After AO spoiled me with an unexpected eight foot long table, I found myself having a hard time adjusting back to a six foot space though the table was also wider than usual by six inches or so. Catherine was supposed to be joining me for the con but bailed two days prior. :\ It was probably just as well though, as I couldn’t really see the two of us squeezing our collective merchandise onto the table when I was having trouble fitting everything alone. And hey, as my third con going solo, I’ve gotten considerably better at stringing my banner up straight, lol.

FRIDAY

Since the posted Artist Alley hours did not start until 3pm, I left for the con until half past noon. I might have left later, but I was counting on my mish-mash of Google Maps and GPS directions to send me astray for at least a little while. This wasn’t really the case though, and I was parked on the University of Houston’s campus a little after one. Unfortunately, the parking lot was a two block walk from the con building. This wouldn’t have been as big of an issue if 1) it wasn’t a hundred degrees out, 2) I didn’t have to haul all my stuff alone. It pretty much sucked and I was sweating my ass off by the time I got to the building, but I am so incredibly glad I decided last minute to transfer all of my con stuff from my usual duffle bag to a rolling suitcase. (I usually opt for the former because driving with large groups in small cars = space is an issue = duffles are more malleable.)

There were some sorority girls on the first floor of the building talking to freshmen there for orientation (or something). The first indication of “trouble” was the fact that these girls had no idea what I was talking about when I asked them where the convention was. I was eventually pointed to the second floor, where a majority of staff seemed to be hanging out in a concession stand selling both concessions and badges. I picked up my artist badge and was pointed in the further direction of the Artist Alley… which was in a large ballroom-type area with a stage. Hmm.

Second sign of “trouble”: the Artist Alley had a grand total of seven artists, only half of whom were already there when I arrived. David Weaver of Bleak World Productions, who had been one table down from me at Anime Overload, was among them, so I plopped my stuff down at the table next to him and started setting up. As I did so, Kawaii Ribbons, the ribbon/lolita accessory people also at AO, claimed the table on the other side of me. We had a few laughs about how the three of us ended up next to each other. On the other side of David was a collective of friends called Star Hoshi Hoshi who were selling mostly fleece hats and small plush, then James Moreno (no website), who had very fine artsy canvas drawings of tiny, tiny, tiny shapes, and a print artist I don’t recall the name of because I don’t think she had a business card. The seventh table, on the other side of Kawaii Ribbons, was not occupied until late in the afternoon.

Now, I’ve been in some pretty small Artist Alleys. The AAs at Kami-Con, Nashi-Con, EXPCon, and Anime Overload probably didn’t have more than fifteen artists… but seven seemed an incredibly sad number, especially when we were arranged in one lonely row against one side of this ballroom, and there was nothing else in the ballroom. This makes me wonder if anyone else actually applied because certainly there was space for more. But oh ho, it gets better. Even more sad than the fact that there were only seven artists? There were only three dealers. I have never been to a convention where there were more artists than dealers, where the Dealer’s Room was smaller than the AA. And none of the dealers were selling anime/manga goods primarily! One was selling kimonos. One was selling spiritual jewelry of semiprecious stones. And one was selling faux fox/wolf tails along with a handful of miscellaneous anime keychains. That was it. That was the Dealer’s Room. And I felt bad for them because they were in a tiny room that was harder to find than ours (the ballroom/AA was right next to the registration concession stand).

3pm came and went. A small trickle of people came and wandered and left and came back and wandered some more. It was painfully obvious that there were very few people milling around because the same people kept coming back, usually looking bored. This did give us more of a chance to try and engage people in conversation and to get them to look at our stuff. Star Hoshi Hoshi seemed to be doing remarkably well, and David had one customer buy one of almost everything he had to offer. o_O For me, Friday sales were about on par with Friday sales and I got a small handful of commissions. Not terrible, but not the best. Everyone in the Alley was fervently hoping that Saturday would net a bigger turnout.

A very sweet woman came by a few times and eventually commissioned a badge of AdventChildren!Cloud for her son, who was cosplaying as such. I basically just used him as a reference, so it’s probably not 100% accurate, even if he had a pretty awesome costume.

There weren’t any other events that look place in our ballroom on Friday, though there was a laptop set up to play music near the stage. This was a minor source of annoyance throughout the day as the volume did not seem able to stay constant. It would get loud for a song, soft for another song, and so on, at the whim of the person manning the computer. Some songs would also cut off midway. It was still a welcomed change from the ever-loud techno of the previous weekend though, and Thomas, the staff member that owned the laptop, had a good collection of Gundam music to entertain me during the long hours.

Sophie (Rubybaga) from Star Hoshi Hoshi stopped by my table at some point and recognize me as a SCAD alumni from the copies of Rainbows and Rainclouds I had for sale. Apparently, she had just been to SCAD for one of their one-week summer programs and, while there, had picked up the Sequential departmental sampler, to which I had contributed a short comic featuring the same protagonist (Greater than DOG). It was a weird coincidence, and I ended up talking to her a bit about the school and the programs there (she was interested in Animation).

The seventh artist shuffled in eventually, and she was a shy Japanese girl selling mostly commissions. Her English was not as good as I’m used to, and she scrambled for her electronic Japanese-English dictionary once or twice when I spoke to her, but it was clear that she was working really hard! x3

As disappointing as Friday was, at least there were still Pokemon gijinka to be found! Though to be honest, I forgot to ask if she was Togetic or Togekiss, lol.

The Artist Alley was not supposed to close until the con itself closed for the night at midnight… But all of the artists, including myself, pretty much decided that Friday was sucking hardcore and packed up around nine. This was definitely the first time I’ve seen something like that happen. We effectively shut down the AA three hours early because none of us believed it was worth it to stay. And it probably wasn’t. There was no one around at all.

