So this one... this one caused a little trouble.
I doodled this guy while I was at AOD, just trying to give myself inspiration of what page 5 should look like. I really liked the direction it was headed, but was faced with the issue of "where am i gonna wedge in the text?"
A few re-drafts yielded some less than stellar results, I really wanted to use my original design, and so resigned myself to simply creating a separate page for the text. I dunno if this is a device I'll continue to use, or not. I won't rely on it, let's say that. On the plus side, I'm able to fit a lot MORE text onto a separate page, and this keep up a good pace with the story. On the minus side, I just like the pure aesthetics of words resting on top of a picture. It's why I'm so drawn to comics in the first place.
Drawn... comics... I get it.
So speaking of AOD, it was a learning experience.
Last year we were there, we were part of the artist alley, and I thought it was a fairly lucrative, very fun experience. We found out later in the year, that THIS year's AOD artist alley was going to be held by lottery. As I've mentioned before, I think that kind of system is bullshit. I think that if you care about being part of an artist alley, you're going to want to sign up early, and if you sign up before everyone else, you should be guaranteed a place, period. I don't think it's fair to pander to the lazy folk by compromising the positions of the serious business people by creating a lottery.
Granted, I know that AOD's artist alley is small, too small to meet the demand of the artist who want to sell there, so the lottery was created to give everyone an "equal chance". I think the measure that SHOULD have been taken, is to try and find a larger area to host the artist alley in to begin with. for all i know, they might be trying to do just that, but in the mean time, the lottery is a real drag.
SO! Instead of subjecting ourselves to something that demeaning, what Trish and I decided to do was stake a claim in the dealer's room. The dealer's room works differently than artist alley, if you put money down on a table there, then that's YOUR table, period (the way artist alley should work). It's more expensive for the table, but you also get more space, so it evens out. The other perk is that people wander into the dealer's hall looking to spend money in the first place, so the theory is that you're inhabiting territory with looser wallets. Sounds like a pretty good deal, right? Well, there was one factor that we didn't take into account beforehand was that the way AOD is set up, in order to get into the dealer's hall, you need to have a bought a badge for the con. The artist alley is open to the public, so that multiplies your customer base by several times. The other (kind of) downside I hadn't anticipated was that dealer's hall stuff is usually more along the lines of "official merchandise" for already existing franchises. My merch is official, but since i'm still very much an underdog, not as many people recognize my characters yet. I did get some folk who pointed at Dave and said "I remember this cat from Fanime!" or what have you. That made me feel pretty good, but the point is, i'm not a household name yet. So that aspect of it was also kinda harsh on me.
This was the first con I've been to in a long time where I did not cover my costs, but on the plus side:
#1. When all was said and done, I didn't really owe that much
#2. I still had fun and got my name out there
So that was my weekend.
This weekend I'll be attending my friend Vickie's birthday up in SF, and the weekend AFTER that I'll be up at Sac-Con! The con that I thought was happening in January :P
So there's some stuff to look forward to.
Ka-Blam Comics is taking longer than usual with ti's shipping of Dave #2. I hope this doesn't become a problem :/
Patience, my pets.
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