokochis. Most of the difference is in firmness and the size of the brush tip. The disposable “fine” is slightly thinner than the Fudegokochi regular, and the disposable “super fine” is considerably thicker than the Fudegokochi “extra fine.” (Am I the only person that is slightly annoyed that Kuretake decided to use both the term “super fine” and “extra fine”? It would make more sense if they were in the same line of pens, but they’re separate?)

Both the disposables have good weight variation and are pretty easy to control. All of these brush pens ended up pretty comparable to the Tombow Fudenosukes I’ve used up till now, with the main differences, again, being variation in firmness and brush tip size.

Tombow Fudenosuke pen tests for comparison. Note that the hard has had about a month of hard usage, while the soft has had a month of light usage.

The two Tombow pens are about the same thickness as the Kuretake disposable fine. The difference between soft and hard is just flexibility — I find the soft about twice as hard to control, but really useful for going from thick to thin quickly. Interestingly, the Kuretake Fudegokochi regular is a bit firmer than the Tombow Fudenosuke soft despite being a wider brush (the widest of the six), and the Tombow Fudenosuke hard is firmer than everything except the Kuretake Fudegokochi super fine even though it’s not very thin.

Is the similarity between the word Fudegokochi and Fudenosuke getting to you yet??

Pen tests on cardstock. All pens are waterproof and Copic-proof after ink is dry.

Kuretake no. 33 brush pen

This is the fattest brush pen I’ve ever used. o_o And it is so squeaky! But more endearing-squeaky than annoying-squeaky, I think. The ink is also incredibly wet, but I’ve managed not to smudge anywhere thus far, though it did get all over my fingers. It’s Copic-proof and waterproof, but I definitely waited a few hours before testing that. There’s no doubt that both would have mixed horribly with the ink if I had tested immediately.

The Kuretake no. 33 gets great variation, though the ink thins near the end of quick strokes if you don’t think about pressing down evenly the whole time. It’s not a bad effect, but if you want even blacks, you’ll have to think consciously about it. Despite the thickness of the brush, I didn’t find the pen that hard to control, and I think it’ll be fun to use it for Asian-style ink drawings… It is also a pretty good calligraphy pen, if you hold it like a calligraphy pen. For the examples above, I was holding it like a regular pen, which is why a lot of strokes ended up way too thick and very sloppy. Slipped my mind to hold it differently, but that’s why these types of brush pens are so long. Calligraphy brushes are very long because you grip a lot higher than you do for normal pens.

Kuretake no. 55 double-sided brush pen

The fat side of the Kuretake no. 55 is very similar to the no. 33. I think the no. 33 is a little thicker, but the difference is negligible. Again, the ink thins for thick, quick strokes. The fine side is comparable to most other fine-tipped brush pens — it’s similar in width to the Fudegokochi super fine, actually, just a little bit thicker. The line variation is similarly subtle. It’s a pretty handy double-sided pen since the two sides are so different, and at five bucks, it’s a good enough discount on buying the two types of pens separately.

The rest of that test page kind of dissolves into random tests with a variety of the pens, hahaha.

Gel pen test on black scrapbooking paper.

Uni-ball Signo Angelic & Broad

Here's how the pens look on Copic marker too. Left to right: Signo Angelic, Sakura Gelly, Signo Broad.

So the Uni-ball Signo Broad is kind of insane. It is seriously like writing in paint — it is SO WHITE and thick and wet, hahahaha. Like all gel pens, it’s hard to get a very fine point and it’s very hard to get any sort of line variation, but I that really just comes with the territory. The Signo Angelic is supposed to be a thinner version of the Broad, but it doesn’t appear nearly as stark white. It’s not a bad pen though and appears pretty similar to the Sakura Gelly Roll. I wrote that the Sakura pen I was using is a year old, but it’s actually closer to two years old, I think, because I bought it before I graduated SCAD. If both Uni-ball Signos have that long of a lifetime (granted, I don’t actually use white gel pens that often), then I think we’re set.

In summary…

Basically, all of these pens are awesome. This is especially thrilling since my last batch of new pens was pretty mixed. The awesomeness of brush pens really isn’t encouraging me to go back to real brushes any time soon, lol. I really, really wish more of these brush pens were refillable though. I kind of really want to give some of those more expensive, real-hair (refillable!) brush pens a go, but most of them are around $30-70, and I’m not sure I want to dive into that yet, especially since I’m already pretty damn happy with these cheap alternatives.

Allow me a moment to plug Jetpens.com, which done wonderfully in keeping me supplied with awesome Japanese pens, because after coming back from Japan, where I had access to a freakin’ seven story Itoya store for two weeks and where I bought like ¥15000 worth of pens and markers, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to resupply on some of the things I brought home.

But this order was less to resupply and more to find things to experiment with! There were a few things I wanted to try out as far as new pens went:

• Fountain pens! Are they a good alternative to actual quills/dip pens?
• Gel pens? I hear they’re good for inking?
• Alternative tech pens? Copic Multiliners’ nibs are too fragile, Microns are fickle, and it is stupidly hard to find Staedtler at my local supply stores.
• Refillable alternatives to my beloved Tombow Fudenosuke brush pens?

After like an hour of poking around the site, this is what I ended up with:

• Tachikawa comic nib fountain pen – school model nib
• Pentel Tradio Stylo fountain pen
• Pentel EnerGel Euro Needle-Point gel pen
• Pilot G-3 gel pen – 0.38 mm
• Pilot SW-DR3-B Drawing Pen – 03 size

The photo’s a little misleading by the way — also pictured are my Pentel pocket brush (front) and my Tombow Fudenosukes (back). I forgot to include the Pilot G-3.

Pen tests on 300 series Strathmore bristol. Orange/red is Copic marker; blue is watercolor.

Tachikawa fountain pen

I went with Tachikawa for the main fountain pen because 1) they were super cheap, and 2) they’re the brand of my real G-pen and other quill nibs, and I’m as fond of them as I think I can be of quill nibs. I’m not entirely sure why I went for the school model nib instead of the G-pen nib, but here we are. This pen is Copic-proof , waterproof, and uses refillable ink!

The reviews on the site said as much, but this fountain pen is definitely meant for very regular use. It didn’t skip much in my first go, but in subsequent weeks, if the nib would start to clog if I didn’t use it every two or three days. It’s an easy enough fix — running the nib under warm water will clear it up, but that seems like such a waste of ink. As for the pen itself, it handles very well. It’s much easier to control, and much more flexible, than a real quill. You can push or pull your lines; curves are easier to manage, and the lines are very fine and even. I wish there was greater line variation though. The thickest and thinnest lines you can get are comparable to an 005 and 03 Micron pen (so, 0.20-0.35mm).

I don’t know how much I’ll actually be using this pen though. Not a lot of my stuff right now lends itself to very thin lines and the minimal line variation means it doesn’t have much of an advantage over tech pens. Maybe the G-pen version would have been better in this area?

Pentel Tradio Stylo

I thought the felt-tip on this “fountain pen” looked interesting, but in practice, it’s a bit cumbersome and awkward. The nib is fat and not great for precision work, but the pen itself being kind of fat makes the whole thing hard to control. And sometimes, the felt makes an unpleasant squeaking sound on paper that really bothers me. <_< Line weight variation is about the same as the Tachikawa, just a few sizes higher. The thinnest is around the 03 Micron and the thicket is a little shy of the 08 Micron (so, 0.35-0.45mm?). However, the thinner you try to make the lines, the harder it is to control the pen.

Honestly, I’m pretty disappointed with this pen. It’s refillable, Copic-proof, but not waterproof, which isn’t really a big deal since I use Copics with pens way more than watercolor, but the clunkiness of the Tradio Stylo kind of makes it useless to me because I need my precision. I guess I can use it to reinforce lines by other pens?

Pentel EnerGel + Tombow Fudenosuke inks; Copic marker colors

Pentel EnerGel Euro Needle-point & Pilot G-3

Aside from line widths (it’s funny how big of a difference 0.03mm is!), two pens are kind of the same. I’ve never really used gel pens like these before, and they kind of blew me away with their smooooothness. In fact, they’re so smooth I don’t think I could actually use them for serious inking because my hand just wants to glide all over the page instead of spending time on any kind of meticulous detail work. I’ve been using them the last few days for pen sketches and studies though, and that has been fantastic. They’re Copic-proof, and I think they’re probably waterproof to a point — the smudges on the above tests are probably because I didn’t really wait for it to dry. I went back in later in some places after it was dry and it held up a lot better. Dunno if you can tell.

Pilot SW-DR3-B Drawing Pen

This is a pretty standard issue tech pen. Copic-proof, waterproof. Pretty thick lines though. It’s a 03 size, but it’s a little bigger than a 03 Micron. I couldn’t find a thickness in mm, so I don’t know how thick it actually is. Nib might be a little stronger than a Micron’s nib, but I won’t be able to tell until I wear it down more. I guess it could be worth the extra $0.50 compared to a Micron, but I’m pretty meh.

In the end, it was cool to play with new stuff, even if some of them were duds. Sorta wish there was a magical local importer of Japanese pens so I could just figure this stuff out in the store, but heeeey, what can ya do.

Unfortunately, from site descriptions, I wasn’t really able to find anything (within my price range) that looked like it would be a good refillable alternative to the Tombow Fudenosuke. I guess it’s kind of whatever though — they’re just a quarter more than Microns, and I could probably spend another entire post swooning over them because they’re my favorite inking pen at the moment. <3 I guess some pens just won’t be replaced by random experimentation. :3

I did hit 10k last night though, so this is still better than a majority of my normal NaNo failures, which tend to peter out around 5k. I don’t feel too bad about it because it isn’t a “real” NaNoWriMo, and I was counting it as a warm-up kind of thing anyway. August was also kind of insane, ’cause:

• Suddenly, San Japan!
• Legitimate one week vacation
• 87-hour crunch time work week, wtf

I should have probably jumped on faster and done the July round, but I don’t think I knew about any of those three things well into July.

On the bright side, I might have figured out a bunch of things about the story (stories?) I was writing — which is very good, considering I have essentially been trying to write it for nine years (yes, really). Namely, a lot more worldbuilding is in order before I can really write it. I actually spent a lot of time this month writing relevant summaries of things and character bios instead of prose, trying to get myself more organized; if I could have added all of that to my word count, I’d probably have 20k-25k.

Other revelations: I really need to read more. The story is decidedly fantasy, but I haven’t really read anything fantasy since I was in middle school. So I should. Research is good. You know what’s really hard for me to write? Fight scenes. They bore the crap out of me, which is kind of hilarious because I used to write tons for Dragonball Z and Bleach-based roleplays and it that was endless fighting — typical shounen. Maybe this is what will get me to finally see what all this A Song of Ice and Fire is all about. I hear there are lots of interesting fight scenes there.

Lehelle is a definitely going to remain a project for the long haul though. I still don’t really expect it to ever see the light of day.

September is kind of a break (no, not really; there is never a break). I don’t foresee being able to do a legitimate 24hr comic for 24hr Comic Day again, so I will probably do what I did last year and give myself October to draw another 24-page comic as a consolation. And then it’ll be November again. NaNoWriMo again.

I have no idea what I’ll be writing.

PINKY PIE APPROVES OF THIS PARTY 8D

This report is 5621 words long. Just so you know.

LAST WEEK

On Sunday, July 31st, Ladre mentioned that he got permission to resell his San Japan table, as he wouldn’t be able to make it for continuing health reasons. I debated for all of fifteen minutes before jumping all over it. I’d heard so many good things about the con that it seemed foolish to pass up on the chance — I could figure out hotel and possible carpool situations later, right? So I paid Ladre, emailed the SJ Artist Alley director to confirm, then set about shooting messages and emails and notes to people inquiring as to whether I could bum in a corner of their hotel room, etc. I already knew the Texas AA community was pretty amazing, but man, I love you guys. <3 I had just about everyone double-checking with all of their hotelmates to make sure one more was okay, not to mention securing a back-up couchsurfing option, courtesy of fellow SCAD grad Jon.

But then it was a waiting game. I hate waiting games. In actuality, all of this was resolved and finalized within 36 hours or so, but 36 hours seems like forever when you’re panicking. But everything worked out. I would be bumming a ride with JohnYume and Chrislea to San Antonio, and I would be crashing with Chrislea, Amanda (Cinnamoron), and Cari (Blix-it) in their hotel room. Awwyiss.

THURSDAY

I spent the morning hitting up half a dozen stores looking for 4×3″ badge holders because I knew I didn’t have very many left. No store had them. It was ridiculous. So I went home and did some word sprints for Camp NaNoWriMo, and after a minor delay, Yume and Chrislea arrived around 1:30pm or so. We loaded my stuff into Yume’s gigantic old creeper van, which, if it weren’t for the many windows, would it look like a kidnapper’s van. :D The van had way more room than we actually needed, lol, and Yume’s con things dwarfed Chrislea’s and mine. I hadn’t restocked on anything since A-kon, so I did have less than usual… but my usual still wouldn’t be anything compared to Yume’s huge storage tubs of stuff.