SATURDAY

The hours for Saturday were 10am to midnight. I got there a little past nine after stopping by Kinko’s to pick up some reprints of my Pokemon poster, which I had sold out of at AO. David and Star Hoshi Hoshi were the only people already there when I got there, I think. We set up at a very leisurely pace. The official opening time meant nothing. People started trickling in one at a time from eleven and onward. It did not feel very different from Friday…

While we waited for life to come to the con, Sam (BlackPosies) from Star Hoshi Hoshi commissioned me for a badge of herself. It is always fun being commissioned by other artists. XD Actually, she also commissioned me the night before for a sketch page of one of her favorite Korean boy bands, but I wasn’t able to finish it before all the artists bailed for the night so I finished it, along with another page of another K-pop group, that morning. It blows my mind that some of these groups apparently have like a dozen freakin’ members. o_O Thankfully, we had Internet access in the room and one of the Star Hoshi Hoshi crew had a laptop so I could look up references.

Things picked up in the early afternoon, and there seemed to actually be things going on at other parts of the convention, whereas Friday the whole floor seemed dead. There was lots of loud yelling coming from a room adjacent to ours and there were intermittent announcements of a panel being hosted by the con’s sole guest, Robert Axelrod, who had also been at Kami-Con. In fact, Mr. Axelrod wandered through the AA a few times to look at our wares (he was nice, but he seemed kind of bored…). Additionally, it would seem that cosplay chess was set to take place in the ballroom, giving the seven of us in AA front row seats to the whole affair. All the same, Saturday at its most crowded was not very crowded at all.

Considering the demonstrated size of the convention (tiny!), I was somewhat surprised they actually got enough cosplayers to fill the chess board, though honestly, the moderator was pretty desperate and annoying on that microphone, continuously calling out for participants. I kind of suspect that, after a while, people just joined so he would shut up.

I don’t think Nabeshin participated in chess, sadly. The chess game was not terribly entertaining, especially since it seemed to take so long for the staff members to get organized. The participants seemed mostly bored and some wandered around a little when they weren’t being active. The plus side of all of the nonsense was obviously that the event, however sad it was, attracted more people to the room, and if they were bored with chess, they could come look at the Artist Alley. ;D I snagged a few commissions during this time, including one by the shy Japanese girl, Renka, who provided me with this lovely reference, which she let me keep afterwards:

I drew her a conbadge:

On Friday, an Aerith cosplayer commissioned chibis of herself (in cosplay) with Riku from Kingdom Hearts. On Saturday, she returned for two more chibi pairs:

An OC and Riku.

And herself (as Aerith) with her friend (as Kadaj) getting married, lol.

One of the girls from Kawaii Ribbons (I’m sorry I forgot your name!) also commissioned chibis of herself and her husband. That is the dress she was actually wearing! It was super cute and I was happy for the excuse to draw it, haha. (She told me to fudge the shoes, but I don’t blame her for wearing flip-flops considering the ridiculous Texas heat.)

Renka, the Japanese artist, stopped by my table a few times to comment on my two pages of Touhou ACEOs, which she really seemed to like even though she didn’t seem terribly familiar with the characters and repeatedly mistook Rumia for Marisa. :o She ended up borrowing my Marisa card for a while to use as a reference for a commission she was doing for Sophie, lol. Hurray for artists commissioning other artists and helping other artists out. XD

Cosplay chess was followed by a cosplay contest, and you could definitely tell the staff is desperate for participants when they say things like, “Enter if you have a store-bought costume! Enter even if you’re not in a costume!” Nevertheless, I think they managed to effectively gather every single cosplayer at the con into a line and marched them tediously through towards the judges. During both cosplay chess and this contest, I felt like a majority of the con-goers at Delta H Con were in the ballroom. Which was very sad. Because it never felt full. Or even crowded. Or even slightly crowded. But it was still infinitely better than Friday.

After the unremarkable end of the cosplay contest, there were a few impromptu karaokes on the stage, then our entertainment for the evening arrived: bellydancers. I had seen bellydancers on the guest lists of other conventions before, and it still confuses me as to how they’re relevant, but more and more I feel like anime cons, especially these smaller ones, are branching out because they have to and because for a lot of artists/dealers/entertainers, there aren’t many other events for them to attend. Two of the seven artists did not have anime-inspired art. Half of the dealers did not have Japan-relevant items. But for them, other than Ren faires, where else is there to go? Especially in Houston? There is no art scene in Houston.

Anyway, the bellydancers were actually pretty fun to watch — definitely the highlight event of the day. There were three of them, and the most experienced one was totally the expert of dancing with random things balanced on her head.

Here she is with a brass pot on her head.

And with a real sword on her head. :O

After the performances, the bellydancers held a raffle for some random items. I ended up winning a keychain/charm thing. David won the exact same thing several tickets later, haha. Around this time, Sam spotted an ACEO of Machiya, one of my characters, in my binder. She had been wandering to my table all day when she was bored and had seemed vaguely interested in commissioning me for various things, but she totally fell in love with Machiya when she saw him. o_O Unfortunately for her, I also really liked the ACEO in question and was not planning to sell it. So she commissioned me for a full page sketch of him instead! …And this was followed by another sketch of her glomping him. …And a sketchcard.

It very, very weird for me to have someone like one of my characters as much as Sam liked Machiya (she was positively fangirling over him) since I don’t tend to publicize them much, especially when they’re from perpetually unfinished projects. I ended up drawing him a few times for her for free just because I was so flattered, durrhurr. x3 Sadly, I did not get pictures of most of these commissions, but hopefully Sam will get around to scanning them for me sometime eventually…? XD

She even drew me fanart! XD (She referred to him as “piercings guy” for a long time because that is his most distinguishing feature. And probably because his name is weird, derp.) His reaction is pretty spot on here.

