#hyung posts

All throughout the week prior to AN, I’d have dreams of horrible things happening to me such as my table helper not being able to make the con or that I arrived at the con with everything but my prints… anyways, IT’S FINALLY FRIDAYYY!!

So it’s 1:00 time for me to drag all of my stuff to the bus stop and make my way to ANIME NORTHHHHHHH WOOHOO. It’s pretty much the thing I look forward to all year hah. So I’ve got my clothes luggage, a rolling backpack, and a giant grocery bag filled with misc things and I’m STRUGGLING WITH THE SIMPLE ACT OF BREATHING BECAUSE SHIT EVERYTHING IS SO HEAVY.  Literally I took ten steps and had to stop to take a break. And then I had to DASH ACROSS THE ROAD WITH 5000 POUNDS OF ART/COSPLAY to chase the bus down.

So we arrive at the con and go set up. I knew the edges of the AN tables were thick since I did a lot of studying nerd from other artist’s tumblargh posts but DANG I didn’t expect them to be THAT thick… that moment I already knew I’d have trouble with my clamps. Lo and behold, within an hour of setup, my stand comes falling down on top of me. SIGH. The people around us were so nice and even the people sitting behind us came dashing all the way to come help lift the stand off of me (not that it was heavy or anything). Then I became paranoid and checked the clamps every hour or so and decided to take the pvc pipes off the clamps each night so it wouldn’t topple over. I’m so glad no one was hurt. I also realized that I was extremely lucky since in the AN Comic Market page, they state very clearly that if your stand falls, it will be deemed as too dangerous and will need to be taken down immediately.

I knew before when I was preparing prints that I wouldn’t be able to predict the sales of which of my things would sell more but man was I surprised. I could’ve done with more pokemon and lonk/zorldo prints and surprisingly I sold none of my miku prints. I also expected my ghibli keychains to do well but I guess I thought wrong.I’ll be sure to mix in some originals in my display next time and see how well they do.

Everyone who passed by would point at my lonk/zorldo/levi prints and laugh. Or they’d point out the larval rin/shiteyanyo buttons. And people were even interested in Teapee! My friend has given me an entirely new genre of art and she titled it “shock humour”. These guys even came back to my table looking for my Lonk print (unfortunately or fortunately? it sold out early Saturday morning). Do I really want to be known as the shock humour artist… haha… I don’t mind though, the feeling I get when people can point at my art, recognize what it is, understand the joke and laugh is pretty great.  

A thing that pissed me off was that people would whip out their phones and try to take photos of my art without even asking me like HELLO CAN YOU PLEASE NOT I PUT BLOOD AND SWEAT AND HOURS UPON HOURS INTO EACH ONE OF THESE PIECES. YOU’RE GONNA TAKE A PICTURE AND I’m not going to get any credit for my babies.

Counting inventory/cash box each night was tough and gave me headaches but tysm to Rina for helping me! WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT YOU. I WOULD BE LOST AND BE LIKE NEGATIVE $100 EACH NIGHT. Next year we shall do a cosplay together and attract lots of people to my table yessssssssssss.

One more thing: the hotel was sooooo shit! It was more expensive, so far, didn’t have breakfast, the key cards wouldn’t work, and the shuttle didn’t even show up. Next year and forever after that we’re gonna go back to Hampton… Our friend’s friend was so kind in driving all of us to the con thank you so much omgggg.

To all those artists that want to try AA, DO A LOT OF RESEARCH! DRAW A LOT! GRAB A FRIEND TO HELP YOU OUT WITH YOUR TABLE! EAT LOTS OF FOOD DURING THE CON! TALK TO THE OTHER ARTISTS! GET LOTS OF SLEEP! TALK TO ALL THE PEOPLE THAT WALK BY YOUR TABLE! My first year doing an AA I would say was very successful. I was ambitious and all my hard work paid off.

GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU!!! Feel free to shoot me any questions about AA, I shall help you out as much as I can. :D