The drive was mostly uneventful, but the last time I went to San Antonio was to evacuate for Hurricane Rita, so I was very pleased that it did not take 10+ hours of sitting on I-10 to get there this time. Things got more complicated once we pulled into city limits, and I’m pretty sure we circled around downtown San Antonio for half an hour before we magically found the hotel entrance — but hey! We passed by some nice sights and the Alamo while we were lost and still got to the hotel right around 5pm.

After Yume checked in, we unloaded the van and left everything with Chrislea and Kiiyame (White Oblivion), who just happened to be hanging out in the lobby when we arrived, and went to go park… In the scary underground garage under the hotel. Which had a 6’6″ clearance height. Yume’s giant van just barely made it under the hanging bar declaring the height, but going into the actual garage was pretty much the most terrifying thing ever since 1) we had to drive down an incline that was at least 40° into the garage entrance, 2) the tunnel was super, super narrow. Even when we made it into the garage, the ceiling was ridiculously low and there was hardly any space to turn, and arghargharghasda. ;_; But we made it! Without scraping anything! For now!

O hay, San Antonio. View from hotel window on the 31st floor.

Amanda, Cari, and Jessica (RadiusZero) were at the Rivercenter mall when we arrived, but were at the hotel by the time we finished parking and such, so Chrislea and I could move our stuff to the room. We didn’t linger long before heading down to the Artist Alley around 6:15 or so though because you see, San Japan’s AA table assignments were first come, first serve…

The Artist Alley was situated in the hallway outside the Main Events room, the Dealer’s Room, and between that area and the hotel elevators. The Marriott had some fancy hallway chandeliers that ensured that some areas were very well-lighted while others were in utter darkness. They were still setting the tables up when we got there, but we all met up with Silver no Miko and Alicechan, among others. There was a lot of confusion regarding where/when we were supposed to and allowed to line up. The San Japan website still said artist check-in was at 9pm, but many of us had been told that this had been changed to 8pm and that we were allowed to start lining up at 7pm. However, as the pre-registration badge pick-up line was also nearby, some artists were told different things by staff and volunteers that probably didn’t realize they were artists.

The artists ahead of me in the Artist Alley check-in line, fufufu.

Some minor drama ensued, but a majority of us that ended up near the front of the line were friends, so as we waited, we sort of just worked out who was getting what table amongst ourselves. Hanging around in line for over an hour gave us plenty of time to figure things out as they started numbering the tables. Between the elevators and the hallway containing the entrances to Main Events and Dealer’s Room was a single well-lit area with six tables, three of which were really under the light and the rest of which were just… not dark, I would say. Amanda, Cari, and Jessica got those tables. There were two or three pockets in the main hall that were well-lit, but inexplicably, there were three eight foot tables in one of those pockets while the rest were six feet. Um. Hell yes?

Long story short, Kat (Tsarren), who sells shiny things jewelry, got one of the eight foot tables. I got the one next to her. Chrislea and her tablemate, Foilguy, got the third one, across from us. Yume and Kiiyame got two tables in a little nook to my left. Alicechan and Silver no Miko were sharing a table to Chrislea’s left. Tod (Uniique) and Kevin (Yanimator) got tables to their right. Katy (MetalEgo/Winged Cat Machine) who got there later, set up in a dark area around the corner from me. Later, I found out that Mossimo had a table in a corner on the other side of Yume and Kiiyame, but I don’t think I knew anyone else in the Alley… and this convention was the first in a good, long while where I really didn’t even have time to make a complete loop around to see everyone. x_x

To illustrate the differences in lighting, here are photos of the main hallway on either side of my table. Notice that the lighted area has fancy chandelier things and that the dark area has crappy little spotlights. The sun was still up when I took these pictures sometime Saturday, but the dark area was waaaaay darker in the evening and night since there’s no extra light coming in the window at the end.

Check-in itself was relatively painless, and I’m always pretty pleased when they actually check for sales/tax permits, but I have mixed feelings about the whole FCFS thing. We wasted a lot of time standing around in line (or, um, lingering without purpose, as we weren’t supposed to line up until 7pm). If tables had been assigned, I could have been doing other things… like eating dinner. However, as San Japan’s AA layout was incredibly polarizing, I’m also super grateful that I lucked out so much in my final table claim. “Good” and “bad” tables were right next to each other. The difference between the dark and light areas was ridiculous. And seriously, what was with those random 8′ tables? Leaving table assignments to chance might have meant actually eating dinner, but I don’t think dinner would have been worth a bad spot.

After checking in, I set up my PVC and banner, but despite being a 24hr Artist Alley, we weren’t allowed to start selling until the next morning. Too bad, really. The pre-registration line was wrapping around the far side of the hallway and there were tons of people just wandering around. I’m positive we could have had a few good hours of selling if we’d been allowed to. Instead, I helped Yume set up her gigantic grid cube system and just hung out in that corner with Kiiyame and Chrislea until we all got tired and went back up to our respective rooms around 11pm or so.

FRIDAY

Technically, Artist Alley wasn’t to open until 9am, but I wasn’t really sure if they were gonna hold us to that and wanted to be downstairs and ready as soon as possible, especially since I still needed to print out my inventory sheets… So I was the first one up at 7am. I grabbed an overpriced cheese danish and latte from the Starbucks downstairs, then headed to the third floor to print stuff. The Rivercenter Marriott’s business center is run by UPS, and each computer had a minimum $5 usage charge. This was ridiculous in itself, but the sad thing is that it didn’t take long to hit that minimum charge because computer usage was $0.59/minute and printing $0.50/page. :| I was really irritated about it, considering the (way cheaper) Holiday Inn I stayed at for Anime Overload had a business computer with free usage and free printing. And they also had a nice, complimentary breakfast. Humbug to you, Rivercenter Marriott.

Fake Lemonade Stand @ San Japan 4TW

All of the tables came with (pretty damn nice) red tablecloths, but that meant the red tablecloth I normally use did not stand out at all amongst the other tables. :\ So I used my weird, picnicy cover sheet as a tablecloth instead and draped my red cloth over a section of it so the bookmarks on the table weren’t competing against a crazy, patterned background. It wasn’t crazy enough to stress me out while setting up, but there were definitely already attendees milling about in the early hours of Friday, and by 9:30am, or so the convention was more or less full swing.

And Friday was insanely busy. Like, A-kon busy. o_o This was astounding because the final count on attendance for San Japan was just over 6,800 warm bodies. A-kon had nearly three times that amount. It was San Japan’s 4th year. A-kon is the oldest anime convention in the United States. I think the following worked in San Japan’s favor:

• It is San Antonio’s one big anime convention. There were tons of con virgins!
• The entire convention is on the 3rd floor of the hotel, so people only left for food.
• The hallway was super wide, so people didn’t block traffic by stopping at artist tables.

For me personally, things were even better because:

• I was in a clean and well-lighted place. :)
• I had a gigantic 8′ table, fufufufu.
• My immediate neighbor (Kat) wasn’t competing with me at all in terms of merchandise.
• Being across from Main Events instead of Dealer’s Room meant that there was tons of traffic even after DR closed.
• A stairwell opened into a nice empty area between my table and Kiiyame’s, so lots of people hung out there. Small crowds attract other small crowds!

Inked sketch commission of attendees~.

I basically sat and did commissions all day Friday, including seven inked sketch cards for Luke Green (Thrythlind) , proper scans of which are on his dA account. I was pleased that people were finally noticing my tiny sign that said “Yes, I can draw you” which I put up to encourage more caricature requests. I did so many little chibi caricatures~. It was pretty awesome. I was also pleased that Brad Swaile (VA for Light from Death Note, Quatre from Gundam Wing, Amaro from Mobile Suit Gundam, etc.) being one of the guests meant that suddenly everyone noticed the handful of Gundam Wing ACEOs I had, haha. Someone bought the Quatre ACEO and got it signed (sorry for the terrible photo):

Brad Swaile's autograph and doodle on the sleeve of a Quatre ACEO I drew.

Other than commissions, I also sold a ton of buttons and bookmarks — way more than usual — along with a bunch of random things I don’t generally move, like things from my “old crap for sale” folder and comics! I am pretty sure I sold more comics at San Japan than every other convention combined. I didn’t really have that many with me either — don’t think I’ve reprinted any of my minis since March — so I ran out of some comics super fast. Was pretty nuts. o_o

Despite lots of people being around, the hallway was never crowded to the point of absurdity, and the temperature never got uncomfortable because of compacted, sweaty bodies. I think Safety/Security staff, along with a generous number of uniformed SAPD officers, really helped with the general flow of things and kept people from acting too wildly. The hotel staff also hung around a lot, with cleaning staff coming through regularly to empty trash cans and pick up dropped litter. I actually spoke to a few of the hotel staff as they were passing by — they were all very nice, seemed genuinely interested in the con, and one of them even said, “Hey, if you guys weren’t here this weekend, I wouldn’t have any hours, so thank you.”

I saw a Nny cosplayer, heeeeee. His shirt had "Z?" taped on it.

~*PINKIE PIE*~ showed up sometime in the early evening and was mobbed by throngs of attendees wanting hugs and pictures. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the suiter/cosplayer actually commissioned me for a colored sketch of her Earthbound OC earlier in the day and she sent me a scan after the con! :D

The Dealer’s Room closed at 7pm. The crowds didn’t die down at all. People started lining up for the first of several concerts around 8pm, maybe? The queue was a little awkward since it blocked Tod and Kevin’s tables, but I think staff managed to keep it relatively orderly regardless.

Unfortunately, the first band to play, the Loliholix, was all kinds of terrible (the name isn’t even the half of it). <_< Being right across from the room meant I could hear everything perfectly, and in particular, the vocalist aggravated the hell out of me. For the first song, the band covered “Haruka Kanata” by ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION. In addition to having a very inconsistent volume and sounding whiny, constantly out-of-breath, and awkward with slurred and Anglicized pronunciations of the lyrics, the vocalist managed to noticeably mess up the lyrics. “Haruka Kanata” is not a hard song. The first verse is two stanzas. The second verse is a repeat of the first verse. Vocalist managed to repeat the second stanza twice for the second verse. Good job. After that, they went on to butcher “Ride on Shooting Star” by the pillows, the theme to Inspector Gadget, and a song I (thankfully) didn’t recognize.

Chrislea, who had her back to the Main Events room, wandered over to chat because she couldn’t stand the noise or the vocals. I think we were both very grateful that the Loliholix did not stay for long and were soon replaced by the Descendants of Erdrick, who played both years at Anime Overload, and who are actually pretty damn good. …And I think they were especially awesome at San Japan because they played a Sonic and Knuckles medley. <3

Inked sketch commission of an attendee and his daughter.

The traffic in the halls had been gradually thinning and was pretty sparse by the time Descendents finished playing. Another band was set to play, but they were taking their time setting up, I guess. I never actually looked into the Main Events room, so everything I know is based off hearing them, lol. A majority of the other artists had already headed up at that point. In fact, I think it was pretty much just me, Foilguy, and some guy sitting around the corner in the dark doing commissions?

While I debated whether to close up for the night, I saw Nabeshin wandering around with his wife (?), her friend, and their San Japan staff person/translator. o_o I actually wasn’t sure if it was him or a cosplayer at first, but the group speaking Japanese amongst themselves gave it away. So I took stalker pictures:

NOT CREEPY AT ALL.

I was bloody exhausted, but in the end, I don’t think I packed up until 11pm or so. I stopped by the karaoke room before heading up, but it looked like they were playing Rock Band instead of doing straight-up karaoke, so I just went back to the room, where I was the last person to go to bed.

SATURDAY

And then I was the first one up again. 8D

But I think the prize for most insane artist over the weekend goes to Foilguy, who did not sleep at all the whole time. Seriously. o_o He stayed up all Friday night and all Saturday night, watching over things and cranking out more foil figures to sell. I think he had a few buddies that watched his table at times, but even if he took breaks, I don’t think they were to sleep. The further insanity is just how cheap he sells his figures for. Kiiyame and Chrislea gave him a hard time all weekend about how much he was undercutting himself:

Foilguy suffers the wrath of fellow artists.

Seriously, look at these things!

Ultra-detailed foil figures by Foilguy.

In general, Saturday was very similar to Friday. I did a lot of commissions. And then I started to run out of everything. San Japan shall henceforth be known as the convention where I ran out of everything. Yes, yes, a lot of this was because I hadn’t been planning on attending the show and hadn’t had a chance to restock on many things, but still. I sold out of the “When I Was Your Age” Pokemon posters early in the afternoon; “Anarchy is Magic” ran out not long after that. Since I didn’t get to find more 3×4″ vertical badge holders, I started taking badge holders from my premade badges when people commissioned me for them. But soon, I ran out of those too, and had to start drawing badges horizontally because those were the only holders I had left. o_o

I sold out of a few bookmarks and at least one button on Saturday as well. And I ran out of so many comics that I had to take away one of the display racks. For the first time in a very long time, I was actually scrambling to find things to fill in the blank spaces on my table left by sold out items. Having that 8′ table I sat in line an hour for made this even harder, hahahaha. That said, and everyone agrees, running out of stock is a wonderful problem to have. *_* I am very, very grateful for (and bewildered by) all of the support and patronage I received at San Japan.