After the bellydancers packed up around eight (?), the stage was again taken over by karaoke and there were talks of a dance/rave happening despite it not being on the schedule. There really didn’t seem to be enough people around for such an event though… people were clearing out pretty quickly now that the bellydancers were gone. Kawaii Ribbons and David decided to head out early again, not really caring for the poorly planned shenanigans. I stuck around doing Sam’s sudden onslaught of commissions, along with a few other random sketch commissions that random people were suddenly interested in! There was even one girl (with awesome pants; this is her distinguishing feature) who commissioned me for four pages of sketches and told me I could draw whatever the hell I wanted. :O

Given that the room was pretty empty aside from artists and staff, and given that after four or five commissions in a row, my hand needed a break, I decided at some point to join the karaoke line on the stage… I had played around many times with the notion of singing at karaoke but always managed to chicken out. At larger cons, there always ends up being a few people with amazing voices and I don’t want to go up on the same stage they did. XD A majority of the artists at Delta H sang at some point, I think, and while everyone had a lot of fun and no one was terrible by any means, there wasn’t anyone amazing. And this made me feel better! So I sucked it up and sang “Believe” by Nami Tamaki (3rd OP, Gundam SEED) and stumbled off the stage in a daze to continue my commissions. :> The only comment I heard was that my speaking and singing voice are apparently very different. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. XD

By ten or so, I had managed to finish all my commissions except for the four pages of sketches the pants girl had bought. I felt bad about leaving for the night before finishing, but they were turning off the lights and passing out the glowsticks for the would-be rave, so there was little point in staying. I tried to find the girl to tell her that I would be back on Sunday and would finish them then, but she was no where to be seen, so I left her a note on my table after I packed up…

SUNDAY

Hours for Sunday were from 10am to 6pm. I arrived at around the same time as Saturday and set to work immediately on the unfinished commissions. This distracted me somewhat from the fact that there was nobody there besides staff, artists, and dealers. I finished the sketches quickly enough and then occupied myself with further commissions from Sophie and Sam from Star Hoshi Hoshi.

Sophie stared at, considered, and eventually bought the Nodame badge I had had since ages ago, noting that she never saw Nodame merch anywhere. Sometimes I think I have weird perceptions of what’s popular and well-known because a majority of my aniblogosphere acquaintances are very well-read/well-watched (and absolutely do not reflect the preferences of a general North American audience at all) and a majority of my real life acquaintances don’t even keep up with anime anymore. But it’s just as well because I tend to only do con badges of characters I like from series I like, which makes leads to a lot of fun conversations with the fangirl or boy that eventually buys them. :3 After buying the badge, Sophie commissioned this sketch of Chiaki and Nodame from me:

And then she commissioned this badge and sketch of some Reborn! characters. XD

And then she commissioned a NANA badge!

In between the Reborn! stuff and the NANA badge, one of the other members of Star Hoshi Hoshi commissioned me for a sketch card of a game character I didn’t recognize. The amount of patronage I got from Star Hoshi Hoshi altogether was ridiculous and amazing and I am very, very thankful for all of it because Sunday would have been insanely boring without it! I was really pretty surprised at the amount of commissions I got over the weekend in general though. Usually, I probably make 20% of my money from a con in commissions. At Delta H Con, it was 50%. And so many people wanted con badges! As I mentioned in my Anime Overload report, no office supply store anywhere near me seems to sell 3×4″ badge holders, so I haven’t been able to resupply these last two cons… so I started taking the badge holders from my premade badges when people commissioned me for custom badges. At the end of the weekend, I had two badge holders left. T___T I am so glad I have time to order some online before the next one, whenever that is.

After Star Hoshi Hoshi was done throwing money at me though, I finally noticed that there was seriously no one there besides artists, dealers, and staff. Poor Mr. Axelrod was apparently supposed to have a panel that morning. I popped in briefly. There were five people in the panel room aside from me. One was James, one of the other artists. The rest were staff members. Mr. Axelrod was recounting how he broke into the voice acting/dubbing industry. It was interesting, but not that interesting, and after about ten minutes, I wandered back to my table. So did three of the others. So in the end, the sole guest of the con was giving a panel to two staff members. That is just a little bit depressing.

In the early afternoon, a few con-goers seemed to show up. The staff was setting up some kind of tournament in the ballroom. I had a long conversation with a guy who apparently had not been there the rest of the weekend and told me that this was his first convention ever. I told him he should have been there Saturday instead and that conventions were generally more exciting than this, seriously. He surprised me by buying my Victini ACEO, especially considering he had no idea who it was, and then wandered off to join aforementioned tournament.

I started to pack up around three. By then all three of the dealers had gone, along with David, Kawaii Ribbons, and the artist nearest to the door whose name I never got. Only Renka, Star Hoshi Hoshi, James, and I remained. The pants girl had not shown up all day to pick up her commissions, but as we were packing up, I saw a cup with an address on it near James’s table. I remembered overhearing him and the Star Hoshi Hoshi girls puzzling over it earlier in the morning. There was some hard to read scrawl on the cup along with the address, which did not contain a city or zip code, just a street and number. After some staring, I figured out that the scrawl read “Awesome Pants.”

James told me that Saturday night, the girl asked for paper to write on to leave a note for an artist. Not having any paper, he gave her a cup. The girl had apparently forgotten who she had commissioned (there were only seven of us!! and only five tables had people even taking commissions!) and left the cup with the address with James, saying that she wouldn’t be back on Sunday and the artist would know what it meant. James, not really knowing what the hell she was talking about, tucked the cup under his table without reading it.

I was and am immensely frustrated that the girl did not think to leave an email address or a real means of contact. I’m not comfortable sending her commissions to the partial address without a name, mostly because her parents might think it weird if I addressed an envelope to “Awesome Pants Girl” or something. Also, given that it was only a partial address, I’m not 100% sure that there aren’t streets of the same name in more than one of Houston’s many suburbs. So… if you are the person that commissioned me for four pages of sketches Saturday night at Delta H Con, PLEASE email me ASAP to confirm your name and address so I can actually send you your stuff. :( Otherwise… I guess I’ll be carting these sketches around with me at subsequent Texas conventions and hope you turn up somewhere. D:

That mess and the fact that there was no one else around, really, kind of put a damper on Sunday, but to be honest, I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed the weekend despite lackluster traffic throughout. It was totally ’cause of these people:

The members of Star Hoshi Hoshi as the cast K-ON! (and a maid?) and Renka in the middle as another maid. This was taken Saturday evening. On Sunday, Star Hoshi Hoshi mostly wasn’t in cosplay and Renka was Haruhi Suzumiya. :3 It was really nice, for once, to remember that I am a fan, and to hang out with people that are also fans.

