Kuretake #13 Fountain Brush Pen

The Pentel is an amazing pen and I love it, but it’s best suited for bolder, looser brush work. It’s hard to use it for precision work, so I was hoping the Kuretake would make up that difference.

The pen comes with in a nice box with three refill cartridges.

The Kuretake #13 comes in a nice box, but it isn’t meant to be kept since you should never store your pen with the cap off after you insert that first ink cartridge. Still, the packaging is the first indication of the $20 price difference between the Kuretake and the Pentel. The second is the material of the pen — a cold metal with a nice weight, not plastic; but obviously, it’s performance that matters the most:

Initial test for Kuretake #13 with Copic markers and watercolor.

In most instances, I can’t tell it apart from the Pentel — it’s responsive, slick, flexible, and adapts quickly to changes in pressure. It’s a very great pen to be sure, but I’m not really feeling that $20 price difference.

Plus, the Kuretake has a huge downside — the default ink isn’t waterproof. It holds up very well under Copic markers (so, alcohol-proof), but one drop of water had the ink smearing all over the place. The Kuretake is compatible with the Platinum converter, which you can fill with any ink you want, but I don’t have one (yet), and obviously, it’d be best if the ink it comes with were waterproof.

Pentel VS Kuretake comparison test.

And the Pentel pocket brush is waterproof, so what is that extra $20 paying for, Kuretake? It comes with more standard refills and the refill packs are cheaper, but that’s probably because the ink isn’t waterproof! I’m okay with paying 59 cents more per refill for waterproof ink.

I was pretty determined to find some kind of performance difference between the two pens though. With the converter, the Kuretake could have waterproof ink if I really wanted, but I felt that there had to be some other justification for the price jump. So I drew some more:

Cats are Kuretake; Dogs are Pentel.

Can you tell the difference, really?

I did find dry brushing with the Kuretake a little more difficult — the ink is wetter than with the Pentel, but it’s a newer ink cartridge, and I didn’t want to be too rough with a brand new pen, either. The Kuretake’s ink does dry a smidgen darker than the Pentel, but the difference is negligible if you’re working in black and white.

Only the two tiger busts in the upper left are Kuretake; the rest are Pentel.

Another difference between the two pens that may be an advantage for some and a disadvantage for others: the Kuretake’s pen cap fits much more snugly over the brush. For me, this makes me extra paranoid that the brush tip getting pulled in the wrong direction as I’m capping it and that I’ll permanently ruin the tip. It also means the pen is harder to uncap with one hand. I’m sure some people like the extra security though.

Left: Kuretake; Right: Pentel.

Eventually, I notice the “big” difference between the two pens. The Kuretake’s brush is about a millimeter shorter than the Pentel’s. Yup.

Left: Kuretake; Right: Pentel

It does make a difference though. The slightly shorter brush is slightly less flexible, and so it is slightly easier to control, especially for the finer, lighter strokes. The facial details on the barn owl above would have been noticeably larger and rougher if I had inked it with the Pentel. So the Kuretake does handle precision work better, but not quite as better as I’d like.

So, the difference probably isn’t worth the extra $20, but there it is.

Maybe eventually, this Kuretake #13 will outlive my Pentel pocket brush, what with its fancier body and ability to use different inks, but my Pentel is already three years old, has burned through 20-30 ink cartridges, and still works like a charm, so I think it’s got a lot of drawing left in it yet.

Can you tell which pen I used for which page?

Conclusion

The Kuretake #13 is a great brush, but so is the Pentel pocket brush, so if you’re on a budget and need waterproof ink, then I think the winner is clear!

These aren't actually sakura, but it's close enough!

I, once again (!), did not have an Artist Alley table, but Kiiyame (White Oblivion) did, and she was staying with me for the duration of the con, plus an extra day before and after. As her official table lackey, I would still have a Exhibitor/Artist Alley badge, so hurray for not having to stand in the pre-registration badge pick-up line, which reportedly took three hours to get through on Friday. I also did have space in the Art Show, and it was my first art show, so I was pretty curious as to how that would go. Many exciting* things in this 8,628 word report!

*Excitement not guaranteed.

Jump to: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Final thoughts.

THURSDAY

Kiiyame arrived Wednesday night, but a day of traveling and two-hour jetlag (much more potent than 14-hour jetlag, in my opinion) meant we didn’t do much besides toss her four giant suitcases of stuff in the living room and sleep. Artist Alley check-in for Thursday was from noon to 6pm; Art Show check-in was from 4pm to 7pm. We figured we may as well head over around four then, so we could take care of our things at the same time. This gave us all morning and early afternoon to do whatever, but it wasn’t hard to decide. Weeaboo friend from the middle of no where Texas who’s never been to Seattle? Only one place to go: Kinokuniya.

We walked to Chinatown, taking pictures of flowering trees all the way. We found a One Piece car chillin’ outside a restaurant. Funny how the con doesn’t start until Friday, but Thursday is still a game day for a rousing round of “Spot the Con-Goers.” How many can you find?? Even some thirty blocks south of the convention center, without their badges? Easy peasy.

One Piece car chillin' in Chinatown.

There were several groups of obvious con-goers at the bookstore, including a bunch of high school girls clustered around the artbooks and yaoi and another girl with a very thick European accent who asked us for directions via bus to the convention center. So I guess we were pretty obvious too, what with Kiiyame digging through the anime magazine racks and squeeing over everything Tiger and Bunny-related. ;) We spent quite a bit of time at Kinokuniya while she marveled over just about everything and looked for a specific Pixiv magazine and struggled continuously over the pronunciation of the store’s name. The latter bit I found hilarious because it wasn’t like she has a problem with Japanese names; it was just names in general. Apparently. (It isn’t “canoe-canoe-yah,” omg.)

We had a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant a few blocks away with decent food and terrible service, then checked out a small anime goods store that was also nearby. We went in expecting a lot of hilarious bootlegs, but the store actually carried mostly legitimate merchandise at pretty standard prices? Good to know for the off-season, I suppose! We bused back to the apartment around three, grabbed the suitcase with Kiiyame’s table set-up, along with my boxes of matted Art Show pieces and prints, then bused up to the convention center: the first of several adventures involving giant suitcases on public transit. Playing “Spot the Con-Goers” got easier block by block until we couldn’t keep count anymore. Into the swarming nest we go!

Welcome to Sakura-Con!

It was weird being back at the same convention center, just a week later, and seeing the whole place decorated for a different show. There were hundreds of people milling around already, but things were a little confusing because normal registration and pre-registration were in different areas, neither of which were anywhere near DR/AA check-in. Thankfully, there were a ton of building staff (as opposed to con staff) posted at hallway junctions and all around the escalators giving very informed directions. It was pretty impressive, honestly. It seemed clear that the organizational caliber of Sakura-Con was higher than most anime shows — in addition to the very helpful convention center staff, there were signs and banners everywhere, all fancy and nicely printed. Sakura-Con is a show with a budget, man.

We made it to Artist Alley check-in without a hitch, forked over some ID, then grabbed our badges. Pet peeve: we, once again, did not receive a program with our badges. The AA check-in staff seemed surprised that we even asked. What?! Artists want a program with the schedule and the going-ons of the convention?! MADNESS. What could they possibly need a program for?! They’re chained to the table all weekend anyway, right?? :| No, but seriously, guys, come on. I just want a program like everyone else, especially since Sakura-Con gives out a ton of sponsor goodies with its program, including a lanyard, various coupons, stickers, and postcards.

The Exhibits Hall (encompassing both Dealer’s Room and Artist Alley) was in the same space as it was at ECCC, though the Dealers’ areas and the Artists’ areas were swapped and there was an awkward little Small Press area dividing them. After verifying Kiiyame’s table location in the Alley, I left her to set up while I went to find the Art Show…

My Art Show panel

The Art Show was in a rather lonely corner down on the second floor, pretty far from the rest of the action. It was my first time at Sakura, so I have no idea how things were set up previously, but the location definitely worried me, even if there were signs pointing to it. There were escalators leading right up to it, too, but they were a side pair of escalators, not the main set that everyone was using to get to the Exhibits Hall. The charity auction items (to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation) shared space with the Art Show, which was surely meant to drive more traffic to the area, but I didn’t know much about the popularity of charity auctions, so I wasn’t too reassured by this.