This Max cosplayer made my morning by 1) existing, and 2) buying the last copy of my WTWTA comic.

I actually had one of the AA volunteers run over to the UPS store/business center to inquire about their printing prices for me. If they weren’t outrageous, I would have printed more of the sold out posters, but they were, so oh well. The AA volunteers showed up pretty sporadically, and it was impractical for me to trek over to the AA staff table when/if I needed them for something specific, but they were awesome all the same. Bringing around water and lemonade was especially appreciated, even if my having lemonade at the table invited a lot of mock anger from attendees when I wouldn’t sell it to them. ;D

Unfortunately, there was a further bit of drama Saturday morning when Chrislea and Foilguy’s table was moved unceremonious from their hard-fought spot to several feet away. Chrislea’s account of the incident is as follows:

Saturday morning I had not been at my table more than an hour, and in the middle of a sale when two security thugs came up and told me I HAD to move.  Next thing I knew, my table was being lifted up and carried down the hall into a dark area. Another table was dragged into MY location.

Went to AA table and demanded an explanation.  AA head was just as surprised as I was to find out [Security was] dragging artists all over the place.  She sought out security, and when she asked their lead-dude what was going on, he told her, and I quote, “Well, it’s not our decision, you’ll have to ask the head of the AA.”  When she informed him that SHE was the head of AA, he paused for a moment, mumbled something about the fire marshall and being too close to the door, then slunk away.  The only thing she could do for me would be to push somebody else out of their spot.  That wouldn’t have been right, so I went back to my new spot.

A few minutes later security returned to bark at us that we were too close to the door and we had to move.  Pissed by now, we all shot back that security PUT us there, that they had put us closer to the door than we originally had been, and we weren’t moving an inch.  And we didn’t.  If they had to move the table that replaced us, they could have put it where they put us, and displaced only one table, not two or three.

It had been Tod and Kevin’s tables that were moved into Chrislea/Foilguy’s old spot. Given that their two tables were routinely blocked by lines formed for Main Events on Friday, it made sense that they were moved, but as Chrislea mentioned, it would have been far more courteous to move their table around to where her table ended up instead of scooting her over. It would have been less of a big deal if the tables hadn’t originally been FCFS… and if that several feet move hadn’t made a huge difference in sales. A good question would also be why Tod and Kevin’s tables were ever in a position to be blocked by lines in the first place, but given how smoothly most of the rest of things at San Japan went, I guess they’re allowed a lack of foresight here and there.

The green shirted Security guys did get on my nerves in a different way as Saturday progressed though. As it began to get more crowded — especially as the Cosplay Contest line started to form — there were two or three Security people and one staff girl that kept yelling at attendees to move or to not stand around. Nevermind that they were standing in front of artists, you know, buying things.

Chell and PotatOS wearing their commissioned badges. :D

But other than that, there is really little else to report about Saturday. I sat and drew for about 18 hours. Really. From 8am to just about 2am, I sat in that hallway and did commissions, and when I wasn’t doing commissions, I was sketching various characters from my Camp NaNoWriMo novel because there was no point in cranking out premade badges or anything because I’d run out of holders. x_x It was madness. This is why I shouldn’t be allowed to do 24hr Artist Alleys. Especially with not Foilguy there to make me feel slightly less insane.

Nabeshin and his entourage showed up again in the afternoon and began doing impromptu signings and photos in the gap between my table and Kiiyame’s. Suddenly, a crowd! It was interesting to see how comfortable he was with his fans and it was clear he was having tons of fun striking retarded poses when having his picture taken. I didn’t have anything relevant for him to sign, so kind wanted him to take a picture with Nomako (the Mokona), but I didn’t want him to think that I thought he had anything to do with Tsubasa Chronicles, lol. In the end, I took a super awkward photo with him in which I look retarded, so I’m not sharing. :D After the fact, I realized it would have been pretty sweet if he had signed one of my fake lemons, but alas.

Nabeshin signing a someone's (delicious) Menchi plush.

An artist that wasn’t tabling swung by and we an awesome few minutes of geeking out over the Archie Knuckles comics before she commissioned me for a drawing of Locke and an OC. And then Cari came by and commissioned me for a drawing of Skittlez from her most excellent webcomic, Toilet Genie. That was pretty damn awesome, even though I forgot to get a picture. ;3;

I’m really glad so many other artists came to visit me at my table because I never got to do my usual rounds around the Alley. Chuck, who also wasn’t tabling, but was attending the con for fun, showed up at some point Saturday and was nice enough to watch my table for a few brief spells, not to mention Kat, who watched it diligently 90% of the time I had to take a restroom break, but it was just SO BUSY Saturday that I never felt comfortable staying away for long. Mossimo visited me like every day. So sweet of her. x3

After the Cosplay Contest, the rave/dance thing started up in the Main Events hall. The music was about the same volume as the concerts the previous night, so it wasn’t that bad at all… the people in the hall did start getting a little rowdy though. Glowsticks seem to have this effect on people? A big family group came and commissioned a crapton of colored sketch cards from me at like 1:30am. o_o Why are you guys even awake?! Half the kids in your party are under ten years old! x_x

The crowds didn’t thin like they did on Friday. They just got louder and crazier, and while the time between sales did gradually increase, I only closed up shop because my brain was melting. <_< If I turned my head too quickly, the room would spin! I think that is a sign to close up for the night. 8D

Fancy Jet and Ein weren't there to rave.

SUNDAY

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten as little sleep over a convention as I did at San Japan, but the 24hr Artist Alley just made it far too easy to want to get up as soon as possible and to leave as late as possible. Chuck crashed in our room Saturday night, along with some other person that I totally never met (or even saw!) because they were asleep in the corner when I got in and still asleep when I left. XD

My table Sunday morning. Notice how many things are missing, lololololol.

Sunday was a lot more relaxed in terms of merchandise sales, but last minute commissions? Ho boy. Thankfully, I’d learned from my experience at A-kon and did set up a nice system for queuing up non-live commissions (that is, non-caricature commissions) that kept me organized. A few people didn’t want to hang around for me to draw them while they waited, but I dislike working off a camera because 1) that screen is just way too small, 2) my camera’s battery sucks. I don’t really take that long to draw people anyway, though I may need to take off the “any number of characters” stipulation for the full page sketches because so many people were taking advantage of it to cram groups of four or five people in, which was just super stressful. <_<

At some point Sunday, I did run quickly through the part of Artist Alley between the main hall and the elevators, but I ended up mostly visiting friends and didn’t really stop long at unfamiliar tables… except for Fuwa Fuwa, because they had a Kyuubey plushie (not for sale, boo) and some really cute buttons and handmade plush. :3

Speaking of plush, Nomako made frands with various attendees' plushies. You know, there were a surprising number of plush corgis dressed as Ein at San japan. :o

Things got pretty hectic in the afternoon because some commissioners were leaving earlier than they thought and I had to rush through some badges. The last four hours pretty much disappeared on me and unfortunately, I had to turn down a few very last-minute commissions because there just wouldn’t have been time to finish them. :c Yume was being kicked out of the garage at 5:30pm, so I started tearing down a little before 4:30… but I tore down slowly. If you can still see it, you can still buy it, guys~. XD

We didn’t quite make it out by 5:30, but it was close enough? Getting out the garage was nearly as terrifying as it was going in, especially as we had to make an insane 180° turn to get on the ramp out. Yume ended up scraping the side of the van against one of the walls. :c We had planned to meet up with a few other artists for dinner, but we couldn’t find either of the two restaurants that we knew people had gone to and Yume, Chrislea, and I decided we’d just go find a Chili’s and eat by ourselves. Unfortunately, the GPS took us around in crazy circles all over downtown San Antonio, which is apparently creepy and ghetto as soon as you get out of the area around the hotel… so we ended up giving up on San Antonio, getting on I-10 towards home, and just pulling off at the first actual Chili’s we saw instead of the mysterious Chili’s the GPS was sure existed somewhere.

Adventures, man. Adventures.

OVERALL

San Japan was amazing. o_o

I made 20% and 25% more Friday and Saturday than I did at A-kon. Saturday’s numbers alone were equal to what I made in my third best weekend ever. Sunday’s numbers took a small plunge (down 30% from A-kon) because I didn’t move as much physically and a majority of sales was  commissions, but overall for the weekend? 10% better than A-kon. Ridiculous. Absolutely insane, especially since I ran out of so many things. The numbers would have undoubtedly been higher if I’d actually been prepared.

Just about every artist I spoke to had an amazing weekend — not everyone did better than A-kon, but a good number did, so at the very least, it wasn’t just me. I didn’t know many of the artists that ended up tabling in the super dark spots, but I like to think that they did pretty well too. Even with stark differences between the well-lit and poorly-lit areas, going down from “amazing” is still “good,” right?

Loot! Miniprints from Cari and Jessica, buttons from Fuwa Fuwa.

Unfortunately, a lot of the factors that made San Japan such a successful convention (for artists) may be moot for subsequent years as the convention is moving out of the Rivercenter Marriott to the convention center and Hyatt hotel down the street. Apparently the Artist Alley in the new location will be in the same room as Dealer’s, so it will no longer be a 24hr set-up. I never thought I’d be sad to see an AA change from 24hr to secured room, but it’s hard to deny that AA being open when DR is closed = lots of after-hour sales and lots more time to do commissions.

Still, for a four-year old convention, San Japan has shown an incredible degree of professionalism that has really impressed me. Aside from the mishap with Security/AA Saturday morning, the staff was responsive, organized, and helpful. As usual, I can really only speak for my experiences in Artist Alley, but I did get the impression that most other con events ran pretty smoothly. I didn’t really hear any attendees complain about any aspect of the convention and everyone was having a damn good time.

It can’t be helped that a lot of things will change when San Japan moves to the convention center, but seeing as the con chair hangs out regularly in the AA forums and seems very open to feedback and opinions, I can hope that San Japan continues to be amazing to artists in 2012 and beyond.

As always, thank you for reading my teal deer. 8) Here is a larger-than-usual image gallery, and I think there are a few more pictures on my Facebook page as well.

Since the Camp NaNoWriMo site launched at the very end of June, I didn’t jump on the July round. But the August round starts on Monday, and I think I’ll go ahead and give it a go.

Outside of NaNoWriMo, I really haven’t written much fiction in the last few years, so having an early NaNo might be nice. I will, of course, still be participating in the traditional NaNo in November — can’t break that seven-year streak — but writing elsewhere in the year! What a wonderful idea!

All the same, as Camp NaNo feels peculiarly un-kosher to me, I don’t think I’ll feel bad deviating a bit from the usual ruleset. To promote the spirit of spontaneity, it is against NaNoWriMo protocol to continue previously started manuscripts, or to rewrite existing material. Well, screw that. I think I’ll be rewriting portions of the 2010 NaNo novel, Lehelle, for Camp NaNo 2011. Or maybe it will actually be a prequel. I’m not sure. See? It is still nebulous enough to be spontaneous. Kind of. I’ll also only be aiming for 30,000 words, personally. Actually, I think I’d probably be pleased if I could managed 20k. I’m taking an actual vacation in the middle of August, so we’ll see how that goes.

Camp NaNoWriMo: An idyllic writers’ retreat, smack-dab in the middle of your crazy life — yeah, pretty much.

The Fake Lemonade Stand @ Anime Overload 2011

Now that I think about it, there aren’t actually a lot of cons I’ve hit more than once — just MomoCon and AWA, both of which I attended twice as an artist, and both of which were pretty inconsistent when I compare them year-to-year. AO this year was similarly bizarre. It was hosted at the same weird venue, the North Austin Events Center, but despite a bigger effort on the advertising front this year, attendance felt very, very down. Mel (Mistyibuki), the Artist Alley coordinator, said that 2010′s numbers were supposedly around 1,000. This year… well, maybe they hit 1,000, but it really didn’t seem like it. And when the whole con’s in one room, it’s pretty easy to tell if there are people around or not.

This report is 4459 words long, but surely you’re used to this by now?

THURSDAY

Thursday morning and afternoon was a hectic mess. I had to stop by the office in Bellaire first thing, then drive way out to Pasadena for a meeting that lasted way too long because the client was chatty (very nice, but chatty), then go all the way back home to load up the car. Houston is too damn big. That is a lot of driving already and I haven’t even left for Austin yet. ;_; I stopped by Kinko’s to pick up prints, but of course, the only time I’m in a hurry when I’m there, they manage to mess a bunch of stuff up, including printing a portrait print in landscape so the top and bottom got cut off, and printing two prints in a batch of ten on cardstock about 50 lbs lighter — what, like I wasn’t gonna notice? :\ They fixed all of this, but at 5pm, I was already running late.

Thankfully, my carpool party for the weekend, fellow con artist Chuck and friend and co-worker Stephanie, both live on the way to Austin, so I didn’t really need to make any detours to pick them up. Chuck was tabling in AO too, of course, but Stephanie and Rusty (who was driving up separately) were attending a Pixar Masterclass seminar hosted by VanArts — conveniently that same weekend.