So I had a good time. But I’m still severely disappointed in Delta H Con. For starters, I don’t understand why the con didn’t take place after classes started at the University of Houston. Classes started the following week! What is so hard about postponing it until then? That would have obviously bumped attendance by a lot! As I understand it, this was the con’s third year, and in previous years it took place in April. Whatever the reason they had for moving the date, it should have still taken place when classes were in session!

I also disapprove of DHC’s pricing scheme. For a tiny, tiny con on a college campus, it had a pretty regular-con price. $20/day or $30/weekend. PLUS, certain events had an additional $5-10 fee. What the hell? It may be presumptuous to think that UH lets them use the venue for more or less no charge, but these are the costs of weekend attendance for the other college cons I’ve attended: Nashi-Con, $10; Kami-Con, FREE, MomoCon, FREE. Hmm.

The thing that bothered me the most was the fact that it was a three day convention when it was painfully obvious that it did not need to be. For some more comparison: Kami-Con was two days. Nashi-Con was a day and like three hours! Even MomoCon, who had over 7,000 attendees this year, and is bursting with crowding issues, events, panels, and guests, is only a two-day convention. Nashi-Con, which was in its third year as well, I think, had 700-1,000 attendees. Kami-Con, in its second year, had ~1,200. I did not think there were more than 500 people at Delta H. Why are they a three-day con? I sent them an email afterwards asking for an attendance estimate. I received a reply a few days ago. Guess what the number was.

285.

Two hundred eighty-five attendees in your third year, and you still have a three-day convention? Why? There were not enough events to fill the time, and most of them were poorly run. Start smaller, do it better, and then expand. I am inclined to think the only reason Delta H Con is a three-day convention is because all the other Texas cons are three days. Maybe all the other Texas cons started at three days and managed all right, but it’s more than obvious that DHC isn’t managing the same for the time being, so it would be better for them to shrink back a little and make themselves an amazing one- or two-day convention before expanding to a three-day con that includes an incredibly pointless Sunday where artists are left commissioning each other out of boredom (not that this was necessarily a bad thing, but come on).

I really, really hope Delta H Con picks things up, but all the same, if I’m still in Houston next year, and if there’s nothing else going on that weekend, I guess I would still go.

Are you tired of seeing pictures of my table yet?

Anime Overload took place at the North Austin Events Center in Austin, TX, and was weird/interesting for a variety of reasons. It was the first convention I worked alone since I didn’t know anyone else going at all. Every other con I’ve worked I attended with a slew of schoolmates, so even when I was tabling alone, like at Kami-Con, there were still plenty of people around that I knew and that I was staying/traveling with. Also, after hitting the Southeastern US conventions for two years or so, there were usually a bunch of artists I knew from other cons. But while AO wasn’t my first con in Texas, it was the first one I was working, so I wasn’t familiar with any of the other artists. AO was also the first con that I traveled to alone, the first that didn’t take place at either a hotel or a college campus, and the first where I was crashing at a friend’s place rather than a hotel.

THURSDAY

Without other people to keep track of, a hotel to check into, and a very long drive, Thursday was remarkably uneventful. I left Houston around 3pm. It was a straight and very boring shot to Austin because the CD player in the car was broken and I recognize probably 5% of the songs that play on the radio. Once I was able to switch to Austin’s radio stations, the selection got better, but it was still incredibly boring for the most part. After circling around for twenty minutes and continually missing the necessary turns to find my friends Dom and Erica’s co-op, I got there, unloaded my stuff, and we went to dinner at a delicious Thai place, followed by a delicious coffee place before going back home and doing nothing in particular and getting in bed around one.

See? Remarkably uneventful, but this is preferable in many ways!

FRIDAY

Since I didn’t want to have to navigate Austin every night in my after-con exhaustion, Dom and Erica drove me to the con around nine. We got really confused looking for the place because the building did not look like much of a convention hall… in fact, initially, the GPS wanted us to turn into a small, empty lot that contained nothing but a dumpster. We spotted a small string of people lined up outside a building though, and as we got closer, it was easy to tell they were con-goers. The cop at the door said they weren’t open yet, but told us to go around the side/back if we were exhibitors. So we did.

My friends left after helping me dump all my stuff on my assigned table. Shortly afterward, I realized, rather suddenly, that the entire convention was in a single room. Seriously. The “events center” was basically a gigantic garage/hanger-like space with a tiny attached lobby. The Dealers were lined up against one wall with Artist Alley forming two weird squares of tables next to it.  The panels were temporary rooms set up against another wall. There was a stage against the opposite wall. And the third wall was the loading area with all the big doors.

This was the view from behind my table. The Art Institute and Ikkicon both had a table set up directly across from me. Behind them, you can see the temporary walls set up to separate the panel and video rooms from each other. You can also kind of see special guest Matt Herms’s table behind the Ai table.

The right side view from my table, you can see the edge of the Dealer’s “room.” Further left from this picture was the small entrance to the lobby area where all the con-goers entered.

View directly behind my table. Here you can see the backs of other people’s AA tables and the stage way over there.

It was incredibly disorienting having a convention set up this way. I mean, I’ve been in open Artist Alleys before, set up in hallways and such, but never has every single event of the convention taken place in the same room. The Ikkicon table across from me played techno all Friday. It wasn’t terribly loud, but I definitely wasn’t used to the noise being there. As the con-goers slowly trickled into the room starting at 10 am, I noted various other things that were different from most other cons I’ve attended.

It was very busy for a Friday, which are usually slow because con-goers like to browse their options before making purchases. However, with such an incredibly small number of dealers and artists, many more people made purchases on Friday. Also, I noticed that a huge number of con-goers had one-day passes, which I almost never see, especially Friday-only. Everyone gets three-day passes, and if they don’t, they come Saturday-only. Not so at Anime Overload! Obviously, folks only there for a day will make their purchases on that day.

I also got a lot more commissions than usual, especially for a Friday. The above trio of siblings stopped by a few times and ended up commissioning a series of sketch portraits (above), as well as a group portrait; the middle brother also returned later for another solo portrait. They were all super nice and I really enjoy doing real person-to-anime character drawings, haha.