Jeff, the Art Show Coordinator, was a really nice guy though. There were only a few other artists setting up, along with the Bonsai Association (or something), and he and the other Art Show staff were good about helping out, providing supplies, and answering questions. The Art Show is split into two parts — panels with artwork for bidding, and tables for artwork for direct sale. I had one panel, which had all original pieces in real media, and one table, which had a bunch of prints. Setting up the panel was easy, but I still had to label every… single… print… for the table. Which was a lot. I was erring on the side of  “too many” for sure.

I ended up hanging out at Art Show set up for a lot longer than I planned, but it was just as well. I chatted a little with Cari (Blix-it), who was setting up her own three panels, along with a panel for Amanda (Cinnamoron) and Jessica (Radiuszero), who were doing Anime Matsuri instead. I also chatted at length with the folks setting up at the table two down from mine, who ended up helping me cut and label my billion prints. ;__; They weren’t also doing Artist Alley and were registered as normal attendees, so one of them offered to give me his con program and goodies since he’d be sharing with his friend anyway. Thank youuuuu. ♥

As a side note, it seems that these geek conventions are highly appreciated by the convention center staff — the lady skirting all the tables at the Art Show said again and again that she wished Sakura-Con happened every month instead of every year. Sakura-Con has been at the Washington State Convention Center since 2006, and ECCC has been there since 2008, and I don’t think either will need to move any time soon. :o There’s plenty of space for both to grow.

My Art Show table full of prints.

Originally, Kiiyame and I had planned to walk over to the Blick Art Store in Captiol Hill after we were done setting up, but I took so long labeling things that the store closed before I finished, haha. So instead, we went back to the Exhibits Hall to roam the aisles and check out the artists and dealers that were already set up. No one was ready enough to actually handle transactions, and we felt bad bothering them while they were still getting settled anyway, but Kiiyame made a mental shopping list, and that shopping list was pretty impressive. I love having friends that spend more than me! It means I’ll feel less guilty about any purchases I make! 8D Enablers, woo!

I feel so privileged whenever my AA badge gives me early access to DR, lol.

We lingered until they shut down around eight. It wasn’t that late, but apparently there are no restaurants open downtown on a weeknight after sundown. Except Subway. So we grab some sandwiches to go, wait forever for a bus, then go home. Anticipation for the next day is high!

FRIDAY

The Exhibits Hall was open to Exhibitors at 8am and open to the public at 10am. The Art Show opened for set-up at 10am and opened to the public at noon. We were up and ready to go by a quarter to seven, but we just barely missed the bus we were planning to take. ._. We were just on the other side of the street when the bus rolled by, but we didn’t feel like chasing after it… especially since we were at the bottom of a hill with a 45 degree slope, and chasing the bus meant dragging two very heavy suitcases up said hill. NOPE. Too early in the morning for that. So we just waited another twenty minutes or so for the next bus. Good thing we were early anyway.

Bringing luggage onto the bus, while physically annoying and difficult, wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be. The drivers didn’t care at all, at least, and other passengers tended to be understanding about us encroaching on their space. There was actually a nice lady that recognized us as con-goers and chatted with us a bit on the bus. We got dropped off just a few blocks from the convention center, so it was very convenient. Also convenient: a Kinko’s in the lobby of the convention center, an Office Depot and a couple of banks down the street, and several Starbuckses within a three block radius.

Kiiyame and I passed no less than eight badge-checkers on our way into the Exhibits Hall. A mix of convention and building staff, there were two at the junction between the main elevators and the sky bridge and six more scattered between the sky bridge and we got to the main doors. There weren’t even that many attendees milling around yet, but they were vigilant anyway! :o

Another regular of the Texas con circuit, John Yume, was up here for the weekend, along with some of her friends from Portland, and they were tabling right next to us. I left everyone to set up while I attended to my first table lackey duty: COFFEE RUN. Though honestly, the coffee run was probably more for me than anyone else, haha. I ran into Cari on the way out, so I took down a coffee order for her too! Caffeine. It is good.

Look at how roomy Artist Alley is. :o

But I actually stopped at the Office Depot first to pick up some paper and index cards, since I was planning to take sketch commissions at Kiiyame’s table all weekend. The place was deserted, but that just meant that the staff were ultra-attentive, and I got what I needed pretty fast. Meanwhile, the line at the Starbucks ran out the door (though there were more businessfolk than con-goers), but the baristas were also cheerful and efficient, so even though I had a list of orders, it didn’t take that long.

Kiiyame was pretty much done prepping the table when I got back, and we still had about half an hour to the grand opening, so we made another round through the dealers since a lot more people were set up now. There were actually quite a few artists in the DR area too, including Cari and Savannah (Amya Chronicles). There were also a ton of people I’d seen at ECCC, like Enfu and Dancing Heron, and some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, like Pawstar!

The Dealer’s Room at Sakura-Con is the largest I’ve seen. I never got to see the A-kon DR because I was so busy that con, but since Sakura is at a convention center instead of a hotel, it’s probably safe to say that it’s much bigger. There were hundreds of vendors there, peddling everything from standard anime goods (figures, plush, wallscrolls) to boxes of doujinshi to steampunk jewelry to non-steampunk jewelry to new and used games and books. Even Uwaijimaya, the area Japanese grocery store, was there, along with Half-Priced Books and Copic, not to mention all the big industry folk, like Bandai, Yen Press, NIS America, and Nico Nico Douga. That all of us were together in the same room made me feel vaguely special, haha.

Still, this meant that we all had the same hours. Friday and Saturday, the Exhibits Hall hours were 10am to 6pm. Sunday, they were 10am to 4pm. Eight hour days at max? Those hours are far too reasonable for Artist Alley!

Kiiyame's table, Friday morning.

The Exhibits Hall actually opened a few minutes later than scheduled, but while the queue outside looked formidable, it was underwhelming when they were actually let in — even with hundreds of booths and tables, there was plenty of room in the hall, so the crowds felt tame and casual for the most part. Shortly after opening, I left Kiiyame at the table and went off to the Art Show again.

But not before snapping this picture of Kyoko and witch!Sayaka (Madoka Magica).

The new custom stamps I’d ordered came in Thursday, so I decided to stamp the backs of all of my prints with my new site URL and such. Because labeling all of them the night before hadn’t been tedious enough, amirite? But I was in no rush to do anything or go anywhere anyway.

Going over the con schedule, there really weren’t many panels I was interested in… it seemed like there were a lot of panels dedicated to introducing people to things, which I didn’t see a point in attending if I was already familiar with the subject, and there weren’t many subjects I didn’t at least know the basics of. There were a lot of voice actor panels, too, which generally don’t interest me, especially now that I don’t watch nearly as many dubs as I used to. (Actually, there was a livedubbing panel with Todd Haberkorn and Steve Blum I intended to go to, but in the end I forgot about it and missed it. <_< I am bad at this being an attendee thing.)

So I took my time and ended up helping Cari and the Art Show staff label and inventory all of her stuff. It was nice helping out!

There were a TON of Avatar cosplayers at Sakura-Con. I imagine Korra has something to do with it.

When I got back to the Artist Alley, I took over manning the table so Kiiyame could get started on her massive shopping list before the popular items sold out. At first it was kind of weird selling at a table without any of my own stuff on it, but it once I got back into the groove of things and familiarized myself with Kiiyame’s merch and where she kept everything behind the table, it really wasn’t that different. It was still fun talking to people, and it was still fun making sales. And after a while, I hung up my own commission examples and proceeded to confuse everyone. :D

It was a pretty slow Friday though. The roominess of the Exhibits Hall wasn’t a bad thing, but it definitely contributed to a subdued and underwhelming feeling. Sakura-Con’s official 2011 attendance was about 600 over A-kon’s (and just 100 under Anime Boston’s), so naturally I’m going to draw a lot of comparisons, along with ECCC, which took place at the same venue. There are a lot of different factors to consider — Sakura-Con’s venue is much, much bigger than A-kon’s, and despite having a lower attendance by at least 10,000, Sakura-Con occupied more physical space at the Washington State Convention Center than ECCC — but still.