AO being as small as it is, we weren’t planning on setting up Thursday night and weren’t in a huge hurry or anything, but the three hour drive went by pretty quickly anyway. Chuck had been at Anime Expo the weekend prior, so we talked about that and various other conventions most of the way. (Sorry for leaving you out, Stephanie!) At 8:30pm, as we circled the freeway looking for the hotel, we magically found Rusty on the road also driving towards the hotel and just followed him there! Then we went to Chili’s and pigged out (or maybe only I pigged out) before going back to sleep before midnight. Exciting.

FRIDAY

Stephanie and Rusty left for their Pixar thing early. Chuck and I had a pretty lazy morning since I was expecting Friday to be rather dead. The hotel had a huge continental breakfast. Their orange juice was kind of gross, and their coffee was weak, but the food itself was good!  At 9:15am, we found our way to the venue. There were maybe a half dozen attendees lined up outside. Circling around the back, there was a larger gathering of artists and dealers. We parked, unloaded, and just as we joined them, Mel arrived to vouch for our access through the back.

By the way, I realized at some point Thursday that I’d left my camera at home (plugged into the wall, charging, arghh), so almost all of these pictures were taken with Chuck’s camera, and that’s why I don’t have as many. Sorry!

Set-up time~

I think there were about the same number of dealers this year as last, but there were many, many more artists — I don’t think there were more than ten of us last year, but this year we had two islands of fourteen each. The tables weren’t assigned, so Chuck and I set up shop at #12 and #13 below on the map. As it turned out, Kawaii Ribbons (no website to link, but remember them?) set up on the other side of Chuck at #14, and later on, Katy (MetalEgo/Winged Cat Machine) nabbed #11 on the other side of me. Amelie was behind Chuck at #1. Our corner was the corner of awesome. Wooters Diana Sprinkle, Shawnna Bass (Bass Animation), and Tod K. (Uniique) were also in attendance, as was Glen of Azarkarde Productions, in the gaming corner.

Last year, I walked into that building knowing no one. One year on the con circuit? You meet a lot of people. The fact that Texas seems to have a convention every month with three in March makes a difference too.

Anime Overload Map: the one-room conhouse

As predicted, Friday was incredibly, incredibly slow. But even slower than I thought. It was basically dead all morning and most of the afternoon, picking up slightly in the evening when general business hours were over. Traffic was noticeably down from last year, which was bizarre. I don’t actually know how strong AO’s advertising was for the year previous, but since the show is run by the same folks that run IKKiCON (and LousiANIME, apparently), I had seen a lot of advertising in the past year for AO alongside advertising for IKKiCON, which is a significantly larger convention. Hell, since the postcard ads for IKKiCON were doubled-sided and featured AO on the back, Chuck reported that AO was even advertised at AX the weekend prior, way out in Los Angeles.

So why was attendance down? I don’t really feel that being the weekend after AX had much to do with anything since probably 90% of attendees were Austin locals and skewed younger — most of them wouldn’t have been able to attend AX anyway. A-kon was a month ago, sure, but Dallas is a long way from Austin too (Texas is too damn big), and again, I don’t think that most of them would have been able to attend. Austin’s most recent anime con, as far as I know, was Ushicon in February, which was an 18+ affair, and before that, IKKiCON over New Years. So even though Texas has a billion conventions, I don’t think that AO was really competing directly with anything.

 Some artists suggested that not being in a hotel might have hurt AO. I agree that being in a hotel or convention center is beneficial because you’ll often get a fair amount of “accidental” con-goers — people who had no idea it was happening, but ended up being curious — but AO was in the same venue last year, and Friday was definitely busier.

Chuck's table -- I think I caught him mid-V, so his fingers look like raptor claws instead. 8D

Glen wandered over at some point (because he was bored out of his mind, probably) to regal me with his tale of how terrible Delta H Con was this year. I had attended last year, but while I did okay, I declined to return this year because man, I know I had just been lucky, and Delta H is a sad, sad excuse for a con. It would seem that I was right to skip.

The con had been the weekend prior, so the same weekend as AX, though that’s only worth noting for the fact that many Texas-area artists and dealers that had been considering Delta H went to AX instead, including Chuck. Hilariously, the artist/dealer numbers were exactly the same as they’d been last year — seven artists, three dealers. This year though, Glen said that the dealers had all jumped ship by Saturday afternoon and the artists had apparently been confined to the basement, far removed from the rest of the con. And there were no signs because signs weren’t allowed? Robert Axelrod (voice of Lord Zedd) was again Delta H’s only guest, though I kind of imagine he only keeps coming out of niceness… or pity or something. Recall that last year, the poor guy was giving a panel Sunday morning to an audience of two staff members.

But Glen’s favorite mishap at Delta H was the fact that they misspelled their own name on the con program — they were Detla H Con. Also, a few pages in, auto-correct got the best of them for “Mighty Morphine Power Rangers.” Wow.

Badge commissions of Kneesocks & Stocking

Katy showed up in the early afternoon, and suddenly, our deep mutual adoration of Animorphs came to light. I still owed her art for modding Nomako, and didn’t have any commissions to work on at the time, so much awesome fanart ensued… not all of which I got pictures of, including two steampunk’d Andalites. I’ll be bugging her for scans though, so hopefully those will show up in my deviantART scraps eventually.

Colored sketch cards of Aldrea as both an Andalite and a Hork-Bajir.

So most of Friday was socializing with fellow con artists and drawing things for Katy, but otherwise twiddling my thumbs. Last year, I passed the time by drawing a ton of ACEOs, but this year… I dunno. Just wasn’t feelin’ it. It was kind of depressing looking across the ways and seeing how bored the other artists looked too, especially that LARP guy. Bored, bored, bored.

Being bored made me acutely aware of the rest of the going-ons of the convention. The video room being just to the left meant I could hear everything they were screening the whole day — and everything was dubbed, furthering my awareness of it. Their screening of Ouran High School Host Club was especially tempting. In the evening, karaoke in the J-Pop/K-Pop room by the Dealers was tempting, especially when I could hear them playing songs I liked. It was slow enough that I did run over and check things out a bit, but they seemed a little disorganized, and I was too anxious about leaving the table to stick around.

The concert started up a little past eight, so we packed up. It was a pretty muted end to the day. Mel had mentioned at some point that less than 30% of the pre-registration badges had been picked up on Friday, so there would surely be a bigger turnout on Saturday… don’t think I was very reassured by this though. Stephanie and Rusty were off partying and so weren’t there when we got back to the hotel. Chuck and I watched maybe half of The Matrix Revolutions, which I actually hadn’t seen before, but I passed out exhausted near the end, so I don’t think that counts.

SATURDAY

On Saturday, the hotel breakfast was infested with kids on some group trip, so we took our food to eat outside. Texas weather is gross. We got to the convention venue just after nine, I think, giving me about an hour to wander around to look at other artists and make a few purchases. It was not very obvious when the con opened to the public at ten, and I only returned to my table when I saw some obviously-not-vendors-or-staff people wandering about. But Saturday started off very much like Friday, and I got bored again pretty fast sitting at my table. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so fidgety being at my table.

Things did pick up at little as we approached noon, at least in the way of conversation. One of the maids from the Maid Cafe came by to chat a while because it was slow at the cafe too, and later on, one of the hosts/butlers did as well. The host had seen me at previous cons and is probably one of my devWatchers, but because I’m awesomely absent-minded, I still don’t know his name. Hopefully I’ll be quicker to remember him by face when I do seem again though. It takes me two or three cons to remember people. <_< Sorry!

Badge commission of Death the Kid

I had an odd smattering of commissions here and there. I didn’t bother getting pictures of most of the sketch ones since I didn’t like stealing away Chuck’s camera so often, but I think I remembered to get most of the color ones? Stacey of Kawaii Ribbons (who has commissioned me every time I’ve seen her ♥) commissioned me in the morning for chibis of herself and her friend/table assistant as they had matching outfits. Later in the afternoon, she commissioned me again for chibis of her husband Michael and herself where I got to make up Michael’s outfit again. Her dress had cherries, her assistant’s had strawberries; I went with oranges for Michael. (Michael said that Stacey had suggested maybe watermelons, but he was sure there was a fat joke in there and didn’t want watermelons, lol.)

Stacey (right) and her assistant friend (left) in matching outfits~

:D

Color commission of Stacey and Michael of Kawaii Ribbons~

Saturday never really picked up to a point where it felt even kind of busy though. Most of the time I was bored. I would have a sanity-saving commission that would keep me occupied for twenty minutes at best, but then I would be bored again. The video room taunted me by screening Soul Eater. Cosplay chess happened at the main stage and drew away… basically the entire convention when it happened. In fact, most of the events at the main stage had a way of luring away all the attendees so the artists and dealers at the back of the one-room con were left staring idly at each other. It was sad because it was obvious.

In the evening, karaoke started up again. The convention floor was dead enough that I didn’t feel too anxious wandering over a few times. But free-for-all karaoke was over, and I wasn’t sure about entering the contest. Then I saw Stacey go over there, and I felt better about it for some reason. I mean, hell, there were probably only about ten people sitting in that karaoke room. Small audience. Marginally less self-consciousness, right? Also, the way the karaoke was run, the staffer pulled up each song on YouTube with lyrics and projected it onto the screen they were using to show K-Pop/J-Pop videos. This is how karaoke is supposed to be done! You’re supposed to have lyrics! There are a lot of songs I like to sing where I only know most of the lyrics, so this was probably what convinced me to just go for it. A con karaoke that provides lyrics! How often does that happen?

I signed up and Stacey signed up to sing after me. One of the volunteers I had been chatting with at my table offered to come get me when it was time for me to go, and Stacey agreed to watch my table while I did just that. I sang “Rhythm Emotion” by TWO-MIX from Gundam Wing. The microphone made my voice terrifyingly loud. o_o But according to one of the audience members who whispered to me during the bridge, I was very soft. This was confusing. I ran away as soon as I was done and relieved Stacey from my table so she could go sing.

I felt a lot better about the con after that, lol. It was a slow-as-snails Saturday, but at least I got to sing.

Then Katy and her friend Matt came over to be weird and do kung-fu moves.

A concert started up again around 8:00pm or 8:30, and so we packed up once again. Chuck had gotten a ton of commissions later in the day and so actually had work to bring back to the hotel. The influx of commissions made the con much better than expected for him, and I was on track to do about the same I did last year. Kind of weird, I guess, but that had happened before. The weekend was dragging, but I was doing okay. I don’t think some of the other artists around us were as lucky though, so AO on the whole still felt a bit lacking — at least for vendors. And maybe the musical guests. It was kind of sad seeing a small crowd of maybe twenty near the edge of the stage as the music started. The attendees seemed to be enjoying themselves fine though, so there’s that. :o

We went back to the hotel and watched most of the Resident Evil movie with Stephanie and Rusty. I’d never seen it before, but it was pretty all right.

SUNDAY

I wandered through the Dealer’s area for the first time Sunday and chatted with a few of the people there. Opinions seemed pretty split — some dealers were doing about what they’d expected: slow, but not bad. Others were dubbing it the Worst Con Ever, including one dealer who told me that he’d never turned a profit at any Austin convention and was probably only attending AO to “complete his triad of suck.” Ouch. I heard similarly split opinions about AO’s management, with some contending that they were all incompetent and others offering appreciation for the fact that the staff was hard-working and relatively responsive. For my own bit, I didn’t really see much of staff over the weekend, but this was probably because didn’t have anything obviously identifying them as staff. Mel stopped by occasionally, and her (presumed) AA assistant did come by to check everyone for their state sales permits, but beyond that, I imagined that most of the rest of staff was busy running events that I wasn’t taking part in.

I don’t really think the lax attendance was anyone’s fault though. I have mixed feelings about the venue because oh god those bathrooms are gross and those chairs are pathetic and it doesn’t have the convenience of a hotel, but for it being what it is, I think AO makes it work pretty well. There being many more artists than last year probably brought sales down for some — one dealer pointed out that he had a ton of competition this year with T-shirts, which were usually his main seller. It’s hard to guess the “right” number of vendors for a con this small… there’s enough room physically for them, but is there enough spending cash to go around?

This is a laser-guided pit bull

Sunday traffic was similar to Friday traffic. Slow and sad, for the most part, but with little highlights here and there in the form of conversation. I think I had more good conversations than usual at AO as a direct result of not being busy for most of it, haha. I guess it’s not easy to have both, though I do think I’m pretty good at continuing conversations while working furiously on commissions.

Since I did sing as part of the karaoke contest on Saturday, I wandered over around eleven to ask about the results. I didn’t realize that the karaoke contests for Friday and Saturday were to select finalists for the karaoke contest on Sunday, which was to take place on the main stage. And apparently I made the cut from Saturday. Aw, shit. It’s one thing to sing in a little make-shift room in the corner with an audience of ten. It’s another thing to sing on the stage, even if there didn’t seem to be more than a hundred or so people in the entire convention. I was also very concerned that singing on the stage would mean that I wouldn’t have lyrics to look at.

Stacey also made the cut and was looking up lyrics on her iPad in an attempt to very quickly memorize the song she wanted to sing for the finals. I fretted about it because I had nothing else to do and tried to think of songs I knew all the lyrics to. There are a good number of them, but I was pretty sure that being on stage would mess with my memory.