There were shockingly few cosplayers all weekend, but Friday was especially sparse. Normally, people without costumes stood out much more than those with, but this weekend, the few dressed up were very noticeable and this lovely satyr was among them. Of those in costume, there was a much larger percentage of kigurumi, though this might have been because one of, what… like ten dealers?, had a lot of kigurumi for sale.

The lack of cosplayers didn’t stop me from getting pictures of Pokemon-related people though. :3 I think I’ve seen an Ampharos gijinka before, but Tangela is definitely new!

I have only seen Durarara!! cosplays of Izaya and Shizuo, and while they are both quite awesome characters, I’d really love to see cosplays of Shinra, Celty, and Kida. They’re all pretty easy, right?

This is a girl with a teacup on her head! The teacup apparently broke later and she came back around with some desserts on her head instead.

Another observation: a majority of the artists in the Alley were craft artists rather than print artists. The table to my right was empty for most of the weekend, but the woman to my left was a jeweler and most of her wares were necklaces and bracelets. There was a fleece hat booth, a lolita hat booth, a lolita ribbon/hair accessory booth, a steampunk group encompassing four or five tables, and various others whose main product was derived from a flat drawing. There’s definitely been an increase in these artists in recent years, but this was the first time I’ve seen them make up the concrete majority.

A BW conbadge commission I did of a character from D.Gray-man. As I’m not familiar with the series, the commissioner provided a keychain for reference. Hurray for people with references!

Despite being much busier than I was used to, Friday seemed to go on forever. Since there was no one else that could really man the table, I did not get up much at all and spent a lot of time drawing ACEOs when I didn’t have commissions. The AO con staff was wonderful though! No other con has spoiled me this much. The Artist Alley coordinator, Mel, brought me food and hung out occasionally at the empty table next to me. Random other staff members would periodically come by with water and offer to watch the table for a while if I needed a break. Even though I never really took them up on the latter, I really appreciated it. It was almost weird that the staff was so crazy nice and helpful when the actual convention still felt pretty haphazard to me.

The “everyone in one room” thing became most obviously problematic as evening set in.

At seven, there was a dance competition on the stage. This was weird and distracting since it took place behind me, but it wasn’t that big a deal. Buuuuuut, one of the musical guests, One-Eyed Doll, was to have a concert starting at eight. Artist Alley wasn’t supposed to close down until ten. But they couldn’t start a concert without all the lights out, and there’s no point in hanging out in the Alley if you can’t see anything. Plus, concerts are loud, and there’s no talking to customers over the screaming guitars, y’know?

So when One-Eyed Doll started, I packed up. I wasn’t happy about not getting the full hours of table time I was expecting, but I was exhausted anyway, so whatever! Had Erica pick me up, ate something, showered, and slept!

SATURDAY

Friday was busy for a Friday, but Saturday was slow for a Saturday. As far as physical merch went, I probably moved about the same amount on both days, but I did get a lot more commissions on Saturday — so many, in fact, that I was out of pre-cut paper for sketch cards by the end of the day. A lot of people were also commissioning con badges, and since no office supply store near me seems to sell 3×4″ badge holders, I was running ridiculously low on those as well. I had to start taking badge holders from my premade badges to give to people who commissioned custom badges. x_x In between the commissions, I drew a ton more ACEOs, so it’s no wonder that by the end of the day, my shoulder was killing me.

I think this is probably the third Horo badge I’ve done, but they all manage to look different somehow and Horo is fun to draw, so whatever!

And there’s the lovely commissioner with the badge! :3

This and the next one are probably my two favorite commissions from the weekend. I like cartooning real people, especially in this silly bobblehead style, so this was ridiculously fun.

The commissioners are cute in real life too! C: And they were super sweet and brought their friends over, who commissioned the following!

This drawing is totally accurate because the girl on the right was wearing crazy boots with her yukata, yup.

Oops, drew the fan in the wrong hand. Oh well!

This was also a super fun commission because Reno = Axel = always a good time. Not being a big Final Fantasy person, I don’t know Reno nearly as well as I do Axel, but the commissioner worked with me to figure out his details since she didn’t have a reference. She said there was a cosplayer around, but I didn’t see her until after I’d snapped this picture. Upon seeing said cosplayer, I colored the goggles black. :3

After the infestation at Nashi-Con, I can’t help but want to snap pictures of every Rocket Grunt I encounter. Aside from this girl, there was another, but I didn’t manage to get her attention. There were more cosplayers on Saturday, including a pretty awesome Kyuubi quadsuit, but I was too busy to get many pictures, sadly.

Hitachiin twins are hard to resist though.

This was one of the many awesome steampunk people manning the steampunk booth. Her wings were retractable and pretty much made of awesome. I’m not really sure how this crazy steampunk trend factors in with anime since I don’t think there are nearly enough anime with steampunk settings, but there darn well should be.

Saturday evening, there was a cosplay contest on the main stage. I guess one plus side of having everyone in the same room was that I actually got to see/hear some of these other events. I mean, as long as it isn’t a full-blown concert, it wasn’t hard to work and be entertained at the same time. The con’s second musical guest, Descendants of Erdrick, played their show Saturday evening, I think around seven. Being a video game cover band, their concert was not as intense as One-Eyed Doll and so half the lights were left on, effectively enabling Artist Alley to stay open while they played. Buuut One-Eyed Doll was playing another show after them, so in the time in between, I packed up to go. Another early night, but it had been another exhausting day.

SUNDAY

Sunday was kind of like Friday. There were lots of single-day passes, an average amount of merchandise purchases, and a bunch of random commissions, but the mood of the con was considerably subdued. There wasn’t a lot going on and a lot of people looked bored. There were a series of small shows/events on the stage, but most were poorly attended and the panel hosts spent a lot of time talking to themselves.

Chibi commission of someone’s OC.

Suzy-kun.

A character from Negima, I think? Hurray for iPhone references!

Not actually a big fan of Adventure Time, and I mostly took this picture for Mukki and Chewi, but this was still a pretty lulzy costume.