Aside from a few popular areas, like the sky bridge where a lot of professional photographers were congregated, the hallway traffic was pretty manageable, in my opinion. There was plenty of room for attendees to sit along the walls and in the handful of chairs and tables available, and there were tons of staff members around to direct people to where they wanted to be and to move people aside if they did stop traffic with cosplay photos. And the hallways were actually more crowded than the Exhibits Hall! Weird!

One of the main escalators: busy, but not ridiculous.

It was nice not to have to fight through teeming masses traveling between the Art Show and the Exhibits Hall, but there is definitely some benefit to having a crowded Exhibits Hall. Crowds mean movement is more restricted, which means people are forced to stop at tables they might otherwise have overlooked — the people in front of them are preventing them from moving forward, so they may as well look at the table next to them. There were a hundred tables in the Artist Alley; it’s very easy to overlook things, even if you’re looking for them specifically. Mild crowding is a great equalizer; large open spaces allow people beeline from one particularly shiny table to the next, skipping all the tables in between. Everyone strives to be that extra shiny table, but there’s only so much you can do.

Derpy and Rarity -- there were SO MANY PONIES! *_*

Spike!

Seriously. It was a brony infestation. ♥

So yeah, Friday was a bit slow. The poor guy manning his (probably) girlfriend’s table across the aisle from us looked bored out of his mind the whole time. Kiiyame and I took turns at the table, but I think I probably ended up spending a lot more time there than she did just because she had so much shopping to do, lol. I didn’t mind at all though. Despite it being full of someone else’s wares, it was actually still hard for me to stay away from the table… I liked being at the table. ;__; It is comfortable and familiar and safe at the table. I’m not spending money when I’m at the table! As it was though, I think I did make most of my purchases on Friday, including my biggest single item purchase at any convention. It was a good deal okay. U_U

STEREOPONY CONCERT

At ~5:30pm, half an hour before the Exhibits Hall closed, I went off to find the line for the Stereopony concert. There were probably two hundred people in it already when I got there, but I’m sure it would have been worse  if people had been allowed to line up earlier (Sakura-Con does not allow people to start waiting for any event more than half an hour ahead of time). I actually like Stereopony a lot, but it’s a big departure from how, um, dedicated, I was to bands like Dir en grey and L’Arc~en~Ciel from the hey day of my J-rock fanaticism. I mean, hell, I don’t even know the names of all the girls in Stereopony. :o Not gonna lie, it was kind of nice not caring at all how far back in the line I was.

Line for Stereopony.

Of course, line position didn’t matter much in the end. The main concert area was also pretty roomy — there was plenty of space to accommodate everyone that’d been standing in line. There were two large sections of seating in the back, followed by the main control area for the lighting and sound guys, then the open floor area, which was hardly a quarter-filled when I got there. I ended up probably fifteen people back from the stage; not a bad position at all, even if there was a tall dude in a top hat diagonally in front of me. <_< Come on, man. Take off your hat. (He did, eventually.)

They really liked those smoke machines.

There was a big screen behind the stage and two more screens on either side. They were set on the Sakura-Con logo when we filed in, but swapped to the Stereopony logo when the band came on about five minutes after people were settled.

I’m most familiar with their first album, Hydrangea ga Saiteiru, along with the themes they did for Gundam 00 (“Namida no Mukou”) and That One Series Which Will Not be Named (“Tsukiakari no Michishirube”), so I didn’t recognize the first couple of songs of the set. The band seemed to be using the first few songs to warm up anyway, as Aimi’s formal introduction of the band did not come until after the third song. The crowd was pretty calm to start with as well, though there were a handful of super excited fanboys that wasted no time rocking out.

Stereopony @ Sakura-Con 2012

Their fifth song was evidently used in a series I haven’t seen. For the the duration of the song (apparently “Chiisana Mahou” from Tegami Bachi: Reverse), the two side screens played through random clips of the show — it was kind of distracting, but kind of enticing too? I still don’t know anything about the series, but it looked kind of neat, anyway. The band seemed to get more energetic the longer they played. The bassist in particular looked really into everything she was playing and sang along frequently with the vocalist. I love it when it’s obvious the band is enjoying themselves. The floor got more crowded as the show went on to, and it was fun being a part of it even if I still didn’t know most of the songs.

Aimi, the vocalist and lead guitarist.

The first song I recognized was “effective line,” about halfway through the set, followed by “Tsukiakari no Michishirube” two songs after that. The full setlist can be found on this site here. In between songs, Aimi would occasionally talk to the crowd. Her English was pretty choppy (it took me a full ten seconds to realize she had addressed us as “Seattle” at one point) and it was obvious she really only knew a handful of phrases, but it was still pretty adorable. <_< I think the crowd’s response would have been a little better if her English had been more understandable, but ah, what can ya do.

My favorites from the set were “I do it” and the encore, “Hitohira no Hanabira,” which I thought was oddly appropriate. When it was over, they teased the crowd a little (perhaps unintentionally), but did not throw anything at us. The whole concert had been streamed live, I believe, and at the end, Stereopony’s cameramen apparently wanted to get a good shot of the crowd, but it was too dark. Aimi tried to get the lighting folks to turn up the lights in the front with her broken English (“Light-o prease~), but it took a while, haha.

Nohana, the bassist. Wish I could have managed better pics of the drummer, but alas!

And then they were gone and the crowd was milling out back into the room it had lined up in as there was a autograph session directly after. I thought about it in the time it took for me to get from the stage to the door, but I decided I was too tired to hang out in another line and went to find Kiiyame instead.

There was this Okami meet-up outside the concert area as I was leaving. :o

It was half past seven, so Exhibits Hall was closed by then, and we had decided to meet outside the Art Show room. Since we collectively had a ton of stuff (better to buy things and bring them home before Sunday so we don’t have anything extra when we have to do the suitcase and public transit dance again, yeah?), we took turns going in to check out the Art Show properly. There had still been a few artists that hadn’t set up yet when I’d left that morning, so it was my first time making a complete round of the show.

To be honest, I was pretty disappointed in the lack of original art in the show (as in, the real, physical piece VS a print, not original VS fanart). A vast majority of the art was prints, and almost all of the prints were open editions — or at least, if they were limited editions, it wasn’t clear how many were in the edition, which is kind of important? I think by virtue of being in the Art Show, because of the way everything is presented, most browsing through would assume that the pieces were limited or special in some way. After all, why would you bid on something if you knew you could just go over to the Artist Alley and buy the exact print directly from the artist without worrying about being outbid? This would actually also benefit the artist too, since Sakura-Con doesn’t take a commission off sales in the AA like it does in the Art Show.

Admittedly, I’m miffed about there being so many prints in the show because prints are obviously priced lower than originals, so having so many prints kept pricing expectations lower. There were no bids on any of my pieces at the end of Friday; my minimum bids were much higher than just about everything else in the show, but regardless, I know they are very reasonable minimum bids. I could have, and probably should have, done something to make it clearer that the pieces in my panel were not prints, but I’m not sure there’s much of a market for originals in the Art Show anyway, if everything else is prints.

Jeff said that the traffic had been pretty light throughout the day, but seemed reassured when I told him that it hadn’t been that busy down in the Exhibits Hall either.

Tiger and Bunny~. Men cosplaying men! IMAGINE THAT. ♥

We took the bus home after we were done at the Art Show. We ate some food and then watched the first four episodes of Tiger and Bunny. Kiiyame had been fantarding pretty hard over it (squee at ALL THE TIGER & BUNNY THINGS IN THE DEALER’S ROOM, YEAHHH~), but I had only seen two random episodes, so I suggested we marathon through it that weekend because being left out is lame! Besides, I’d been planning to watch it for forever anyway and having someone watch it with me is the surest way to get it off my to-watch list.

But we only watched four episodes on Friday because man it was a long day and we were tired and dang, Hulu, you sure have lots of commercials. U_U

SATURDAY

I’m not entirely sure why we were compelled to get up at basically the same time we did Friday, but we did, despite not needing to set up again and despite having already made many purchases from other vendors. There were more attendees milling about when we got to the convention center this time though, and the staffers guarding the Exhibits Hall were even more vigilant about checking badges as we made our way past.