As the karaoke staff set up at the stage though, it became clear that they would still be providing lyrics. There was a laptop set up on a table on the stage and a screen behind it to also display lyrics and video to the audience. Whew. That just left the whole… being on stage part.

This is a picture of Katy's table. She modded many a Pokemon figurine over the weekend.

Stephanie and Chely, who had also gone to the Pixar Masterclass, showed up at the con sometime after noon. They both tried to talk me out of my stage fright. Stephanie also commissioned me for a picture of Chi eating lemons, as inspired by my Fake Lemonade Stand. The karaoke finals were supposed to start around one, but I don’t think they really started until maybe two. I don’t know how many total finalists there were, but I was to go fourth, right after Stacey.

The line-up was a little confusing though. I don’t remember who sang first, but it wasn’t bad. Then someone started to sing the Japanese version of “You Raise Me Up” by Lena Park that had been in Romeo x Juliet, but it was just a TV cut and ended rather abruptly. I thought this meant Stacey would be next, but not so? A guy went up to sing a song I didn’t recognize, but I thought it was kind of ballsy for him to choose a slower song because it’s much easier to spot mistakes in a slower song. Being confused about whether I was still fourth or not, I left Stephanie at my table and went to sit in the audience with Chely.

Stacey went up on stage after the guy though, so I think the “You Raise Me Up” entrant was unofficial. She sang the same song she sang when everyone took shots at karaoke at Delta H Con last year. I found this kind of funny since I was also planning to sing what I’d sung at Delta H. I think it must have been a different song than what she’d been trying to hastily memorize earlier since she performed the whole thing without looking at the lyrics at all — in fact, the lyrics that were on the screen while she sang were for a different song entirely. It was intimidating going up after her. ;_;

I sang “Believe” by Nami Tamaki from Gundam SEED. It went a lot better than I expected? I didn’t sound ridiculously loud to myself like I did on Saturday, and I referred to the on-screen lyrics a lot less than I thought I would. I don’t think I murdered too many high notes. Still, it was insanely awkward standing on stage while waiting for the bridge to pass near the end, and I was very, very happy to get off the stage when I was done. <_<

This is a hilariously bad picture Chuck took of me while I was on stage. (You can be sure that if it hadn't sucked, I wouldn't be posting it, lol. Also, I'm wearing a hat with a Sandile on it, if you're wondering.)

I didn’t recognize any of the other songs by the other contestants, but all of them performed pretty well. I didn’t expect to win anything, especially not competing against Stacey, though Michael joked that I probably would because most as good as she was, Stacey was still “a white girl singing in Japanese.” Nevermind that she probably understood what she was singing about as much as I did. Deceptive Asian, go~.

The convention was winding down after the contest, but naturally, that means last minute commissions!

Badge commission of Princess Luna

Chely commissioned me for a colored sketch of Rainbow Dash, but I forgot to get a picture of that pony.

Annnnnd, as it turned out, Stacey got second in karaoke and I got first, so I am halfway convinced that this was only because I’m Asian. XD The prizes were pretty lame — I got some boxset of a thing called “Instant STAR” which looks like a crappy MTV series, but apparently FUNimation distributes it? And Stacey got a Strike Witches wallet (brb, loling forever) and the Rave Master vol. 2 DVD — but it’s whatever. We had fun. :3

Kawaii Ribbons and most of the rest of the artists started breaking down and moving out around 4:00pm, I think. Chuck, Katy, and I were pretty much the last tables standing, though Katy had abandoned her table for most of the day to play a steampunk roleplaying game, and her assistant started breaking down for her around 4:30 or something, lol. There was pretty much no one around but vendors and staff by the time Chuck and I finally packed up and piled things into the car with Stephanie.

Chely had hoped to tail me out of Austin, but we learned very quickly that I am a terrible person to try and follow. :D Especially if I’m blindly following GPS instructions. :D But hey, I got her to the freeway?

Anime Overload swag

Final verdict? Anime Overload was all right. Mel’s got everyone on the interest list for next year, I think, and I’m pretty sure I’ll go if I’m still in the area. (I keep saying I want to get out of the state; when is this actually going to happen?)

To be honest, I don’t really know what they could do to make things better as far as attendance. With their one-room venue, they’re obviously not trying to be a large con, but if there were 1,000 people there over the weekend, then they could stand to aim for 2,000. It wasn’t crowded at all. With so many conventions in Texas, it may well be over-saturated with conventions, but then again, all major Texas cities are three hours apart at best, and maybe six hours at worse (unless we want to count El Paso as a “major city,” in which case, like, ten hours). Most of AO’s attendees were definitely locals. In fact, as far as the anime cons go, probably only A-kon, IKKiCON, Anime Matsuri, and Oni-Con draw a significant percentage of out-of-city attendees, and all of those are now in different cities — Dallas, Austin, Houston, and Galveston respectively.

I dunno. Con trends are weird. But all things said and done, I did about average for sales and had a good time, and that’s good enough.

And now I have a gaping five-month break until my next confirmed con (IKKiCON)… I guess this means I’ll have to start writing something other than con reports!

Sandile hat. c:

Years later though and having tabled my way through a dozen other cons, I wasn’t as raring to go because the Dallas location felt inconvenient. I don’t really know anyone in Dallas and wouldn’t have a couch to crash on; it’s a longer drive, and man, A-kon’s tables are expensive! But as I hit up other cons on the Texas circuit, hung out on the Artist Alley forums, and made friends with other artists, it felt less and less like a big deal. It’s the biggest con in the state. There’s really no good reason for passing it up! So I decided to go for it when the tables came up for purchase. Those suckers sold out in less than two minutes of keyboard-mashing, eye-twitching, heart-racing insanity, but I am master table wrangler!

The calmness depicted in this picture is exactly the opposite of how the weekend was.

Ladre was generous enough to offer me space in his room at the con hotel, which would be shared with a lovely bunch of other artists, including Tracie (Silver no Miko), Chrislea, Cathy (Meomeo), Xanseviera, and (fellow SCAD grad!) Missy (Zimmay). At Matsuri, Chuck and I discussed the possibility of carpooling to Dallas, along with his friends Erika and Meagan. Things were coming together nicely!

…Of course, the best of plans tend not to go as planned. Thursday of the con was one of the most stressful Thursdays ever, and there have been many Thursdays. On the bright side, the weekend did not consist entirely of Thursdays.

THURSDAY

The plan was thus: Chuck, Erika, and Meagan were to meet at my place around 3pm so we could tetris everything into my minivan and hopefully beat rush hour traffic out of Houston and make it into Dallas by sundown around 8pm. The Artist Alley at A-kon is divided into two sections: the downstairs, unsecured section, which is open to the public at all times, and the upstairs, secured section, which had designated hours each day. All four of us had tables upstairs, which meant that we had to check in and get our badges before setting up. (Theoretically, downstairs folk also had to check in prior to setting up, but in practice, no one checked.) Artist check-in on Thursday was from 3pm to 11pm, which would give us plenty of time to get settled if we arrived by eight.

On Tuesday, Erika informed me that she probably would not be able to get off work until 4pm, so would probably not be able to meet until past five because she lived on the other side of town. Truthfully, I didn’t take this well because 3pm was already a bit later than I would have preferred. Chuck and I settled on that time since he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to take off work either. Consider that when I had been at SCAD, I specifically tailored my schedule every quarter so I would be out of classes by 1:30pm Thursday for the sole purpose of being able to leave early on convention weekends. I was stubborn enough to take an 8am the Monday after a con, but never a class Thursday afternoon if I could help it.

If I hadn’t had others depending on me, I’d probably have left around noon. The joys of freelancing! The paranoid neuroticism of always wanting to be safe and early! There was also the fact that, even though the con wasn’t technically “on” until Friday, artists were welcomed to begin peddling their wares Thursday as soon as they set up. For those downstairs, they were welcomed to camp out all Thursday night and sell then if they wanted. For us upstairs, we had until 11pm, when the secured section became secured. Or so we were told.

Thursday morning, to add to my anxiety over needing to leave later than planned, I received a note from Tracie: Ladre, who had been sick for some time, had been hospitalized that morning and would not be able to make it to the con. She would be taking over the hotel affairs in his place. Terrible news. Of course I was worried about Ladre’s heath (spoiler: he’s fine!), but there was another concern as well… Ladre was my one contact for the room and the only hotelmate whose number I had. I needed to be able to call someone when I arrived at the hotel so I could get the room number. In a mad rush, I sent everyone my number, but it being Thursday already, I was sure that everyone was already traveling or otherwise too occupied to check their messages. Woe, anxiety, woe.

Here is a C.C. to break up the madness. There really needs to be more Code Geass cosplayers. ;_;

I basically spent all Thursday afternoon fretting until the carpool party was finally assembled around 5:30pm. Thankfully, packing the van did not take long and was not terribly difficult considering I had previously helped Cat tetris five artists and their luggage into her much smaller vehicle. We left just in time for rush hour. No one had responded to my note regarding numbers when we had left, so all I could do was hope one of my hotelmates would get it and call/text me before I got to Dallas.

Even with the traffic on 610 backed up to hell like it always is, I felt a lot better once we were on the road. Belting out lyrics loudly, shamelessly, and endlessly helped. Passing all the other cars on the road once we got out of the city helped. There were about a billion cops on the road between Houston and Dallas conspiring to catch me speeding, but it was mostly smooth sailin’. It really didn’t feel like a four and a half hour drive, hahaha. The Sheraton is right off the freeway, so we had no trouble finding it and arrived just after 10pm. After unloading everything, Chuck and the others went off to check in at the hotel and to figure out stuff with Artist Alley — we still had an hour for to grab our badges and set up, right? I went to find parking.

The Sheraton’s parking lot was full. There were a number of public lots around the hotel, but the signage was confusing and I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to park overnight at any of them. After circling the area twice (doubly annoying because there’s a tram that goes through one of the streets and all of the timed traffic lights were sloooow), I pulled into a suspiciously empty lot a block from the hotel. I paid for parking at a machine that was apparently incapable of letting you pay for more than twelve hours at a time… I could park the night, but I would need to come back before 10:30am Friday to pay again… and that period would expire at 7:30pm, so I would need to return again and again throughout the weekend to keep paying for parking. Oh, hell no.

But for the night, it would do. I would find new parking in the morning.

Celty and Mulan make a strange couple.

I checked my phone and was insanely relieved to find that Tracie had texted me at some point. I called her to meet me in the lobby. Chuck, Erika, and Meagan were also in the lobby and informed me that AA check-in was, in fact, closed already. What. We totally made it on time. What? Since now we couldn’t set up, we decided it’d be easier to let them take all of the stuff up to their room first instead of trying to extract mine from the tangled mess that was the bellhop cart. They left and I chatted a while with Tracie, who said that Ladre was like the Kevin Bacon of artists and that we were all only connected to each other through him, hahaha. She also said that AA check-in closed at like eight. :\

I went up to Chuck’s room, retrieved my stuff, dragged it to my room in a different tower of the hotel, went to return Erika’s hand truck, then finally went to scope out the downstairs Artist Alley. It wasn’t insanely busy or anything, but it was busy enough to be depressing because I couldn’t be part of the action.

I got progressively more pissed the more I thought about it. Check-in was supposed to close at 11pm. I had been a ball of anxiety all day, drove across the state in record time, made it on time, but I still couldn’t bloody check in? Getting any selling done was already out of the question, but I wanted to get my damn badge and set up, at least. It did not help that no one seemed to know when AA opened Friday morning to the public VS open for artists. No one knew when AA check-in would resume again. I had a 10am open-to-public time written down. Staff gave me conflicting answers, but it seemed like check-in wouldn’t open again until nine, giving me one hour to get situated in the morning. It takes me longer than an hour to set up. Bad mood, bad mood, bad mood.

Downstairs AA setting up

I wandered around the (downstairs) Alley. A lot of people were still setting up, including Tracie and her tablemate, Alicechan, and there were quite a number of still-empty tables, but those that were set up were vendin’ already. While none of them were physically present, I noticed a lot of popular deviantART artists’ tables. Artists I admire like Rem, e1n, Joanna, and Sypri were there… Endling was also supposed to be in attendance, though he wasn’t tabling. Their existence was intimidating. There were a lot of rather sophisticated set-ups and plenty of gorgeous, gorgeous artwork by people I didn’t know. I felt distinctly outclassed and suddenly realized that hey, A-kon really is that big. Rounding out the top five largest anime cons in the States, A-kon is one of those conventions that artists will actually fly out to attend. There were artists from across the country. From out-of-country. Shit. I’m outclassed, and I can’t even set up. Woe and despair!

Eventually, I retired back to the hotel room, showered, and chatted with Chrislea and Missy. The three of us and Cathy (who was super quiet!) collectively passed out around 1am. I have no idea when Tracie and Xan got back to the room, crazy downstairs-AA-people.

