![]() This addition gave me more room to display commissions, prints, and mini watercolors, and did not take up much table space. I did my table demo on Tuesday evening, and introduced a minor change to the layout- side 'wings' made of wire mesh panels that I hoped would solve my drift issue. Heidi was set to arrive the Wednesday before Anime Weekend Atlanta, and we planned to leave Thursday morning to make the trip, with the intention of picking up our badges and setting up our tables, a system that worked well last year. This is a problematic way to announce important changes, and seemed to trip up a lot of artists. The AWA Artist Alley Facebook page didn't invite participating artists to add them on Facebook, the only way I knew it existed is because I saw the account posting to the Artist Alley International Network Facebook group. This was not emailed to Artist Alley participants, nor was it added to the official site. Attendees had to have a legal ID for all badges they were picking up, as well as confirmation emails for all badges purchased. I do not know if this was announced on the AWA Artist Alley Twitter (which I also follow).Ī couple days before the convention, the AWA Artist Alley Facebook page (link) also announced a minor change for picking up registration. I, and many other attendees, don't really check the forums regularly, so I only knew about this release because I'd recently added the AWA Artist Alley Facebook page to my friends list. It took awhile for AWA to release their alley map, and they did so on their forums rather than the actual site itself. In the future, I'd really like to see AWA make the effort to link their artists. Because some names are extremely common (basically anything with 'kawaii' involved in the name), we weren't always 100% who our alley mates would be. A continued complaint is that AWA doesn't directly link artists on their Artist Alley page, which means Alex must Google everyone who sounds interesting. In the weeks before the convention, Alex, our con assistant, scoped out the other artists in then alley. Once I reached a stopping point with both Kara and Gizmo Granny, I began pressing, sewing, and assembling more Sailor Scout ribbon badges, and nearly last minute I painted a new, relatively small batch of mini watercolors. Reprinting and cutting stickers was much the same, something I did shortly after Mechacon was over to fill time, rather than in a last minute rush. During quiet evenings when I'd finished painting for the day, I'd reward myself with assembling new buttons, focusing not on the upcoming convention, but more on the process of crafting. ![]() Of course, Anime Weekend Atlanta did require some prep, especially since Mechacon depleted my stock of sassy feminist buttons, stickers, and mini watercolors. Working on these longer projects helps me recenter and remember my real goals- the eventual release of Kara as a webcomic and three volume book set, and more freelance illustration work, neither of which are served when my time is consumed either attending conventions or preparing for conventions. It's frustrating to know that customers often only purchase from me because I offer the cheapest commissions, not because they feel an affinity towards my work, and it's annoying to invest in business cards that are just going to lie forgotten at the bottom of a bag once the convention is over. My analytics support this hunch, and the fact that customers will email me about commissions after I've tried emailing them (often getting a bounce back stating the message was undeliverable), and have posted the finished piece to Tumblr. It was nice to be able to focus on these much neglected longterm progress, especially since I've felt that my at-con customers don't follow up after conventions by actually checking out my Tumblr or this blog. During those two months, I didn't take a vacation- I focused on working on 7" Kara Chapter 5 and illustrations for Gizmo Granny. There's a little under two months of blissful convention free days between Mechacon in early August and Anime Weekend Atlanta in late September.
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