We basically spent the whole time leading up to the 10am show time browsing other  people’s booths and tables and bothering them while they set up for the day. I’d already done my “in depth” round of the Artist Alley Friday, so I spent more time poking around the Dealer’s part of the hall. There were a couple of doujinshi I would have liked, but I balked at the import prices. After buying a majority of my doujin for ¥200 a piece in Ikebukuro, it was really hard to accept $18 USD as the going price for the same book. Anyway, I actually already own all of the Asucaga books by Nijika Kotohira the sellers had and that was mostly what I was looking for. I guess it’s a good thing I mostly ship canon things anymore? (Wait, Asucaga was canon too.) Doujinshi is an expensive habit.

Kyuubey be pimpin'.

I spent a lot of time looking for Madoka Magica merchandise of Kyoko for my brother. There was actually a big pull-out Madoka poster in the Sakura-Con program, and Yen Press was giving away a bunch of postcards at their booth (among a billion other freebies!), but hilariously, Kyoko is excluded in almost all of the official promo art. I have no idea why! I don’t really like any of the girls in the series (my favorite character is Kyuubey), so I don’t really care, but it’s still perplexing? In one set of blind boxes, all of the girls have two different poses. Except Kyoko. She just gets one. She’s the last of the girls to get a Figma and Nendoroid, too, I think. Is she really that unpopular??

It was very handy having Kiiyame around while browsing figures though — she is the resident expert at spotting bootlegs. o_o I can spot you some Pokemon bootlegs, but that’s about it. I don’t have nearly as much knowledge about bootleg Nendoroids and trading figures. There weren’t that many dealers carrying illegitimate goods, and of those, only a small handful were obvious enough that I could tell, so I would guess that many of the dealers weren’t aware either. One booth had the derpiest looking bootleg Kyuubey plush though. Oh man, why didn’t I take a picture of it. o_o It was so ridiculous looking. There was also this terrible giant Charmander plush. It was pretty bad.

Ponies. Ponies everywhere~.

We went back to the table when the doors opened at 10am. Things were a bit busier Saturday, but it was still… calm. Compared to both ECCC and A-kon, it was very calm. There were a few industry panels I was kind of maybe interested in attending in the afternoon (I ended up completely forgetting again, oops), but really, I was content to just sit at the table all day. To keep myself occupied, I doodled a bunch of commission examples and eventually managed to snag a couple of real commissions, including a half dozen Hetalia sketches for a group of friends.

There was also this commission. This was the best commission:

Color sketch card commission of Toph. :3

Around 3pm, Robin texts me to meet up. :o Robin Sevakis is the creator of the Anime News Nina webcomic at Anime News Network and had contacted me a few months ago about doing guest strips. I guess I never mentioned that here! (I really am terrible about updating this with anything other than con reports and pen reviews…) But four of the six strips I did are up (start here), and the last two should be up by the end of the month. Anyway, we figured it would be cool to hang out for a bit since we were both attending the con!

Robin, her husband (sorry, dude, forgot your name!), and I chatted about all manner of random things for about half an hour while wandering through the Exhibits Hall. They were planning to attend a Kuragehime-themed workshop on making your very own jellyfish plush/doll at 4pm, and so went off to drop things off at their car at about a quarter till. I’d been unaware of this workshop, but Kuragehime was an okay series and who doesn’t like jellyfish plushies, so I said I’d meet them at the workshop.

Who doesn’t like jellyfish plushies indeed! The line for the workshop snaked awkwardly down a narrow hallway. It was obvious that there were way more people in line than could fit into the room. A few minutes before the workshop was scheduled to start, a staff person counted down the line to the 40-person capacity of the room. The 40th person wasn’t even halfway to the end of the line. Sadness all around. Robin and her husband arrived on scene to the bad news, but we hung around a bit anyway, looking/waiting for Bamboo, another ANN staffer that was supposed to meet us there.

At least we got some cute Kuranosuke and Tsukimi cosplayers out of it.

In the end, the workshop was actually canceled about five minutes after it was supposed to start. o_o A reason wasn’t given, but the disappointed attendees that had waited in line were given the supplies they needed to make the  jellyfish plushies themselves and sent on their way. Ah, anime cons, where things always go as planned! We did meet up briefly with Bamboo though, along with a Canadian aniblogger (?), and some guys from FUNimation.

Afterwards, Robin, her husband, and I wandered down to the Art Show; they hadn’t been there yet, and I wanted to see how things were going. There were a few more bids on pieces here and there, but I didn’t think more than ten pieces would end up going to auction (it was three bids to auction). I was happy to see that a lot of the pieces that Cari, Amanda, and Jessica had for direct sale were sold though. I finally wandered through the charity auction part of the room while there too. Almost all of the items were posters and things that had been signed by anime staff or voice actors (some Japanese, some American), though there were one or two pieces of original art as well. Pretty neat.

Then the three of us sat around a while in the emptyish area between the Art Show and the main escalators, talkin’ about anime and fandom and keeping up with new things and life and work and such. It was nice! :3 It was kind of weird that we could just sit in a quiet hallway on the Saturday afternoon of one of the biggest anime cons in the country though — Sakura-Con really did have a lot of empty spaces in between the action.

It is pretty awesome when cosplayers get into their characters like this~.

It was just past five when I got back to the Artist Alley. Almost closing time already! Moi dix Mois was having a concert that evening, but I decided to pass. Kiiyame had a panel she was kind of interested in in the evening, but she decided to pass too. We packed up and bailed as soon as the Exhibits Hall closed. Like the empty hallways, being out of the convention center more than an hour before sundown was pretty surreal, but hey! Tiger and Bunny was more important! Watchin’ animu during an animu convention! Whoa!

We made it through to the halfway point, episode 13, before passing out for the night.

SUNDAY

Sunday morning, before the Exhibits Hall opened to the public, I raided the Copic booth! It was glorious. There were actually two other neurotic artists sifting through the hundreds of Sketch markers with me, looking for the perfect colors while cross-referencing color sheets. Comrades in arms! The Copic employees were still setting up, but they were good about letting us dig through things and answering questions. The Copic booth was really something to marvel at, man. I think they had just about every Copic product there, including every single Sketch marker color. Sadly, they only had the standard store set of refill inks, which meant they didn’t have the RV11, R11, E01, and YR16 refills that I needed.

But! They had a cool deal going where I could order anything they didn’t have on hand from the website at the convention price and get free shipping, so it was pretty much the same thing. And convention prices were awesome. Copic Sketch markers were $5 a pop and refills were $6. I KNOW IT IS KIND OF SAD that I think a $5 marker is cheap, but shit, Copic Sketches retail at like $6.99 now. :| Five bucks is a goddamn deal. Why artists are poor: art supplies are stupidly expensive. Sob. I end up grabbing about eight or nine new markers and ordered the refills through their website.

I think the Mako and Bolin cosplayers should switch characters, but oh well!

Sunday actually felt like the busiest day of the convention, though not by much. I did more commissions on Sunday. Some Sundays are slow because everyone’s already done spending and are already heading out for the weekend. Other Sundays are busy because everyone is all, “I have x amount of money left! What can I buy?!” Sakura-Con was neither? It was weird, but Friday and Saturday had been kind of weird too.

I wish I had taken the time to talk more with the artists there. I’m not really sure why I didn’t other than that I didn’t want to accidentally spend more money than I already had. It would have been nice to see which artists were local and to make new connections up here in the Northwest. And seeing how everyone else was doing is always a good way to get some perspective. My next Northwest-region convention isn’t until September. :c

I did chat briefly with my SCAD buddy Billie (DragonBeak)’s little sister Betty (Kafai) though. She flew in from Savannah (as she’s also attending SCAD now) and had all of these adorable buttons that I might have bought even though I still have like 80 buttons I need to put somewhere since I ran out of room on my hat. U_U

Other commissions I did for the same guy that commissioned Toph.

Around noon, I went off to see the Art Show auction. Which was apparently four floors above the actual Art Show, so I ran a little late finding the place. It was just as well though. The charity auction was going to be held directly after the Art Show auction at the same location, but there was some mix-up with the rooms, and we ended up in the room next to what was on the schedule? I dunno! I didn’t miss anything though.

Okay, bronies, how much does friendship cost?