FRIDAY

I woke up once an hour, every hour, from 1am to 6am, like clockwork. Sleeping is hard. I gave up just before seven, tried to take my damn sweet time getting ready since it was so early, failed, and left to go see if maaaaybe AA check-in would magically be there around 7:30 or so. No luck of course, though the early Friday registration and pre-reg line were already a hundred people deep. I circled the Alley once or twice restlessly before wandering out into the disgusting Texas heat to go square with parking.

I found a different lot a block away from the Sheraton where a shady-looking parking attendant assured me that I would be able to pay for the entire weekend at once and that I would be able to leave my car overnight, etc. I parked and paid him cash to get a ticket for my window before realizing there was a machine that would have done the same… the parking attendant jotted down his number on the back of my parking ticket “in case [I] have any trouble with leaving the car overnight.” I couldn’t tell if he was failing at flirting or if I had reason to worry. Either way, it made me uneasy.

Despite being literally a block over, I left the parking lot from a different exit/entrance than I had entered, confused myself, and got mildly lost on the way back to the hotel. This would have mattered less if it hadn’t been 95 degrees and humid out. I returned to the Alley just past eight and finally, finally saw staff and volunteers setting up at the check-in table. But they wouldn’t let me check in. Because they “weren’t open until nine” and had to sort out volunteers and stuff. This seemed like a stupid reason. I returned briefly to the hotel room, whined about my not being able to check in to Chrislea and Missy, then returned to the AA check-in table to make sure they knew I was pissed.

The registration and pre-registration lines at 8am Friday morning. Deceptively tame. I heard that later in the day, the lines snaked around the entire ballroom.

In retrospect, I was kind of a douchebag to the poor people at that check-in table and I feel bad about it. It was just insanely aggravating for me to see staff and volunteers sitting at the table, some of them looking rather bored, insisting that they could not help me. I believe Starry explained it to the extent of the person with the laptop with all the artist information was not there yet (I’m not entirely sure if this was the reason because honestly, I was too mad to listen properly), but this seemed like a poor excuse. Really? One single person has the list of artists? Really?

You know what I found ridiculous about the whole thing? Giving artists a separate check-in is supposed to expedite matters. Conventions that make artists go through the normal pre-registration line with all of the attendees are ridiculous because artists are vendors, not attendees. Vendors have stuff to prepare and tables to set up! And yet, pre-reg was open both at 10:30pm Thursday night and 8am Friday morning while AA check-in wasn’t. If I had gone through the pre-reg line, I would have been able to get my badge faster. Bloody ridiculous.

I got my badge at 9:05am. It took all of a minute. It took two trips back up to the room to get all of my stuff (Missy helped!) so I could finally start setting up.

The Fake Lemonade Stand @ A-kon 22

The AA tables at A-kon were set up as huge islands of around 15 tables each. Each island had a one table gap that served as the only entrance/exit for artists; there were no gaps between any of the other tables. Long story short, this made set-up more difficult than usual because I needed to adjust the position of my clamps so they didn’t hang off the sides, which threw off the length of PVC I needed to go across the table. This is annoying when you cut PVC to the exact length of tables. It’s not that obvious in the picture, but the two supporting poles on the table both point outwards a little, instead of straight up.

You might also notice that that’s still my old banner. Tables are six feet long. My new banner is exactly 1×6 feet… which means that the banner is the same size as the PVC meant to hold it. Good job! Will need to order a new new banner and figure out a use for the old new banner so as not to waste it. Sigh. Nomako didn’t get to make it out to A-kon to keep me company because I had too many things to carry already without bringing her along. This was particularly sad because Katy (Winged Cat Machine) was set up diagonally across from me on the corner of the next island, which would have made it super easy for me to refer people to her if they had inquired about my amazing steampunk-modded Mokona plush.

I was not ready when “the gates opened” at ten. I don’t know how obvious it was, but I was an exploding bundle of nerves the first hour or so, scrambling around making sure everything was where it should be and fielding customers at the same time. Friday at A-kon was the most insane, crowded, and busiest Friday I have ever experienced.

It's Venusaur!

It felt like a Saturday. It blew my mind how busy it was. The entire upstairs Alley was flooded with swarms of attendees from the minute we opened at 10am to closing at 9pm when staff began ushering people out. There were some fantastic cosplayers milling around too, many of which I didn’t get a chance to grab photos of because I had so many people at my table. o_o I had more than one friend mention that they never got to stop by and say hello because every time they wandered over, I was being mobbed by others and they didn’t want to interrupt. Madness. I was sold out of one of my prints by mid-afternoon. On Friday! Friday!

I think I spent at least ten of the eleven hours we were open drawing commissions, including a crazy number of full-page pencil sketches. Normally, I get a ton of sketch card commissions because they are small and versatile (available in pencil, ink, or color), and maybe one or two of the full pages. People often ask if I can do full-page inks or full-page color, but those would take too long, and I’d rather do a ton of little things than one or two big things. It means people don’t have to wait as long and I get to draw a bigger variety of subjects, keeping things interesting. It was weird to do so many full-pages for once, even if they were all just pencil and still didn’t take that long. I ran out of paper an hour before closing. o_o

Of course, the commissions all came and went so quickly, I didn't get a picture of probably 75% of the stuff I drew over the weekend. Here's a full-page commission I did on Saturday though.

Every hour and half or so, an Alley volunteer would stop by to ask if I needed water or a break. They had been around to offer their help for set-up as well. I always bring my own water and only only took one break the entire day, but the volunteers coming around did a lot to quell my morning’s rage towards staff and procedure. There were only three or four different volunteers, but they came around frequently enough to make me think that A-kon had a good number of them, but apparently this wasn’t the case? It confused me that these volunteers seemed so available, but they were too short-staffed to maintain the AA check-in hours Thursday night or to have more than one person with the proper information to check-in artists earlier Friday morning.

Dalek and TARDIS

Eleven and Ten

There were a lot of Doctor Who cosplayers. Actually, I was extremely surprised at the number of non-anime cosplayers in general. I definitely saw more than one Robin, Batgirl, and Green Lantern — there were also about two dozen Jokers, a couple of Harleys, a hundred trolls, and I saw someone cosplaying Annie from Gunnerkrigg Court!! I’m very upset that I didn’t manage to get a picture because I’m pretty sure I won’t see that again any time soon. It was a post-living-in-the-forest Annie and she had leaves in her hair and it was a lovely costume in general… Now I want to find someone cosplaying a Lackadaisy cat. That would be amazing.

I also found a Zim! …And noticed that man, there sure are a lot of clothes with GIR on them. I feel like a good 5% of everyone I saw that weekend was wearing GIR in some form or fashion… that little robot dog is on fancy-print purses and wallets and a billion T-shirts, and I even saw a hoodie-backpack? I have no idea. It looked sophisticated and strange. You know, Invader Zim is a decade old now? How many of these kids running around in weird GIR hoodie-backpacks have even seen the show?? But maybe I can’t say anything because, in fact, the white sleeveless jacket I often wear at cons has GIR on it, hahahaha.

Zim is here to conquer your little art tables.

I also found some ponies, even though it took me about five minutes to figure out why they looked familiar, lol.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy!

Doing commissions nonstop all day was great, honestly. I had several people come back with friends after I finished their commissions, resulting in an endless cycle of awesome that was very exhausting. I snacked on SOYJOY bars leftover from Comicpalooza, but one especially amazing commissioner also brought me a taco from Taco Bell. ♥

And then suddenly it was nine o’clock and time to close up. Despite my hand being tired as hell, nine felt very early. Where did all the time go? As I packed up, I chatted a little with Jessica, who was tabling directly across from me, as well as JohnYume and her swarm of table helpers (?), who were a few tables down. Actually, one of them was probably Spizzy, since she, JohnYume, and Chrislea were splitting two tables three ways together, but I didn’t realize this at the time! It’s hard to match faces with forum handles. Besides, I have the face-memory of a blind person. This was made obvious as there were several attendees who said they had visited me at other conventions, but I would never remember who they were until they described our interactions. I don’t forget encounters, but faces? Yup. Who are you again? ;_;

Two commissioners and their badges.

I went downstairs after packing up to mill around the other Alley again. Of course, the whole place was jumping with activity, though there were quite a few tables that had already closed up shop for the night. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. When I registered for A-kon, I chose to be in the upstairs Alley on purpose. I like having set hours because I would undoubtedly be insane otherwise and stay up all night in the Alley because I could… my convention habits are unhealthy enough as is without forgoing sleep as well. And I like being able to leave things overnight knowing that attendees wouldn’t be able to mess with anything — I have so many little things, it is a huge pain to have to clear it every night and hide everything under the table, which still isn’t very secure. I also like being near the Dealer’s Room, and the upstairs Alley was right next to it.

But it’s hard to see how crowded and busy the downstairs Alley still was at 9:30 and 10pm and not be at least a little jealous. I did get a lot of mixed reviews about the two locations though. Most artists feel that having more hours to sell means more sales, but a handful would contend that having limited hours spur people to buy more when they can. Artists that make a lot of money in commissions tend to prefer longer hours as well, since it gives them more time to draw without having to disturb all of their hotelmates at odd hours. Artists that depend more on prints seem to be less picky about having longer hours… at the very least, a majority of the artists that had already vacated their tables downstairs seemed to be primarily print artists.

I dunno. It is hard for me to judge because the only two conventions I’ve been to with 24-hour, unsecured Alleys were EXPCon and Anime Matsuri, both of which were small enough that crowds thinned out considerably after a certain time. So even though there were technically no hours, a majority of the artists retired around the same time. But with an estimated attendance of over 18,000, there would definitely still be people wandering around at all hours of the night at A-kon. I heard later from artists that stayed up to 2-4am working on commissions (including Tracie and Chuck!) that there would still be random attendees around… mostly drunk, but drunk people still buy things sometimes?

Marik and Bakura (Yu-Gi-Oh!)

I went back to the hotel room pretty early; the tiredness catches up to you. On my way up, I outed myself as an A-kon newbie by being surprised that there was a line to access the elevators. I asked, “Is this a line… for the elevator?” The person coming up behind me laughed and said, “This is your first time here, isn’t it?” So apparently a line ten to fifteen people long is standard procedure for going up the elevators in the evenings. There are six elevators for the center tower, each of which has a maximum capacity of what, ten? Twelve? On one hand, I suppose it’s a good thing that they are careful about maximum capacities. On the other hand… wow. Just, wow.

Chrislea, as the only other person in our room with an upstairs AA table, was the only one there when I got back to the room. Just as I was about to head to bed though, one of the screws in my glasses pops out, loosening the frame enough that the right lens falls out. Awesome. The screw is tiny, and I have no idea how I didn’t lose it immediately, but I definitely didn’t have a screwdriver small enough to put it back in place. Somehow though, with Chrislea’s help, a nail clipper, and some other random tools, we manage to put it back together… it was obviously not perfect though. The corresponding screw on the other side of the glasses was much tighter. What if the screw popped again on Saturday? Or Sunday? While I was driving?

SATURDAY

But I actually manage to sleep Friday night. Even with the semi-broken glasses, I was feeling a lot better about the weekend because the check-in stuff was done and over with, my table was set up, and hey, I had made more on Friday than I had over some entire weekends. o_o A-kon had been amazing thus far, and I was very eager for Saturday.

Inked sketch card commission of the Tenth Doctor and Jack.

The upstairs Alley was open again at 9am. It was once again crowded the whole day through, and I was once again drawing commissions for pretty much the entire time I was there. The volume of commissions I received on Saturday was so incredible that I actually had to close them intermittently to make sure I didn’t build up too much of a backlog. My normal turnaround for sketch card commissions is like, five minutes for pencils, ten minutes for inks, and maybe twenty minutes for color, though I think I’m actually a little faster and give slightly inflated times just to be safe (and also because it is reaaaally hard to tell time while working the table). A lot of times, I’ll finish commissions while the commissioner is still hanging out at the table looking at other stuff, and so I don’t really build up a queue.

But A-kon… A-kon was crazy. At some point, I had a backlog of seven or eight commissions, including some full-page pencils. Again, it actually doesn’t take me that long to work through them, but since I’ve never had this many commissions to do before, I didn’t have the best system of keeping track of them all. I kind of just jotted down messy notes on my inventory sheets and kept the order of things in my head. When I got to the point where I didn’t think I could remember the order anymore, I closed commissions until I cleared the queue… though a lot of times, I took on more even when I was technically closed because there were people that could leave references and reassured me that they were in no hurry. (Man, do I hate making people wait.) The only ones that I had to turn down outright when I was queued up were those that wanted me to draw them because that meant they had to hang around while I drew them, which meant I had to set aside the queue to work on them.

Badge commission of Green Arrow for a cosplayer of the same character!

I think the next time I’m at a con with an 18k+ attendance, I’ll need to set up a proper system of managing queued commissions so I can queue up more and give better estimates of turnaround times. I don’t think I’d have a problem drawing it all, it’s just remembering what needs to get drawn, in what order, and if certain commissioners are leaving at a certain time, making sure their stuff is finished first. Honestly though, this was a pretty awesome problem to have. It certainly beats being bored at the table because no one’s around!