I had a lot of people ask me about the name of my table this weekend and I suddenly remembered why it is what it is. At some point, I had started answering that Fake Lemonade Stand was what we got after somehow combining CitrusFish.net (Cat’s website) with DEADEND-DETOUR.com, but it’s really named such because I always felt like tabling in Artist Alleys was similar to manning those lemonade stands of youth. Except you aren’t selling lemonade. Not sure how I managed to forget that.

The Alley wasn’t supposed to close until four or so, but around three, it was already exceedingly obvious that most of the people still around were either staff or exhibitors — another advantage of the entire convention being in the same room! So I went ahead and packed up to go.

Overall, I think AO was a pretty all right con. There seemed to be a lack of things to do for the average con-goer, but as an artist attending, that wasn’t that big of a deal. I really, really wish the concerts could be held in a different room since their presence basically shuts down the entire rest of the convention, but other than that, the fact that everything was in the same room wasn’t that bad. I mean — it made visiting the dealers easier, and it was kind of nice being able to hear the panels taking place on stage and the smallish dance and cosplay contests. I think they’re in the same location next year, so this aspect isn’t likely to change.

Not being in a hotel or a college campus also seemed to invite a younger demographic, which was probably the reason for all the single-day passes. Like the college con, it was probably a lot of people’s first convention, but unlike the college con, few of the first-timers were of college age. MomoCon has a lot of younger first-timers and parents since it’s free, but AO wasn’t free, so I think the expectation is a bit different. Not really sure though. Regardless, I’m signed on for next year and will probably attend unless I go through another geographical move that makes it financially unfeasible. And as Mel is apparently double-dipping as Ikkicon’s AA coordinator as well, I’m on the wait list for Ikkicon, which is over New Years. Really hope I can make it, if only for another excuse to hang in Austin!

Next up! Delta H Con! Which is in… like ten hours, lol. D;

the wolves are here – Triptych

Back in January, I did a short, 9-page comic called 狼来了, or “the wolves are here.”

That comic, along with Sunflowers and Rainbows, will be included in the second volume of the Sugar Ninjas anthology, which is due out by the end of the month. To celebrate the release of the book, Howl Gallery/Tattoo will be hosting a month-long exhibition featuring artwork from selected creators included in the book.

I apparently didn’t need to submit art relevant to my included comics, but I figured it’d be for the best anyway. Since I recently finished up Rainbows and Rainclouds, I kind of wanted a break from that art style and those characters and did some work inspired by the wolves are here instead. This triptych did not originally start off as a triptych. It was just a single painting — the one furthest to the left — but I thought a companion piece would look nice, so I painted the center image. I liked how they looked together, but then I thought it would be pretty cool to balance the whole thing out with a third piece. Thus, a triptych.

Unfortunately, as far as the exhibition goes, I have a limit of a two-foot wide area to display my work, which means that if I want to include all three pieces, they’d have to be printed for smaller frames, probably 5×7 or so. After some deliberation, I decided to just use the first two paintings in 8×10 frames. So at the show, it’ll just be a diptych, rather than a triptych.

The prints turned out great and I really like how they look framed!

Sadly, I won’t be able to attend the opening reception for the show on August 6th as I’ll be in Austin, for Anime Overload that weekend instead. But if you’re near Fort Myers, Florida, you should definitely check it out! I hope people take good pictures though, because I really want to see the rest of the art included in the show. I’m mailing off this diptych tomorrow and have included very limited number of prints for sale at the show, but I may do a second run of prints for conventions next month to accompany the minicomic version of the comic. If anyone’s interested though, the originals of all three paintings are for sale, so feel free to email me about it. I should eventually be getting a small storefront specifically to sell off originals though. Maybe by the end of the year?

I’ve never really painted text, so this was interesting. For “Write It,” I was more concerned about getting it to look good than I was about the fact that there’s no way a typewriter could 1) produce copy that big, 2) change fonts, 3) change inks. The text here was outlined with quill and ink first and then filled in with waercolor, which is why the edges are a bit uneven. I rather like that look though.

For the disaster that this almost became, it seems to be the most popular of the series. Though I had considered that putting down the watercolors first would have been smarter, I inked it first anyway. Thus, when I added the watercolor, the black wasn’t really solid black anymore. While this is a pretty easy fix digitally, I wanted the physical piece to be black also, so I put another layer of ink over the black after I finished with the watercolors. Except that I used a old, cheap bottle of Winston & Newton ink rather than my normal Bombay India ink. And the Winston & Newton was terrible. Instead of drying, the ink got sticky. Though technically, the painting itself was okay, I was afraid to scan it in such a state because I didn’t want to get gross, blotchy ink bits on my brand new scanner. So I painted over it again with the Bombay. Eesh.

“Say It” is the debatable one. It’s just ink and digital, no paint, but I was excited about the opportunity to use gigantic screentones. And more bright, saturated, rainbow colors. I also got the chance to use some of my giant Chinese horsehair brushes, which I can’t control at all, but I don’t need to control it if I just want to put in very strong, bold words.

“Read It” probably took the longest of the five. I had a really hard time composing it, but while I’m still not entirely happy with how the text flows, I think that by virtue of the words being identical throughout the series, the slight confusion is passable. Aside from some texture and lighting tweaks in Photoshop, this painting is just watercolor and gouache, so none of the text had an ink outline this time. I think I like it better this way, especially since the washed out text near the top looks almost like the fire is melting the words. I’m very pleased with the fire, lighting, and burnt pages as well.

I had the hardest time with this last painting. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it at all since I don’t actually agree 100% with the sentiment. There is this stipulation: I don’t care what you believe as long as this belief does not lead to actions that may infringe upon my own right to believe (or write, or draw, or speak, or read, or whatever else). I also had no idea what kind of imagery to use. I went through a ton of thumbnails trying to decide, and while I had a lot of fun painting this and using frisket for the first time in forever, I’m still not sure that I like how it looks.

Here are some of the thumbnails I did for “Read It” and “Believe It” — I had meant to paint the latter first, but was so frustrated with it that I painted the former first instead. The candle was originally supposed to have some contours painted over it in ink, but I decided against it in the end.

Thumbnails for “Draw It” and “Say It,” and some older ideas for “Believe It.”

And the thumbnails for “Write It.”