I was a little surprised at how many people were there, even if a vast majority of them were there for the charity auction. There were about a dozen Art Show pieces that went to auction — a majority of them open edition prints by either Robin Kaplan (the Gorgonist) or R. H. Potter. The former had a couple of sci-fi prints go to auction, including multiple Doctor Who pieces, and the latter had a ton of fox design prints. The most spirited bidwar was over the My Little Ponies piece above, which I think ended up going for $125 or whereabouts, though there was also some back and forth on a couple of the R.H. Potter pieces between two guys who apparently really like foxes. :o

The auctioneer did a good job of keeping things entertaining with fun commentary and quips at the bidders. At one point, two friends were bidding against each other, so the auctioneer commented with stuff like “Anyone for $45? $45 and you can save this friendship!” and “Sold! For $70 and a best friend!” It was fun. :o

I wandered back up to Art Show proper after the auction was over, intending to check out my pieces from the show and bring them over to the Artist Alley, but the staff were all busy handling the auction winners, so I decided I’d just come back later.

Kiiyame got a picture of this Lapras gijinka while I was away~.

I got back to the Artist Alley around 1:30pm, I guess? I did some more commissions, realized suddenly at some point that I did not have my camera on me, realized that I probably left it in the auction room, ran off to go find it, and found it right where I left it. x__x The Exhibits Hall would be closing at four, so when I got back to the table, Kiiyame went to go make one last round of the Dealer’s Room. I told her she wasn’t allowed to spend any more money though, because I think she bought more on each day of the convention than I did for the whole weekend. :|

She came back with a stack of seventeen manga and a “LET ME EXPLAIN.” :|

Falco punch?

Apparently the Half-Priced Books booth was selling manga for $2 each and $1 each after the first five. Or something. Some crazy deal. Fair enough. u_u; I went to go check it out, mostly to dig for Tsutomu Nihei books bro is missing. The only manga I’m personally looking for at the moment are the volumes of Bakuman I’m missing, but that’s more a “I’ve been putting it off” than a “I can’t find it anywhere” thing.

It was a feeding frenzy at Half-Priced Books booth. They had a pretty small space — a single 10′x10′ booth, I think — and there were like fifty people packed in there rummaging through the shelves. I was surprised to see that a lot of the books were in good condition, too. Sure, there was a fair share with bent spines and dogeared pages, but man, there was a lot of like-new manga for two dollars or less. :o And the selection was decent as well — lots of out of print TOKYOPOP books, a good number of consecutive volumes, popular titles like Gravitation, Sgt. Frog, and Reborn!

One of the employees manning the booth said they had twelve boxes of books left, but didn’t have room to pull them out until more of what was already out sold. She said that earlier, she had been “literally pouring books out of the boxes and directly into the crowd” and that “books were being snatched out of the air.” It was HPB’s first time at Sakura-Con, and they were only there as a result of one dedicated employee’s persistent pestering of upper management. But according to the employee I spoke with, they had hit their minimum goal Friday morning, so hopefully they’ll be back. :o

Kiiyame found an Uncle Iroh. WHY DO ALL THE COOL PEOPLE COME BY WHEN I'M NOT THERE. 8C

Went back to the Art Show around three to pick up my stuff. I wasn’t surprised that none of my pieces had gotten bids, and I wasn’t upset because I know I can eventually get my asking price on all the pieces just by having them at my table at subsequent cons (I’ve sold a few originals this way before, after all), but I suppose it was still a bit disappointing. The number of prints I sold off the Art Show table was also rather sad when you take Sakura-Con’s numbers into consideration.

It was still only my first time doing Art Show, but my impression for now is that Artist Alley is superior in every way — there is just so much more traffic in Artist Alley, and again, no commission is taken off AA sales, and you get paid immediately. Really, unless your piece happens to go to auction and gets warred over (and not all pieces that go to auction are fought over), there isn’t much benefit to selling through the Art Show unless you’re just not keen on sitting at a table in AA all weekend, and I obviously don’t have a problem with that. I made more doing a tiny handful of commissions at Kiiyame’s table than I did at the Art Show.

That said, I’m gonna give the Art Show another shot at Sakura-Con next year. And I have gone ahead and reserved space in the Art Show at A-kon as well. This Art Show ended up being disappointing, but it wasn’t a total loss, and I’m interested in seeing how A-kon’s show compares.

Little kids are good for two things: singing in choirs and being adorable in chibi cosplay.

When I got back to the table, the announcer had just begun his gradual countdown to closing time. Kiiyame was darting around doing end-of-show button trades with nearby artists. Things wound down pretty easily in the half hour. There weren’t many last-minute purchases, so there weren’t many stragglers. The announcer was also really adamant about all minors being out of the hall when the forklifts came in through the loading dock (apparently it’s against Washington state law for them to be around).

We broke down pretty leisurely while talking to Yume and her friends and some of the other artists. The stock that Kiiyame sold freed up enough space in her suitcases that I could cram all of my stuff in as well, which was great since that freed me to help her drag said suitcases out. Three very heavy suitcases, two out of shape ladies, and a bus that was pulling towards the bus stop at the same time we were. o_o

We chased it this time. There was no hill. We jaywalked with those suitcases. And we caught the bus, arriving at the bus stop at the same time it did. Hallelujah.

We got back to the apartment around six (?), sorted through our loot, took pictures, had a good time doing nothing for a bit, ate some food, and then watched more Tiger and Bunny. Kiiyame was lame, gave up early, and went to sleep around episode 18 or something, but I powered through and finished the series around 2:30am. It was a pretty good show. U_U

BY THE WAY. IT WAS ALSO EASTER. I KEPT FORGETTING.

OVERALL

Sakura-Con was okay.

It was one of the better organized conventions I’ve been to for sure. On-site staff, both for the convention center and for the convention itself, were incredibly amiable and helpful. The space was well utilized for the most part, signage was plentiful, the programming seemed diverse, and their guest list was pretty impressive. It’s probably a great con to go to as an attendee, but for me, it really highlighted the fact that I have no idea how to just be an attendee anymore!

Sakura-Con 2012

My artist perspective is limited because I didn’t have a table of my own and didn’t talk to as many artists/dealers as I could have, but it felt like a pretty slow weekend to me, in the Alley at least. On Sunday, I went over to the AA control booth to inquire about tables for next year. They’re scheduled to go on sale in November again, which is fine, but the AA head mentioned that they were probably going to add tables, maybe to 120 total, so that they “don’t sell out in a minute.” This year, there were exactly 100 tables, plus 16 Small Press booths, for 116 artisty tables total. If they don’t also increase the number of Small Press (or if more people don’t apply for Small Press), that’s 136 artisty tables for next year.

That really isn’t a bad number of tables, but I seriously doubt a twenty table increase will do much to curb demand. A-kon has 120 tables this year and still sold out in a minute. Anime Boston has 144 tables, but they don’t use a purely first-come, first-serve system. Instead, if Sakura-Con’s AA felt slow this year, a twenty table increase might mean that it will be even slower next year.

I’ve never been to and can’t speak for Anime Boston, but A-kon was busy last year. A-kon was busy from the second we opened on Friday to the second we closed on Sunday, and I drew for hours and hours every day to keep up with commissions. A-kon could stand to add more tables, but they don’t physically have the room (for now; they’re moving venues soon though). Sakura-Con has plenty of room, but I don’t know that it should increase tables just yet, even if it means it might be easier for me to actually snag one next year.

Artist Alley.

Part of the slowness might have come from sharing space and sharing hours with the Dealer’s Room, which was always noticeably busier. I believe this is the first year it was set up like that? I always have mixed feelings about this. A 6pm closing time is early for Artist Alley no matter what you compare it to, and being open past Dealers is always a huge advantage. But being able to leave stuff overnight in a highly secured room (so many badge-checkers!) is fantastic, especially when you have to catch a bus home. So I don’t think I’d want them to move the AA out of the Exhibtis Hall.

A different solution might be to change the layout of the Exhibits Hall so that Artist Alley is the middle area and the Dealers are on either side of the main entrance. Attendees will always beeline to Dealers, but AA is easier to overlook. That’s kind of how it was at ECCC, where you hit AA as soon as you enter the hall, but the Artist/Dealer divide at ECCC was much subtler, and ECCC has a more indie, artist-centric focus compared to Sakura. So I dunno.

Loot! Everything to the left of the markers and under the buttons was free.

Right now, as an artist, I don’t think it’d be worth it to table at Sakura-Con if I weren’t local, but I am local, and I’d need to properly table myself to really be able to call it either way. It’s kind of frustrating being so limited in my assessments right now, haha. I suppose next year will be doubly interesting then, assuming I actually remember what day table sign-ups are this time. U_U

Now.