Sometime in the early afternoon, my glasses exploded again. By sheer, insane luck, the screw landed on my shirt and I didn’t lose it! If it had fallen on the floor behind my table… it would have been lost forever. But being momentarily blind when I had a billion commissions to do sent me into a small panic. One of the AA volunteers came around though (perfect timing, dude!), and I asked if he could go find me a tiny, tiny screwdriver. He went off and I tried to fix the thing again with a nail clipper and the pinback on one of my buttons. It didn’t work that well. But by amazing luck, the screwdriver that the AA volunteer managed to retrieve was small enough to be useful. It still wasn’t quiiiite small enough for the screw, but it was good enough! So relieved. And yet, so scared that it was going to happen again.

But other than that! There really isn’t much else to report about Saturday because seriously… I spent eleven hours drawing and that’s about it. o_o

I made an exception to my "pencil only" rule for full-page commissions because it was such a nice sketchbook and the gentleman was totally open to me drawing whatever and charging whatever, lol.

Here’s some more cosplay though! For anime-related cosplay, it was a lot of business as usual — there were a ton of Pokemon gijinka, but I didn’t see nearly as many trainers? Oh, wait, except these ladies:

Being monstrously slow, I haven't beaten either of these gym leaders yet and don't know their names. WHOOPS. I'm a terrible Pokemaniac. ;_;

I was glad to see lots of Black/White love, even if it made me feel terrible for not having finished the game yet… Seriously, guys, I haven’t even beaten the third gym yet. It’s pathetic. ;_;

Here be dragons!

There were a few dozen Panty and Stockings, hahaha. Not enough Briefs! Not enough Scanty and Kneesocks! But I did find a Garterbelt:

Garterbelt and his collection of Heaven Coins.

There were also a lot of Durarara!! cosplayers, and upon seeing my Celty bookmarks/buttons, a dozen people remarked that they’d seen one or three such cosplayers wandering around but didn’t know what she was from. …This meant that I got to say the name of the series many times and sound like an idiot each and every time! :D But the best Durarara!! cosplayer was not a Celty, but the following Shizuo, because while I have seen many Shizuo cosplayers brandishing signposts as props, this is the first that was awesome enough to carry a damn vending machine with him everywhere:

ARGHHHHHH!!

The upstairs Alley closed at 8pm Saturday night. I have no idea why we closed an hour earlier than Friday since Saturday is usually the “main” day of the convention. More than a few people were annoyed by this for sure. When we closed up, the downstairs Alley was as busy as ever and with the rave going on into the night, I imagine that it stayed that way for a while. I went through the Alley to make a few purchases and say hello to my hotelmates and various others — a lot more people were still at their tables this time around. Busy, busy, Saturday night.

I hadn’t really planned on it, but since it was so damn early and I had nothing else to do, I decided to check out the Furry Fiesta room party that one of my commissioners (the lion sketch above was for him) invited me to. I’ve never gone to a room party ever, lol, but I would have gone to Furry Fiesta if I had known about it in time (it was a February con), and figured I could learn more about the convention? And also get free snacks! Free snacks are very appealing when all you’ve had are SOYJOYs all day (not that SOYJOYs are bad!).

Furry Fiesta room party

The room party was in a suite divided thus: a bunch folks doodling and playing a Mario game I didn’t recognize in one room, and a bunch of folks doodling and watching random episodes of Tiger & Bunny (a decidedly not-furry “superhero” anime, lol) in the other room! It was kind of awkward not knowing anyone there, but whatever! I camped out for a little by the food and chatted with two or three people before settling down to watch two episodes of Tiger & Bunny, which I had been meaning to pick up anyway. I ended up not talking to anyone about the actual con and left around 11pm or something, but it was still a nice way to relax a little after drawing all day.

SUNDAY

Sunday morning was wonderfully lazy. The upstairs Alley wasn’t to open until ten, but I was awake at 7:30 or 8am? Maybe it was even 8:30?? It felt ridiculously late to be honest, but I was the first person up, and everyone kind of rose lazily after I did. We all took our time getting our things together, but really, the bulk of my luggage was my table stuff — I had very little up in the room. Chrislea recounted fun (and kind of disturbing) stories from other conventions. Missy and I reminisced a little about SCAD. Can I take this time to mention how awesome my hotelmates were in general though? It was always quiet in the room, everyone was very mindful of when someone was sleeping; the room was clean, no one snored, and everyone was just lovely to each other. It was so nice. ♥

I gave my room key to Tracie and went down to the Alley a little past nine, leaving behind the entertaining conversations. I wandered the upstairs Alley for what felt like the first time because well, it’s hard to browse tables that have the same working hours as you! (This goes double for the Dealer’s Room, which opened later than the AA and closed earlier — of course, this is the way we prefer it since it drives people into the Alley before and after DR hours, but it still means that I never get to go to the DR!) I made a few purchases and talked shop with Pawstar, the awesome folks to my left — I seem to have made many friends in the fleece hat-making business, lol.

Colored sketch card commission of Itachi and Pein.

Sunday was (surprise!) another day full of commissions. And on Sunday, everyone wanted two characters on each sketch card! And in color! I probably leveled up in speed coloring. Someone also got me to draw a trombone! Having been a woodwind player (clarinet), I have a built-in and superficial bias against brass instruments, but the pressure was double because the commission was to be a gift for the commissioner’s trombone-playing father, aw, man. Cons are full of challenges.

I pretty much fudged it.

I have no idea where most of Sunday went. Friday and Saturday were busy and went by quickly, but Sunday, it was like… I blinked and suddenly it’s 4pm and we’re being told that we had previously been misinformed — Artist Alley didn’t close at 6pm, we had to be packed up and our tables moved out by 6pm. Ummm.

This made things pretty disorganized and weird because artists would leave at different times and staff would come and take away their tables and chairs, leaving gaps in islands and the whole place looking a mess. Once a good percentage of artists were gone, less attendees would wander through because it looked like we were closing, though I guess the attendees were also signing out of the con themselves.

At some point, Emily (IceAndSnow) came and totally made my day by asking to trade Archen prints with me (hers, mine). Her paintings are so gorgeous… ;_; She had a number of original watercolor and acrylic paintings with her at her table, but I didn’t get around to asking about them. I also traded buttons with Jessica and the two guys tabling to my right, Slimu and Fenryk. This brought the total number of buttons I obtained over the weekend to 39. I really need to figure out what I’m going to do with all these buttons! Someone buy me a new hat, omg.

Clean-up time!

I finally started breaking down around 5:15pm or so because the Alley was more than two-thirds empty already and Chuck, Erika, and Meagan were finally breaking down as well. The room was apparently connected to the Sheraton’s parking garage and had a small loading area, so after dismantling my set-up, I went to find the car. We loaded everything up without a hitch, said our goodbyes to our friends, and were back on the road a little after six.

PS — my glasses did not explode again while I was driving, thankfully. They exploded and I finally lost the screw about three hours after I got home.

OVERALL

A-kon was awesome. I am still hoping to move out of the state soon, but I will come back for A-kon, and it would be worth it. Things weren’t perfect, and I think all of my anxiety from Thursday and Friday morning made up for how relatively relaxing my last couple of convention Thursdays were, but I think this was as close to an ideal convention as I will ever get. A-kon has been around a long time, and I think that experience really shows.

Some miscellaneous thoughts:

• Both the upstairs and downstairs Artist Alleys are in pretty ideal locations. The former was next to the Dealer’s Room, and the latter was right next to registration and the main ballroom. There is one “doom island” downstairs across from the bathrooms, but I wonder if they could move that island upstairs and move some of the Exhibits people downstairs? The far wall of the upstairs Alley was also occupied by folks that should have been dealers and moving them out would possibly make room for another island upstairs without moving Exhibits… but as I understand it, the waiting list for the Dealer’s Room is five or six years long. o_o I wonder if moving into a larger hotel is in A-kon’s future? The Sheraton was pretty swanky, but yeah.
• There could have been longer hours for the upstairs AA. I think we could have and should have been open 9am to 10pm every day, honestly, or at least 9am to 9pm. With normal registration open at all hours and staff required to watch the entrance of the secured area all day anyway, I don’t really see what difference it would have made. Perhaps less volunteers would be available for the fringe hours, but I don’t feel artists need that much assistance in general — I appreciate that they’re there to watch my table if needed, but I’m still not going to leave any more than I need to. For Saturday especially, 8pm was way too early to close.

Really though, I have few complaints. A-kon was great. The staff and volunteers were great. The hotel people were great. Most of the inconveniences on Thursday and Friday were no one’s fault and I can plan for them better next time. I will leave you now with a picture of my loot and a photo gallery. Thanks for reading through the lengthy recounts of my adventures!

A-kon loot

For having a super long guest list comprised almost entirely of people I’ve never heard of, Comicpalooza didn’t actually feel all that different from an anime convention to me. There were many more comic-, sci-fi-, and game-related cosplayers, and the crowd skewed older, but I didn’t feel nearly as out of place as I did at STAPLE! Things were pretty run-of-the-mill, really — maybe this is because Comicpalooza is officially a cross-genre convention encompassing comics, sci-fi, and pop culture, and included anime-related programming for the first time in 2011?

This is kind of an irrelevant photo of Captain Jack Sparrow being confused by my (fake) lemon.

Traffic throughout the weekend left a bit to be desired though, with a majority of artists reporting lower-than-average sales. The layout of Artist Alley probably had a lot to do with it, and post-con murmurs have further pointed out that Dallas Comic Con being the weekend prior probably didn’t help either. I also agree with the crowd that says downtown Houston probably isn’t the best place for a convention in general…

Today, my essay-length con report-writing skills clock in at 3835 words. I hope I’ve included enough pictures to break up the monotony!

FRIDAY

Being in downtown Houston has many great disadvantages, the first of which is parking. The entire downtown center is basically comprised of hotels, stadiums, big corporate businesses, and commercial parking lots. Since the George R. Brown Convention Center doesn’t have a dedicated lot, there was no discount for parking in a specific place — even the Hilton, which could be considered the “con hotel” as it’s attached to the GRB via skybridge, provided no discount from its standard $18/day rate for parking in their garage. I opted not to set up Thursday evening because I didn’t want to pay for an extra day’s parking.

Arriving downtown around 9am Friday morning, parking ended up not being as nightmarish as I’d feared — we found $7/day parking in a relatively empty lot right across the street from the convention center. Since my Artist Alley table came with two badges, my brother, Eric, was joining me for the weekend. Hurray for not having to cart all of my gear in one trip from the car to the alley by myself!

Comicpalooza had fancy booths for on-site registration.

It was pretty quiet when we got upstairs. There was a small crowd at what was presumably the pre-registration badge pick-up table. We waited around there for a bit while staffers rummaged through badges/printed lists looking for my name, but eventually, it was clarified that Artist Alley badge pick-up was, in fact, in the Artist Alley. Pah! There were some security dudes at the entrance to the two main ballrooms. They asked us for badges. I found this weird, seeing as badge pick-up was in the Alley? They let us pass when we explained. We walked through an area where they were apparently setting up for wrestling and Quidditch to get to the Alley, where it wasn’t immediately obvious where we were supposed to sign in.

Asking around got us directed to the Dealer’s Room for badge pick-up. Dealer’s Room separated from the rest of the ballroom by a ring of temporary walls, but it still wasn’t obvious where we were supposed to be. Guess where AA/DR badge pick-up was? At the loading dock behind the DR. I was kind of annoyed at how roundabout and counter-intuitive this was. Most dealers needed to go through the loading dock — yes, fine, this makes sense — but most artists don’t. There were one guy handling badges for dealers and one guy handling badges for artists, so I’m not sure why they couldn’t move the AA guy to the front of AA. This would be a more minor complaint if we hadn’t had to drag around my annoyingly cumbersome luggage while looking for badge pick-up, but we did, and if I hadn’t had my brother with me this time to share the load, I would have been even more peeved.

I also still wish more conventions would give us the dang con programs/schedules with our badges — just because artists and dealers are going to be manning their tables/booths all weekend doesn’t mean we don’t want to know what’s going on elsewhere! On the plus side, Comicpalooza did provide lanyards — color-coded ones, even? All the artists had aqua blue ones!

This is my table. I don't sell lemonade.

Also on the plus side: the tables at Comicpalooza were eight feet long instead of the more-standard six feet. So much room! I didn’t have to lay my two binders on top of each other! I had room to hang my new posters and to utilize all the nifty plastic book stands I bought off the local Borders that was closing! Such luxury!

I ordered a new “Fake Lemonade Stand” banner that’s about half a foot shorter than this old one, which will allow me to put the second horizontal bar up higher and give me more hanging space. It also has a new URL on it — fakelemonade.com — but I haven’t had a chance to set up that website yet. I’m intending to set up a storefront there and maybe move my comics over, I’m not totally sure how the organization is going to work since I’m not really planning to abandon deadend-detour.com. I don’t think I’ll be able to sort it out before A-kon in two weeks, but I may use the new banner there anyway just for space-saving reasons…? We’ll see, I guess.

In the time between setting up and the doors opening to the public, I wandered through the Alley a little to say hello to Katy/MetalEgo (my delightful neighbor at AggieCon), Chuck, random people I recognized from the A-kon AA forums, and Jason of Robbie and Bobby, who started following me on Twitter one day. It was nice having my brother around to help me set up and to watch the table while I wandered, but there’s really no one that can sell my stuff but me (except maybe Cat? I miss tabling with her for this reason, lol…), so I returned to the table as soon as people started coming in and let Eric go off to check out con events.

