Ready For Animazement!

Hey guys, sorry I missed that last update.  I was busy with a number of things (job hunting being one of them.  I may actually have a new job that can pay my rent and give me enough spare time for more artwork.  Hopefully.)

So I'm totally over the pre-convention jitters.  Well, mostly.  I am actually prepared much earlier than usual!  This weekend I got down to business.  All of my printing is done as well as my banner and my display. I wanted something better this year than the flimsy pvc pipe stand that I had last year.  Quite honestly it sucked and looked absolutely terrible.  I don't plan on using so much masking tape to hold the display prints up this year either.  That looked so sloppy and unprofessional.

Anyway, I wanted to make it out of pvc pipe again but the drawing I made was a little complicated.  That stuff is usually pretty cheap, which makes it an ideal material.  I did the math though, and after I found that it would cost me $75 in pvc pipe I decided that maybe that wasn't the most efficient and cost effective idea.  I over-engineered the crap out of that stand.  It needed to be sturdy enough to hold up prints, a dry erase board, and a banner.  It probably would have worked but I the money was a bit outrageous and there are better options for cheaper.

 

Our 4 foot by 2.5 foot banner.... and my wedding cake topper haha.

Totally Over-Engineered.  Would have been a good stand though...

I eventually went with those wire mesh storage cubes that a lot of people seem to use for stands now days.  After finding some of my own and getting them home, I can see why people use them.  They are sturdy and there's so many ways you can arrange them.  My display is gonna rock this year!  I may still end up buying some pvc pipe and some zip ties, I need to hoist my banner up over the stand somehow.  The higher up the better.  After all, I am stuck in a corner and getting attention is important.

I also got this super awesome board.  It's a black dry erase board that you use with neon colored dry erase markers.  Yes!  This is dry erase!  I had no Idea that they even made these until I found them in Walmart.  I'm not sure that these will be my final prices, I just had to try it out when I got it home.  It was too cool.  I plan to attach it to one side of my stand at eye level.  I may even get another one for the other side to keep the commission list updated and let people know when their commissions are finished.  Haven't decided yet.

As you can tell I used to work in the restaurant... they bugged me do the feature board every day for this reason.

So maybe I lied I'm not COMPLETELY ready for the convention yet.  The to-do list is definitely a lot smaller than it used to be though. I have to trim my prints.  They turned out great by the way!  I'm so excited about it!  I finally did enough research to save my print files in a printer friendly fashion.  The colors turned out amazing and I am very happy with the quality of the paper I got them on.  I even printed everything for less than the budget I had set aside for printing, which is also a plus.

I want to print out one more poster though.  I will be putting two prints into the art auction this year instead of just one like in previous years.  One is an original concept and the other is fan art.  I thought that was fitting.  I only ever print out ONE 16x20 print to sell of each piece.  There will never be another print that size for sale of any of these again. 


Sailor Moon was kind of a no-brainer.  I did a quick poll on DeviantArt anyway and it won out over three other pieces to be in the art auction this year.

As for the original, I just had it printed on a whim because I liked it.  The brown haired angel in this picture is a character from a really old story I had dreamed up back in high school.  She does have a name, and her name is Catriona.  Nga did an absolutely wonderful job capturing her character in her pencil work!  It was a joy to color.

I've adapted Catriona's character for E20XX like most of the characters from that old story plot.  The characters were just too cool to abandon even if the story I came up with sucked.  What could you expect though, I was sixteen.  As I grew up, so did the characters.  It was almost like they outgrew that story.

Hopefully other people will like her as much as I do.  I sold an original character last year in auction which was a success, far more successful than I thought it would be. It gave me the warm fuzzies when the lady who won the auction brought it by the table to have me physically sign it.  Her daughter found me on DeviantArt and sent me a picture of it hanging up on the wall in their house.  I cried happy tears.

This will probably be the last I write about the convention before I actually go.  I only have two weeks until the con.  Since I'm mostly done with the preparations, expect some sketch entries into the blog pretty soon along with my current works in progress.  Got some overdue commissions to finish.

If all goes well I will be updating again on my normal schedule of Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Until then thanks for the continued support it means a lot to me.