How many of you actually read all that? o_o THANK YOU. But WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. o_o

Anyway, here are all the pictures. The pink tree blossoms and everything after are photos Kiiyame took.

Not that I’m complaining. It was really refreshing being able to attend a con as just an attendee again, if still ridiculously exhausting.

I guess this was also my first time as a normal attendee at a comic con (as opposed to an anime con). One of the things that kind of surprised me was the relatively short hours. ECCC’s Saturday hours were from 10am to 7pm — just nine hours. The sun wouldn’t even be down when the show closed! Meanwhile, many anime cons run twenty-four hours over the course of the weekend, with mostly-video and gaming programming running late into the night. I mean, ECCC had plenty of after-hours, unofficial happenings, mostly at local bars, but those don’t really count. This basically highlights the difference in demographics, I guess. Anime cons = high school and college kids partying it up with minimal supervision. Comic cons = fans and professionals of a wider age range, 20′s-60′s and beyond, coming together to geek out, make connections, and… buy a ton of things.

(Fair warning: This post is just shy of 5,000 words.)

So Saturday morning, I took a 9:30 bus downtown. It was drizzly and windy, but not too unpleasant a spring morning. It was only about three blocks from the bus stop to the convention center anyway. There were a pair of Browncoats on the bus; their lanyards gave them away by proclaiming them as such. There weren’t very many people in costumes on the streets, but con-goers always have a way of being obvious, plain clothes or not. I mean, after all, plain clothes is what, an Avengers shirt? A Batman baseball cap? An arrow to the knee? Gratuitous zombie make-up? And apparently ECCC was giving away these bright green bandanas with every badge, so there were a ton of those to be seen.

The main floor of the con was on the fourth floor, so it was quite a ways to get to registration from the lobby of the Washington State Convention Center. The staff were pretty good about directing traffic, though signage was pretty poor on the lower floors. I think part of this was because it was still the beginning of the day?

Registration was in a large vestibule area with about a dozen volunteers processing lines split into cash, credit, and pre-reg. Of course, the latter was the longest line — more than double the length of the other two combined. But while things were busy, the crowd was calm, and the lines moved very fast. Can’t speak for later in the day, but it seemed to me that the con had a good handle on things that morning. After registration, there was a large open area (the skybridge) where a ton of people were taking cosplay photos, and beyond that was the main exhibition hall, which opened right at TopatoCo‘s large Artist Alley presence.

David Maiki ! talking to a customer.

And so, within ten minutes of getting my badge at ECCC, I’d already dropped a significant portion of my budget on Wondermark books. It was an accident. ._.

But man, it is so much harder to resist pretty books when they’re standing so nicely stacked in front of you. Online, you browse through the stores and look at the price and go, “I don’t need to be spending that much money right now,” but when you’re standing in front of the table, it’s like “Hey, I have this amount in my wallet right now. I could buy this and own it, right now. No delays! No shipping! I can get it signed! INSTANT GRATIFICATION. Goddammit all.” I actually had to resist buying everything on the table because all of it was good stuff, man. And it was presented so well.

David Maiki ! was a really nice guy, too! Prior to making my purchases, I chatted with him briefly about working on the comic, how he amassed his picture archive, what percentage of each comic he drew himself, and stuff like that. I also requested that the one-fifth starhorse make another appearance in the future, because that was an awesome little storyline. :3

Becky Dreistadt signing my Axolotl print!

After that, I stumbled upon Tiny Kitten Teeth‘s table. I didn’t even know they were going to be there. :o I admit I’ve only skimmed the comic and couldn’t really get into the story, but Becky’s art is still freakin’ gorgeous. :| It’s just so nostalgic and technically sound. And her prints were super nice as well, printed on heavy stock with watercolor paper texture, which made it hard to tell they were prints at all. So I got the Samurai Axolotl. Because axolotls. U_U

In case you could not already guess, most of my time at the convention was spent talking to artists and buying things (often that I did not intend to buy, dangit). I might have mentioned that the creators of at least half the webcomics I read and revere were there, many of which I do not yet own things by, so it was really hard to resist. It’s funny that conventions are things that you spend money to go to and most of what you get is the privilege of spending more money. There were other things to do of course — panels and gaming and such, but mostly, these aren’t things I’m nearly as interested in.

Ian Jay signing my book while his tablebuddy Rochelle looks on.

I picked up an adorable Doctor Who magnet and a raven button from the Gorgonist, then ran into fellow SCAD grad, Ian Jay, who was tabling with his friend Rochelle. Ian draws some pretty super comics and recently funded and printed a huge collection of his comics from the last several years, so I picked that up! We talked a little about the ill-fated SCAD Sequential anthology, the last edition of which we both contributed to, other conventions, and book printers. I really need to start writing these sorts of things down though, lol. I think I talked about book printers with a dozen different artists and for some reason thought I could remember them all in my head, along with all the day’s events. HA. Self-publishing research: failed.

Artist Alley was laid out mostly in islands, though there were also tables along the left and far walls. To the right (from the main entrance), the Alley eventually hits the Exhibitors’ Booths, though there’s no real distinction between the two spaces since everything is in one giant room together. It might have been obvious when one section crossed over to the other because the exhibitors’ booths had huge, often towering, displays, but while most artists had relatively modest displays, there were at least a handful that went the extra mile. In particular, Girl Genius‘s booth really stood out. It encompassed an entire half island. o_o

Girl Genius giant booth of doom.

It is interesting to note that because most artists at ECCC were promoting and selling their own comics, most tables looked like this: simple book stands with books on them. I know, right? At anime cons, the trend is to build taller. PVC and wire grid cube displays allow artists to display dozens of prints, making their tables little caves with artwork plastered all over the exterior. Apparently, most comic artists don’t carry a lot of prints. Some did, sure, but even then, selections were small. A few would have portfolios to show off their original pages, but mostly it was their books, and that’s all they needed.

ECCC’s Artist Alley did not only feature comic artists though. There were a good number of character designers, animators, illustrators, jewelers, and even a couple of musicians. Even so, for almost everyone with a PVC/grid cube display, you can tell that they hit anime conventions primarily, haha. The designers, animators, and illustrators mostly had artbooks and sketchbooks featuring their work; a few of them had a small selection of prints. In fact, one illustrator (who did not have a business card :|) had a grand total of three 11×17 poster-prints available at his table. That was it. They were really gorgeous pieces of art though. I chatted with him a while — if I recall correctly, it was his first con selling, and he was doing pretty well!

The crowds in the Alley are still pretty chillaxy just before noon.

I wasn’t making my way through the Alley with in any particular path in mind. In fact, I didn’t even look at my con program/map until hours later. There were a ton of people I was familiar with in the area nearest to the entrance though, so I think I probably spent the first two hours just there. x_x Jhonen Vasquez made an appearance at the TopatoCo block around 11:30am. Invader ZIM and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac remain some of my favorite things, but I had completely forgotten to bring my crusty old single issues of JtHM. I would have been okay with re-buying issue #1 to get signed since they didn’t have the compilation book for sale, but I wasn’t particularly interested in spending an hour in line, and one about a mile long formed as soon as the dude sat down. U_U

I did, however, remember to bring in the two volumes of Johnny Wander that I already own! Yuko and Ananth’s table was pretty crowded the first couple of times I wandered by, but I eventually came around when they weren’t being mobbed. :3

Yuko signing my Johnny Wander books while Ananth waits his turn.

And then I found Kel McDonald (also a SCAD grad; I don’t know why I feel compelled to point all of them out), picked up a copy of As We Were+Strange Someone, and talked to her about… book printers! None of which I remember now! Kel was tabling next to Evan Dahm. I already own a signed copy of Rice Boy, but it was my first time seeing him at a con, so I said hello anyway! I am getting better at this talking to other artists thing. *_* He had a few short issues of Vattu, but I will probably pick up something up once it’s far enough along for a full book.