The books are softcover, perfect bound with awesome full color interiors for the entire 40-page comic and two bonus illustrations. They are $20 each, and shipping is $5 (added at check-out) within the US and +$2.50 per book for international shipping (sorry, guys). All preordered books will be signed and include a free sketch. Don’t forget to include a note with your order if you want me to make a dedication out to someone! I’m going to also try to include the printed minicomic version of Sunflowers and Rainbows with every preorder. It will depend on a few factors, but I’m gonna try!

An eBook version is also available in PDF format for $4. The eBook will be automatically available to everyone who buys a real book, so you won’t have to wait long at all to actually read the comic! (It might be more exciting to wait for the physical copy to ship though!)

Preorders will end Sunday, July 11th at 11:59 pm CST. Hopefully, this leave plenty of time for me to get the books to you before the end of July.

After preorders, the book will mainly be available at conventions or other events I attend. I may eventually make them available for regular purchase online, but I haven’t decided yet, so it might be best to snag your copy now!

Preorders are now closed.

I’ve reopoened my COMMISSIONS so I can hopefully have a little bit of income while I work on a slew of other projects, both for myself and for others. One of the first things on the list is a number of portfolio websites from former classmates and friends. I’ll be setting up a specific page with info on commissioning websites from me eventually, but I’d like to get through my current queue so I have some more examples handy. In the meantime though, if you’d like a personal website — especially a portfolio website — feel free to contact me about it.

Also at the top of the list are the minor corrections I still need to make to Rainbows and Rainclouds. Was also thinking of doing a few more bonus illustrations since I have more time now… As soon as I’m done with that, I’ll do preorders. I’d really like to be able to get books into people’s hands by early July, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m going to be working on a comic project to pitch to Scholastic. It’s an adaptation of a Scholastic property rather than an original project, so I probably won’t post anything related to it for the whole. I’m only going to be doing character designs and about five pages of sequential work for the pitch. If it works out, whether I post anything will depend on the editor. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll share everything then. (If you know me at all, it shouldn’t be hard to guess which Scholastic property I’m working on. But don’t guess because I won’t answer!)

I’m also going to ink the cover for and properly tone my Black Cat comic from March and pitch that somewhere else. I would like to draw the rest of the strips I have scripted for Grains of Salt in Tokyo, but this is a pretty low priority right now.

Outside of comics work… I HAVE SO MUCH PAINTING I WANT TO DO. I want to do more paintings in the vein of what I was doing last summer, so you can probably expect some more weird animal skeletons soon. I also want to do a series of ACEOs themed around something. Or maybe multiple series of ACEOs because I have a lot of themes I wouldn’t mind doing, haha.

I’m still working out whether I’ll be able to attend AnimeOverload, Delta H Con, AnimeFEST, Oni-con, Austin Comic Con, or Ikkicon. I’ll post about it as soon as I figure it out, but right now, Delta H is looking pretty likely. AO, ACC, AFEST, and Ikki depend on if I can get rides and general costs worked out, though if I attend ACC at all, I probably won’t be tabling. Oni depends on if they can get their stuff together because it’s June already and they have absolutely zero information up on their website and I’ve been harassing them on Twitter for the last three months. :\

Annnd… I think that’s it for now. I haven’t been uploading much aside from school work these last couple of months, but that’s obviously gonna change, ’cause I’m out of school forever~.

This was my final assignment for a basic computer class. It was my first time using After Effects and I did this very leisurely over the course of a week, so it’s super simple and not very exciting, but I’m pleased with it. Man, animating characters via puppeting sure beats tweening and frame-by-frame. If I had known about this earlier, I would have probably done a lot more random animated shorts in my free time. XD But with this, I am 100% done with all of my school work for the rest of forever. Ahahahaha…

Now what? :o

Considering I ordered it on Sunday, I’m really surprised it got here so quickly, even with expedited shipping (since expedited shipping doesn’t mean expedited printing). I kind of wonder if I could have gotten away with just getting ground shipping, but whatever, it’s here with time to spare, and I don’t regret paying extra for it.

And the book looks awesome!

The cover is thick and glossy and the colors and texture came out great. Seriously, since the original is pretty much the same size as the final, a side-by-side comparison proves they’re almost identical. The only differences are basically what I edited in digitally.

I keep looking at the smudges of white gouache near my name — they look like they’re smudges of actual gouache on the cover!

It’s only 45 pages total with 40 pages of comics (and an extra illustration), so it isn’t very thick, but it meets Lulu’s minimum page count (32) for perfect bound, so it still looks like a real book, haha.

Back cover isn’t terribly fancy. The original plan was to do a wrap-around cover, but that ended up being more complicated than I wanted, so I just did this instead. I think it worked out okay; it doesn’t clash, at least. Besides, wrap-around covers work better when the book is (much) thicker.

Interior colors are very accurate for the post part. I lost a lot of the saturation when I converted from RGB to CMYK, so this reflects that, but otherwise, it’s pretty spot on. I also lost some of my more subtle color gradations and lighting in the conversion, so I think some of the shadows look weird, but it’s not that big a deal.

Even though Lulu provides page templates that include the trim and bleed margins, it didn’t take into account the folds of a book. I think some of the panels could have been scooted outwards a bit to accommodate that, especially since the bleedless pages have a significant amount of margin space. Nothing super important is lost in the gap though, so it isn’t detrimental to the storytelling that some of the images are caught in the fold.

I was worried about some of the later pages being too dark, but they turned out fine — lighter than I intended, even. The pages above had a few issues where my fuzzy spots aren’t as soft as they were supposed to be — they kind of look like when you drop water on a freshly printed color page: it kind of bleeds around the edges. There’s also a weird stripe of green near the horizon on the second page above. Not sure if that was caused by my excessive gradients or lighting overlays?

Most of these little details are probably things only I’d notice though. For the most part, the pages turned out as I wanted. Along with the fact that none of the pages are too dark, I’m also really happy with how all the bleed panels look. I was a little worried about them just because there are so many of them (28 of the 40 pages have bleed panels), but they look fine. It isn’t too much at all and the color scheming between side-by-side pages works out pretty well also.