Some of the artists in my immediate vicinity!

But Friday was slow, even for a Friday. I spent a lot of time drawing random commission examples and sketching the people tabling around me because traffic was so pathetic. Jason and his table buddy, Austin, were just across the ways, with the Land of the Rats guy to their left and Robert James Leudke to their right… I was actually really, really awful about getting around to scoping out everyone’s tables and got most of their names from their various banners, signs, and displays, hahahaha. :x The unfinished sketch was of Phil Hester, I think, but there was enough distance between him and I that my view was blocked most of the time, even in low traffic. So much for creeper sketching!

The Alley was laid out so attendees wandered through a snaking path — this looked great on paper, but the winding made it easy for people to skip tables when they rounded corners. With one entrance and one exit, it was hard for people to make multiple passes through the Alley, even with plenty of room for two-way traffic. The concession stands and bathrooms being situated at the end of the Alley also meant lots of people dashed past all the tables to get to the food. There were also wayyyyy too many artist tables and a lot of no-shows. Empty tables made the place look more deserted, which possibly dissuaded people from going through at all.

There was also supposed to be laser tag or something in between the Artist Alley and the Dealer’s Room, which might have forced people to go through AA to get to the DR, but the space mapped out for laser tag was pretty much empty all weekend, so people had a lot more options as far as getting from point A (the entrance to the ballroom) to point B (the Dealer’s Room).

Commission example that later sold. Yes, I know I forgot her wrist braces!

I hadn’t been able to find attendance numbers for Comicpalooza prior to the con. Someone (Katy?) told me that they were expecting upwards of 17,000 attendees this year? The number of guests they had might suggest a number like this, but you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that this was hardly the case. I have no idea where that number came from — apparently, 2010′s numbers were around 3,000. But I’ve been to smaller cons with busier Fridays.

Another disadvantage of a convention being hosted in downtown Houston? The city basically shuts down when the businessfolk go home for the day. There are no restaurants within walking distance of the GRB. This, combined with expensive parking, meant that attendees who left to go find dinner rarely came back. It didn’t help that even the over-priced convention concessions packed up shortly after 5pm — I really don’t understand why they did, but only food vendors on contract with the GRB were allowed to vend, as far as I know, so this probably limited options.

I also forgot my camera on Friday, so despite many awesome cosplayers wandering around, I have depressingly few photos of them. (The photos thus far are actually from Saturday, shh.) Friday was so dead after dinnertime that I packed up a little after sunset at 8pm, which felt ridiculously early. What can ya do but hope for a busy Saturday though?

SATURDAY

For some reason, I thought that the Dealer’s Room and Artist Alley opened again at noon on Saturday. I should have known better because my brother was going to the con’s Magic tournament around 10:30am or something, and why would there be big con events going on before the DR was even open? But because of my misreading of the schedule, we got to the convention center right at 10am… which was apparently when the DR/AA actually opened. I panicked slightly when I realized there were already attendees milling around when I got to the Alley, but I think I managed to set up again quickly enough…

Saturday was indeed much busier than Friday, and I basically spent the entire day doing commissions. It’s been a while since my wrist has burned this way, but hey, I’m not complaining. A couple of people kept coming back for more too! It was really flattering, and I really enjoyed working on all of them. Here are a few of the lot!

Colored commission of Colossus, Kitty, and Nightcrawler. (Thanks, Stephanie, for texting me references, lol.)

Colored commission of Matt Smith as the Doctor & the TARDIS (I didn't have a ref for the TARDIS!)

A pair of friends and their chibi portraits.

Colored commission of someone's OC!

Along with the endless stream of commissions, Saturday had various other highlights. One of which was (the voice of) Professor Utonium (Tom Kane) making announcements intermittently over the loudspeaker. I don’t remember what any of those announcements were, but there is just something really, really awesome when such a familiar and amiable voice is talking to you over the loudspeaker, lol.

Another highlight: seeing university Quidditch players wander around in uniform and often with their broomsticks. I should have snapped some photos since I couldn’t attend any of the actual games, but I did get to live vicariously through my brother’s retelling of Friday’s match between Texas Tech and SHSU (apparently SHSU got slaughtered). It was also hilarious to me that the con schedule blocked out a whole two hours for the Quidditch matches, but most of them seemed to last 30 minutes or less. Variable game times due to evasion skills of Snitches! Hahahaha!

Another highlight: I was surprised by the number of people that expressed interest in and bought my two new posters — the My Little Ponies/Panty and Stocking mashup because I wasn’t expecting a lot of people to know what Panty and Stocking was, and the other one because it’s kind of random/weird? There were a lot of hilarious comments on the MLP parody from little kids though: “Teehee, that pony has underwear as its cutie mark!” “What’s anarchy?”

Comicpalooza was brought to you by SOYJOY.

Another fun highlight? Comicpalooza was sponsored by this company named SOYJOY, maker of gluten-free, fruity soy bars. They had some big booths set up by registration and were handing out a bunch of bags/shirts branded with the SOYJOY name along with a metric ton of free bars. A guy came through the Alley at least twice every day handing out two to four bars of SOYJOY goodness to every artist that wanted one. As someone that rarely packs food for the day and rarely leaves to find sustenance, SOYJOY basically kept me fed all weekend. o_o And I never felt hungry! The different flavors of bars had varying degrees of tastiness and a lot of attendees didn’t seem to like them, but maaaaan, I think they’re awesome just for being edible and relatively filling! Eventually, I think on Sunday, the SOYJOY guy just handed me a whole bag full of them. I will be saving them for A-kon, lol. :D Maybe they’ll even last me to Anime Overload in July?

Josh, a friend of Stephanie’s, and a brief co-worker last year, stopped by a few times that afternoon. He draws some pretty sweet comics himself, and I hope we convinced him to get his own table next year. :P Stephanie and her brother showed up around 2pm and also stopped by a few times throughout the afternoon, donating me their SOYJOY bars, which they apparently enjoyed way less than I!

Colored commission of Glaceon and Haunter gijinka!

The commissions slowed as the afternoon waned into evening, and in spite of all the afternoon’s excitement, I was moving a lot less physical merchandise than usual. Chuck reported a similar phenomenon, so it wasn’t just me. I didn’t get to visit the Dealer’s Room all weekend, so I’m not sure how the situation was for them, but neither of my neighbors seemed to be doing very well either. If a lot of the same crowd also went to Dallas Comic Con the weekend before (which apparently boasted ~100,000 attendees this year?? Hot damn, but Wikipedia’s missing a citation for that figure…), then it would make sense that spending would be down — they bought prints and commissions last week, probably from a lot of the same guest artists, so certainly they’d be more conservative this week. It’s a much smaller show. Perhaps attendees were underwhelmed?

Dallas Comic Con. Comicpalooza is basically like a Houston Comic Con, right? San Antonio Comic Con in June. Austin Comic Con in November. That’s basically every major city in the state, with a majority of them clustered together in May/June. I haven’t been in the con circuit here long, but I’m guessing this is new because Comicpalooza and San Antonio Comic Con are both relatively new… it’ll probably be in their best interests to move to other months in subsequent years. January, August, and December are the empty months for conventions in my experience, though January and December are probably sparse for a good reason.

The amiable Fleishman twins with their purchases!

Sometime around 8pm, these two awesome guys stopped by to rummage through my folder of old, random things I just wanna get rid of, and both really took to the original lineart for some promo art I did for MomoCon a year ago. They each got the miniprint of the colored version and had me sign ridiculously huge on all of them, along with their programs. The two of them were really animated and fun to talk to, and one of them came back Sunday morning with a burned CD of all the photos they’d taken Saturday to share. :o They had a big bag of them, so I think they handed a CD to basically every artist in the alley — really sweet of them since it let me see a bunch of cosplayers and other stuff that never passed by!

Things really died down as night fell, and I got up a lot to half-wander while keeping my table in sight since my brother was off watching movies they were screening as part of the film festival. I watched a few people play CON!, a pretty hilarious card came being peddled by Glen of Azarkarde Productions, a table diagonally across from me. Anything that plays off stereotypical con-goers is hilarious when done right, and CON! was pretty great at it. I chatted with Glen a little later about sales and traffic; it was more of the same. I hope he does better at A-kon (just over a week from now, ahh!).

And then I wandered over to see Chuck and Katy again, and Katy presented me with:

Her name is Nomako. Endless thanks to Katy for modding her for me. <3

Recap! At AggieCon, the dealer guy next to me gave me a Mokona plush for free because its jewel had fallen off somewhere and he couldn’t sell her that way. Damaged goods! I asked Katy if she would mod her for me with steampunky goodness and then let her take her home. And here is the fabulous result! I am still hoping to procure a gold or brown bowtie for her (because bowties are cool), but yeah. :3

And I spent way too much time coming up with her name. Nomako is an anagram of Mokona, obviously enough. “Noma” is for “nomad,” which is pretty much what she’s gonna be: my conbuddy~! Joining me for shows everywhere! And then your standard Japanese “-ko” suffix for girl names. Yup. In return for Nomako’s mods, Katy asked me to just draw her some of my original characters. Such a generous request… ;_;

Best costume ever.

I packed up a little past 10pm Saturday night? This life-sized, fully-functional-minus-the-lasers Dalek waved us off. Why can’t day-to-day life have things as awesome as this?

SUNDAY

Managed to remember AA/DR hours for Sunday and arrived pretty early around 9am. This gave me a good amount of time to actually wander the Alley, though it seems like every time I wander, a majority of everyone else isn’t set up yet! A picked up a few new buttons here and there, though I still haven’t gotten a new hat to put them on, and also commissioned Jamie Kinosian for an ACEO of an OC.

Shortly after I sat down at my table again, a bald fellow from the Comicpalooza staff came by to ask Jonathan, the neighbor to [my] left, and I how sales had been this weekend. My response was pretty mild — in spite of a pretty dead Friday and a Saturday wholly dependent on commissions, I was doing pretty okay. Jonathan had been doing a lot worse though, and launched into a pretty in-depth discussion with the staff person about points of failure as far as Artist Alley layout, design, promotion, and other factors. The staff guy acknowledged that there were many flaws in the layout and mistakes made on his part, repeating many times that he knew that “sorry” wasn’t good enough.

It was clear that he felt terrible about the whole ordeal, and I think Jonathan and I both kinda felt bad that the guy felt the need to take responsibility for everything. I mean, hey, Comicpalooza is new; these things happen. Poor sales or not, it’s pretty hard to vehemently blame the con for things that oftentimes can’t be helped — like the fact that the laser tag thing didn’t work out and left a gaping hole in the layout of the room, diverting attention away from the Alley. With the willingness of the staff to be receptive to our concerns and suggestions to improve, I feel reasonably confident that the situation for Comicpalooza 2012 will be much better.

Pro commissioner family!

Sunday morning was pretty similar to Saturday morning with a good handful of commissions coming in. One family in particular — I think they commissioned me at least once on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They were the best! ♥♥♥ The father had a huge piece of Bristol that had been divided into a few dozen little squares that he had gotten a ton of artists to draw in. It was clear that these were pro commissioners, possibly with art by hundreds of different artists at home, hahaha. It was an honor to draw for them, really.

Things slowed a ton around lunchtime though. A lot of attendees were taking off for good to travel back to wherever they came from. The afternoon dragged like on like Friday and I don’t think anything else really exciting happened…? Sean Maher — that guy that played Simon Tam in Firefly – wandered pretty close to my table at some point, but never stopped to look. :c  Also, someone came by with a box of free Justice League and Green Lantern comics, but that’s just dealers gettin’ rid of promo stuff I guess. My brother participated in a “Name That (Anime) Tune” contest with a randomly selected team and won first place, nabbing a boxset of Azumanga Diaoh and the first volume of Needless (lol). Wish I could have played, but it’s the second best thing to have someone tell you about such adventures, I suppose.

Dealer’s Room shut down at 6pm, and while the announcer was kind of vague about Artist Alley, I think the schedule had us closing at 6pm as well, and by that point, there was no one around anymore anyway.

Free comics, bizcards, buttons, a billion SOYJOYs, and Nomako!

Comicpalooza was a fun show. Met some cool people, drew some cool pictures. I did juuuust below average for numbers, but it wasn’t too bad. I feel like the programming offered to attendees was pretty good — there was a lot of stuff going on and it effectively covered all advertised genres and niches, so I think it was successful as a multi-genre convention. My brother played in the Magic tournament, watched a lot of indie horror films, and went to some anime-related panels and games — that’s a pretty well-rounded offering, yeah?

I think the convention is still growing into the space offered by the venue, and the organization for many things can be improved on (more signage, more open Artist Alley, etc), but for a show that’s essentially in it’s second year, I think they did a pretty fine job. Many artists likely came out of the weekend a little wary because of sales figures, but I wouldn’t shy away from attending again in the future.

Next week, I’ll be in Dallas for the oldest anime convention in the States. :o In the meantime, here’s a picture gallery.