Also found Cari Corene (blix-it, SCADDIE), whom I met formally and hung out with at San Japan last year, chatted a while about… I dunno. Prints or something?? Sakura-Con? (She’s going, so I’ll see her again next week.) My random move to Seattle? And then she gave me a muffin! (This might have been the only food I ate at the entire convention, oops.) It was really, really nice being able to talk with Cari at length since previously, we were both chained to our tables, but this time, only one of us was! I’m pretty sure I talk to artists a lot more online because we’re always so busy and/or exhausted at conventions themselves. Eventually wandered away when she got hit with a wave of customers, but what can ya do. ;3

Had a similar run-in with Kevin, whom I saw a lot on the Texas con circuit, but he does cons all over the place, so I wasn’t surprised to see him there even if he was surprised to see me, haha. This surprised me though: Kevin recently got into Doctor Who and Sherlock, so we got to geek out over that. He isn’t going to be at Sakura-Con next week as he’ll be at Anime Boston instead (hello, there are six anime cons going on next weekend; what is this madness). Apparently one year, he and his girlfriend did an experiment to see whether Sakura-Con or Anime Boston was the more profitable show and AB won out. :O They’re similar-sized and similarly-run, as far as I know, so this is interesting information.

Ken Taya/Enfu was a cool dude farts rainbows.

I was not expecting to see Enfu at ECCC, but there he was! For once, this was an artist I discovered in the meatspace instead of on the Internet. A shore in Chinatown selling Japanese decorative goods carries some of his prints, and I was pretty tempted when I encountered them the first time. Cross-heritage oddities is something I can identify with, after all. I picked up this awesome print.

Though I hadn’t completed a full round in the Artist Alley, I crossed over into the exhibitors’ area at some point. Most of the booths in this area didn’t really interest me. Most of them were huge publisher booths promoting various properties I didn’t read and wasn’t enticed by. I know there were portfolio reviews going on somewhere, but I’ve more or less settled on the idea of self-publishing and was indifferent. There were a lot of merchandise vendors; rows and rows of longboxes occupied some booths, while others had racks of shirts, hats, hoodies, action figures, plushies, and the like. A couple of anime vendors had the standard stock of dakimakura, artbooks, blind boxes, as well as old DVDs and manga. Was surprised to see some fanart poster-prints of Bleedman‘s work at one booth, but didn’t look much into it. I don’t think they were there without his permission, anyway.

Then I ran across Sofawolf Press‘s booth! Had a very nice time chatting with the Sofawolf staff dude there about selling at a con with a rather different crowd. It was nice to hear that things were going well for them, even though a lot of folks at the show weren’t really interested. Also got to talk a few minutes with Kyell Gold about writing and editing. It kind of blows my mind that he writes most of his novels in a year or so. Few writers have that kind of focus, I think. Ended up buying some (too many) things I’d put off before, including Nordguard #1, and what do you know, half of Blotch (Tess) showed back up just in time to sign it for me. :D Wandered back to the Artist Alley shortly after.

WHERE IS BRUCE TIMM?

Bruce Timm (artist, co-creator, producer of Batman: The Animated Series, etc) had a table in the Alley, but he wasn’t there at all that I saw all morning. I’d brought my trade compilation of various Harley and Ivy comics that DC had published, including one by Timm. Not gonna lie, I circled back a lot to check if he was there, lol.

I didn’t know most of the artists nearer to the back of the room, but I ended up having conversations with a number of them anyway and it was a good time all around~.

Oh god crowded.

By early afternoon, the show floor was getting oppressively crowded. The place was already pretty difficult to navigate because of its sheer size, but with a few thousand other people hanging out, it took a very long time to get from one end of the hall to the other, no matter which way you were going, or trying to go.

It was just as well though, because one of the few panels I did kind of want to check out, the Batman: The Animated Series 20th Anniversary panel, was at 2pm… even if I didn’t remember until a quarter past. The panel room was across the skybridge from the exhibition hall, which meant traversing across the area where various unofficial cosplay photo ops were taking place. Really though, I didn’t see too many super impressive costumes over the course of the day. There were probably a dozen Harley Quinns and twice as many Doctors (Ten and Eleven seemed equally popular; I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anyone dressed as Nine, anyway, sadly), and a lot of superheroes I don’t know much about. Oh, also lots and lots of Adventure Time people. But it was mostly meh. If the cosplay to normally-dressed person ratio at an anime con is 1:2 (probably an exaggeration, but it sure feels like that sometimes!), then the ratio at ECCC was something like… 1:15, if that.

SUPER BLURRY PIC OF BATMAN: TAS PANEL. It was really dark in the room and my camera was all NOOOO okay. :c

Discreetly made my way into the Batman: TAS panel room from the back and found a seat in the fourth to last row, lol. It was a huge panel room, so I didn’t have much of a view, but that wasn’t really important anyway. Bruce Timm, Kevin Conroy (voice of Batman), and Tara Strong (voice of Batgirl, though not in B:TAS; voice of Harley in Batman: Arkham City) discussed a variety of topics, most of which were prompted by audience questions. To be honest, it wasn’t a very interesting or terribly informative panel aside from a couple of fun one-liners. Many of the questions were prefaced with proclamations of admiration and appreciation to the panelists, and while this wasn’t a bad thing in itself, some of these proclamations got rather lengthy and ate up a lot of time. <_<

One thing of interest: a fan brought up that DC is planning to make a The Dark Knight Returns movie and wondered if Conroy had been approached about being the voice of Batman. Conroy was unaware there was even such a thing in the works and responded with mock offense. It’s kind of sad, I guess, since for me, like many others, Conroy is the de facto voice of Batman in my head, but Conroy wasn’t cast for his most famous role in last year’s animated Batman: Year One either. As an aside, Conroy’s normal speaking voice sounds pretty similar to his Bruce Wayne and I think this is hilarious.

Another thing of interest: Bruce Timm talked a little about the creation of Harley Quinn and how she was never meant to be more than a one-shot, walk-on character, but the writers liked her and ended up putting her in virtually every Joker episode. Tara Strong also talked a bit about taking up the role of Harley in Arkham City and how she worked to find a medium between channeling Arleen Sorkin (Harley in B:TAS) and adding her own spin.

Casey and April~.

The panel ended at three, and I made my way back to the Artist Alley… to hover around Bruce Timm’s table because now there was a con volunteer there with a “this is the end of the line” sign, which surely meant that the guy was going to show up to sign random things thrust at him by fans, right?! The middle of AA is a pretty inconvenient place for a signing though, and while Timm’s presence at the con was relatively downplayed and not too many people were there, lines forming in the Alley = blocking other people’s tables = bad. So the poor volunteer kept telling people to disperse and to line up when the man was actually there.

So I wander through the Alley some more and kept finding tables I hadn’t stopped at before.

Nate Powell at his table.

Like Nate Powell‘s. This whole encounter was kind of surreal, really. x_x There was no one else browsing at his table, but he was really friendly without being over-attentive when I approached. I flipped through a couple of his books and really, really liked his inkwork. Strong black and white work with no color or tones is always really impressive to me. And hello, Eisner Award winner I’d never heard of. How did that happen? (Okay, so I don’t really pay as much attention to the Eisners as I could.) We chatted about the tools he uses and the prevalent themes in his books. And then I bought both Swallow Me Whole and Army Empire because I couldn’t decide. This almost never happens. o_o Prints maybe, but I rarely, rarely buy comics or books that I hadn’t read (at least parts of) beforehand or at least know a lot about already. And here, I didn’t even know Nate Powell’s name before stopping at his table. And though I won’t have time to read them until at least after Sakura-Con, I’m still sure that both books I bought are gonna be phenomenal. o_o

Stopped by a lot of other artist tables while checking back to Bruce Timm’s table every so often, but I was getting really, really tired. It was almost four. I had been on my feet for at least six hours, and I was carrying like fifty pounds of books I didn’t mean to buy. :| Artists behind tables wish they had more time to walk around. Attendees in front of tables just want a place to sit down a while. C’EST LA VIE.

STARE AT IT. KEEP STARING AT IT.

I remember suddenly that I still needed to go hunt down Claire Hummel/Shoomlah, who was not in Artist Alley, but somewhere down in the bowels of the Gaming area with her various video game and tabletop brethren. Going from the show floor to Gaming required taking escalators down to the third floor, where the media guests were doing photos, then going down two more escalators. The Gaming area on the ground floor was mostly video game demos and large booths selling tabletop and board games. I couldn’t find escalators to the basement level, so I just took the elevator… which was shockingly empty. A-kon, with 14-15k less people, had lines 15-20 people long to get onto the hotel elevators, but here was ECCC with completely empty ones. (There are lots of reasonable explanations, but still.)