So yeah! After I fix a few minor issues, I’ll probably order a small batch and see if I can sell some at conventions. Since the physical book is a little costly though, I’ll probably also offer a high quality PDF version to download for cheaper.

By the way, I also found these scans from forever ago that I never shared. These are some of my initial sketches and thumbnails for this project. It went from the below to the above in about nine weeks. c:

I had initially toyed around with the idea of doing a “serious” unicorn story. I still might someday eventually, but I decided I needed to work on equine anatomy a lot more before tackling something like that. Besides, doing a derpy, silly story would be more fun. It’s hard to take yourself or your story seriously after a while. Especially if it involves unicorns.

My thumbnails for pages after I decided to do a sequel to Sunflowers and Rainbows. Originally, the story was 46 pages thumbed and was a bit more complicated. Since I have no dialogue, clarity was a huge issue and the complicated parts were kind of confusing. When I penciled the pages from the thumbs, I condensed as I went and ended up axing most of the complex stuff, streamlining it down to an even 40, which was my page count goal to begin with.

I didn’t spend a lot of time on character design since I’d used both Rarukyo and Dicorn Boy before. I probably should have though. Rarukyo especially tends to go through small changes between projects and I could probably stand to be a bit more consistent with how I draw him. Even on this page, he’s kind of all over the place. Also, apparently, all of my characters in this comic are androgynous (even the mermaids??). I am okay with this though!

(PS — So hey, who wants to buy a book from me?)

I worked steadily all last week coloring 3-5 pages a day, and I meant to work through this week also. If I had stayed on schedule, I would have finished coloring by Thursday, but I ended up finishing late Friday night/Saturday morning instead and then doing the cover this evening. It wasn’t that big of a deal though. I just wanted to finish everything earlier so I could have plenty of time to prep the files for printing this weekend and then send everything off to Lulu by Monday so hopefully they’ll be able to print and ship it before my final critique. As far as the class goes, I could have stopped coloring on page 30 because that’s all that will be due on the final critique, but whatever. 40 pages and a cover, done two weeks early, how about that.

This is a panel from page 10. There’s lots of epic lighting in this comic and that’s what I had the most fun with since it’s basically playing with a billion layers of color and blending attributes. I think this crazy sunset lasts for five or six pages, lol.

More epic lighting! This is a panel from page 28. This part of the story has lots and lots o sparkles and shininess and oh man I hope these colors turn out okay when I print it.

Here is a tiny, blurred screenshot of the folder on my computer that contains all the print ready files. It doesn’t look like much, does it? It feels kind of weird that this took eight weeks from start to finish. I’ll need to compile everything in InDesign tomorrow and then place the order to Lulu. That will give them eight business days to send me my book. I’ll probably have to get expedited shipping, but hopefully it won’t be a problem…

I’m only ordering the one proof copy so I can see how the colors turn out and such. I don’t expect I’ll be able to sell many copies of this though, so I’m not sure how many books I’ll order after I fix any issues that come up in the proof. I was entertaining the idea of doing a few more similar comics and doing a collected book, Rainbows and Rainclouds and Other Stories, or something, but I dunno. Time is an issue. I have too many things I want to and need to do after I graduate in… twelve days.

Anyway, I’ll make a final “progress report” when the proof comes in. :3

But basically I had the entire weekend, Friday-Sunday to color those pages. Long story short, I put off starting them until midway through Sunday afternoon and stayed up all night to finish the required six before I had to go to my eight o’clock art history class Monday morning. But heyyyy, I finished. I always finish.

I went through all 40 pages to clean and fix inks before coloring, but somehow I always manage to forget things, like that bar across the window. I had a really hard time getting started on the colors partially because I haven’t colored very many comic pages and find it pretty tedious. Details in the background like in the first panel here really turn me off and I want to take breaks constantly. I also have a hard time choosing colors because I’m worried everything will be too bold and that the background will draw attention away from the foreground. The only part that I really enjoy is getting to play with the lighting at the end, so stuff like the light from the window and the shadow of the thing there.

The fact that the bird went through the glass of the window without breaking anything was something I completely overlooked until after I inked it. Hilariously, no one that saw this page seemed to acknowledge the snafu until I pointed it out. In the end, instead of redrawing anything, I just made the bird phase through the glass. PERFECTLY PLAUSIBLE, AMIRITE? I mean, it’s obviously a magical bird anyway. v_v The last panel is a little empty, but oh well.

I had fun with the lighting on this page, I did, especially in the last panel. The Gryffindor scarf in the closet is worn in both Sunflowers and Rainbows and in Grains of Salt in Tokyo, but this comic takes place during spring or summer. :> Also, the stuffed toy on the bookshelf (not the dinosaur) belongs to Harmany, who starred in a oneshot comic I did in 2008 entitled banshee. I like sneaking references in!

I like this page because it was easy to color, lol. Also, for once I’m actually pretty pleased with that cityscape.

This page on the other hand, took FOREVER. Fields of flowers are not fun to color, no, no, no.

I don’t actually remember coloring this page. It seemed to go by oddly fast, considering how long the previous page took me. It was like seven in the morning at this point though, and I had had like five or six mugs of tea. Yeah… After finishing this, I got some strong coffee and went to class. Even with the coffee, I don’t remember much of my art history class either, but at least I went! ~_~

All things considered, I’m pretty pleased with how these turned out. I think now that I’ve started, the next 34 pages won’t be as hard to do and I won’t procrastinate as much (hopefully). I have a little less than four weeks to finish coloring the rest, though again, I’d really like to finish before then so I can go ahead and get a copy or two printed for the end of the quarter. These will be the only finished pages I’ll be posting online, though I’ll probably also post the cover once I finish that.

I still haven’t had a chance to work on the cover and in my forgetfulness, I went ahead and sold my watercolors (because I’ll be moving soon and have already have another set in Houston), so… I guess I won’t be using watercolors. I could use gouache instead, but I haven’t done a straight-up gouache piece in a while. I might do a combination of marker and gouache, but we’ll see… I guess I gotta figure that out soon though.

These last couple of weeks are gonna come and go too fast.