Shot of the tabletop gaming area.

Basement-level Gaming was a whole bunch of tables with tabletop and board game demos in session. It was a very busy area, but not crazy crowded or anything.  There were a handful of artists along the far wall, and among them, the elusive Shoomlah~. I got to have a nice conversation with her about conventions and such before buying the set of her Disney princess postcards. I’d asked her if she would be at Sakura-Con next weekend and she said no — Norwescon is the same weekend. She’s interested in doing Sakura, though she isn’t sure if she’d do well with the crowd there. I told her I think she’d do fine. U_U So her stuff isn’t very anime; any fool can tell she’s just good. Besides, she has Doctor Who stuff. That’s all you need to do well anywhere these days. U_U;

Went back upstairs after that, and lo! Look who’s finally at his table! :D :D :D

Bruce Timm signing my Harley & Ivy book.

The line at his table was really quite short and moved really fast, haha. Timm wasn’t really having conversations with people, though it was hard to tell whether that was because people were being pressured to move on quickly, or because the fans in front of me just didn’t have speeches they wanted to give like the fans at the panel. For my part, I was good with just saying, “I really enjoy your work” and “Thanks very much.”

After that… after that, I was really ready to just sit down for a long time, lol. But I made one more sweep of the Alley to find Britney Lee again. I’d stopped by her table earlier in the day, but had a really, really hard time deciding what I wanted because all of her work is amazing, and even more amazing to see up close. Her prints, like Becky Dreistadt’s, were printed on thick, textured, watercolor-like paper, so even though her work is almost exclusively digital, it looked like gouache or something. And so very, very pretty. When I’d been by her table earlier, I saw someone buy one of her original cut paper pieces. It must have been the only one though, because I didn’t see any other cut papers, and understandably, she didn’t have prints of those (photographs could never do them justice).

Britney Lee signing the artbook I bought!

…I spent the last of my cash at her table and left the convention shortly after at about a quarter to five, haha. NOTHIN’ ELSE TO DO IF I’M DONE SPENDING MONEY. >_> Though really, at that point, I’d already overspent my budget because of people with danged card readers. <_< Mostly I am okay with this though, because my expenditures at ECCC have made up for relatively sparse spending at my last nineteen conventions! Yep. That’s how I’m gonna look at it. U_U I am determined to regret nothing.

OVERALL

ECCC was a blast!

It was great being able to walk around leisurely and talk to as many artists as I wanted without a table to rush back to. It was great being able to finally meet so many of the artists and writers for webcomics I’ve been reading for many years now — though there are actually a few, like Erika Moen (DAR!, Bucko, etc) and Danielle Corsetto (Girls With Slingshots), that I didn’t get to speak to directly because they were always being mobbed by other fans, ahahaha. And of course, it’s always nice to see con friends and old schoolmates — it’s one of the reasons I’m super excited for Otakon this summer. East coast again! Folks I haven’t seen in a few years!

I also really like making continued observations about the differences between anime and comic conventions, particularly where Artist Alley is concerned. I think I probably spend too much time thinking about everything related to Artist Alleys though. If you are (un)fortunate enough to follow both S-girl and I on Twitter, you’ve probably experienced more than one random tweetstorm on the matter. 8D

The convention seemed very well organized for the most part. I never had much of a reason to interact with volunteers or staff, but they had an obvious presence and were easy to spot in the crowd. The convention center staff were also pretty friendly, if obviously overwhelmed in some instances — many of the people checking badges at the entrance seemed to be convention center staff instead of con staff, and on my way out, I saw one dude walk in very quickly without getting his badge checked. The badge-checker called out, but the guy apparently didn’t hear, and the badge-checker kind of exasperatedly gave up and just let the guy go because it was too busy and crowded to bother.

I wonder if compared to ECCC, the convention center staff have an easier or more difficult time with Sakura-Con? They both take place there. More total attendees at ECCC, but many more teens at Sakura-Con. Hmmm.

ALL OF THE LOOT. I do not recommend hauling this around for 7-8 hours. Just sayin'.

And yeah, it was nice being able to support artists I’ve long admired by finally buying things. Man. So much buying of things. Look at this crazy pile. It’s good I had the foresight to bring an extra bag. I guess?? >_> Would I have bought less if I hadn’t had a way to carry it?! The world will never know.

BOOKS. I BOUGHT TOO MANY.

I will probably look into getting a table for next year, though I really need to haul ass on drawing more comics, even if they’re just a bunch of oneshots. I have actually produced far, far more art in the last few months than I have in ages, but most of it is sketches. Need to convert some of the output to finished stuff, I guess, though I don’t want (can’t let) the sketchwork to lessen. It’s inspiring to see so many people with their finished products, their bound books, their pages and pages and years and years of work. Gotta do more. Always gotta do more. I still don’t really like working on stuff, but I still really like having stuff done.

Next weekend is Sakura-Con. I will have things in the Art Show, but no table in the Alley. I will be the official table lackey of a friend though, so I will have a place to sit down for breaks (YESSSS). Cari actually suggested that I bring my stuff anyway and see about grabbing a no-show table, but I don’t think that will happen, lol. (Okay, so I actually emailed the AA staff just now and they said they don’t do walk-on claims for no-show tables. XD) Oh well!

Various signatures I gathered.

tl;dr ECCC WAS PRETTY AWESOME AND I KNOW ALL OF YOU ARE JEALOUS OF MY LOOT. ♥ HERE IS THE FULL GALLERY:

Aside from the new header image and some color updates, there aren’t that many visual changes though. I added a more prominent footer so it’s more informative and moved the social media links to the side. Most of the exciting changes are on the backend and should make management somewhat easier to me, assuming I don’t randomly rewrite everything again next spring.  ಠ_ಠ I’ve updated the Illustration page with more recent work and pruned some of the older things. I hope to keep it more up-to-date moving forward, but deviantART will still be the first gallery updated with new, finished work.

The Comics page has the most changes. The entirety of 狼来了(the wolves are here) is now there (previously unavailable), along with Sleep Pirates (previously readable only by digging through this blog), and I finally added The Black Cat (uploaded to dA in October). I will be adding the remaining 34 pages of Rainbows and Rainclouds to the site sometime this summer, I think. Two years hidden away in a printed book is long enough!

I spent a few straight days pouring over code things to write a new system for the Comics section, too. Each comic now has its own page and each page has its own page (with comments enabled!) so you aren’t reading each comic via a Lightbox script. While working on it, I had a lot of little issues with permalink structures and page slugs… most of them I managed to get through, but I’m still really annoyed that each comic’s individual page URLs can’t conform to the same structure. For example, if I wanted individual pages for “The Z Train” to be at /comic/the-z-train/pg01 and /comic/the-z-train/pg02 and so on, I can’t also have pages for “The Last Crane” at /comic/the-last-crane/pg01 because the last parts of those two URLs — the “pg01″ part –  are the same, despite the fact they’re housed under different comics.

So the workaround is to have individual page slugs set to stuff like /comic/the-last-crane/lastcrane-01 and /comic/the-z-train/ztrain-01 but this seems unnecessary and ugly to me. I’m not using ComicPress and have not gotten around to poking at its guts, but from looking other multi-comic sites I know are running ComicPress, it seems they have the same issue. Anyway, I’m sure it doesn’t bother anyone except me, so whatever, I guess! There were a few other issues I had with coding the new comic section, including how to get RSS updates, but honestly, most of it won’t ever be an issue unless I do a longform comic, and I still want to stick with oneshots for now. (I did get the RSS working, but there’s no simple way to feed the Comics content into my normal site RSS, so I just mixed the separate feeds together using RSSMix and put that in Feedburner, which is what’s linked from the RSS icon to the side.)

That’s pretty much it for site updates? With the Comic section restructure done, my next project for the site is to finally get a store set up. The goal is to have it finished code-wise by the end of May, but as I’ll be hitting back-to-back conventions (Comicpalooza in Houston and A-kon in Dallas) right then, it probably won’t launch until mid-June at the earliest. I’m also really hoping to have a new 24 or 32-page minicomic done by then, but we’ll see!

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.