Soooo last weekend was the TAAFI 2016 Animation Arts Maarket!
First, a PSA! Somebody lost a black spiral bound sketchbook near my table (on table 9, I was table 10) at the end of the day on Sunday. I turned it into the taafi staff (who gave it to the event’s Box Office staff), so if anyone hears of someone losing a sketchbook at the TAAFI Animation Arts Maarket, please check with them!! I really hope it finds its way back to its owner ... T___T (UPDATE: THEY WERE REUNITED YAAAAY)
Above: my table, including my first time trying a little Now Recharging display with a tablet (I'm gonna try to make this a bit more user-friendly for TCAF... like downloading all my pages in advance instead of needing wifi to constantly load the tumblr site :P), and things I got/traded for~
Floral watercolour postcards by Qi Zhan
Original watercolour and "Sexy Tuna" comics zine by Joy San
Mousekewitzes character intro zine by @fakeanarchist
It’s not a big event by any means - it’s definitely an industry focused one, not a general public convention with huge traffic so it’s not necessarily for everyone. The busy-ness certainly ebbed and flowed, but the people who are there, being fellow artists and working in the storytelling field, really appreciate that kind of work! Including of course original stuff! So that’s always wonderful.
IMO TAAFI’s strength is the fact that you get to meet and interact with so many animation industry professionals, educators, and fellow artists. I think that is so crucial in terms of developing your own artistic sensibility and discipline, not to much incredibly important and healthy to build a support network of people who are passionate about the same things you are and able to inspire and motivate each other in our creative projects! In addition to work work and personal creative stuff (i.e., Now Recharging and books/zines), I’ve been writing a longass rambly blog post about my approach to art and what I do to get myself through projects. So this sort of thing has been on my mind a lot. The scale of the event means you actually have the time and space to be able to have in-depth conversations with people, from the serious and insightful discussions to the hilarious and joyful nerding-out fests! Thus, it was very refreshing and invigorating on a number of levels.
Some thoughts and highlights:
They reduced table costs from back in 2014; you no longer automatically get a submission to the artbook, but I personally prefer the option of the cheaper table and letting people who want to do the artbook pay that separately instead of having it automatically lumped together. This definitely helped me to break even faster - I was able to do it on the first day.
The venue was the same as last year, the lovely George Brown Waterfront Campus. It was a smaller market (group of artists) than when it took place for the first time back in 2014. We were also up on the second floor instead of the first. I dunno how I feel about the second floor and the setup. It was great to have such big tables and also easily accessible floor outlets, and the epic fabric backdrops were really nice! At the same time I did I kinda wish we could see the other artists instead of being back to back with fabric curtains in between us. A lot of us kept peeking around the fabric to talk to each other and running back and forth between the curtains lol. Well, pros and cons as with anything.
The volunteers were super helpful and friendly and I really appreciate all the social media promo they do of the indie artists!
I was very lucky to get to sit next to Qi Zhan, who is such a sweet and funny person! I also met and got to chat with so many other awesome artists/people like Joy and and @fakeanarchist, @wkobra, Scott Caple and more ... It was also fun to get to meet and talk to Toby Proctor (one of the NA voices of Tuxedo Mask) and Christian Potenza (voice of Chris McLean/Total Drama and Jude/6teen) and constantly hearing these voices and impressions around me lols
Seeing people squeal over the little Emmie charm wipers and also checking out my webcomic was really wonderful *^///////^* IT MY BABBY
Soooo many amazing conversations, I can’t even begin to summarize them all! A few memorable ones included: talking to a pair of anime/manga fans with excellent taste who completely recognized and appreciated my mentions of/obsession with Yu Yu Hakusho, Kekkaishi and Ushio to Tora lmao; having a very enthusiastic fountain pen 101 discussion with two non-animation students who had wandered in to check out the event; crying over art and comics and Miitomo and free stuff with other amazing people lololo...
Lots of people who recognize and follow @aatoast! And talking to artists who were really excited to learn that such a resource existed! I’m so glad to hear that it’s helpful for people. Also I really need to update it more aaaaah!
Overall, I really enjoyed the Maarket and would totally do it again if I’m able to next year! Kudos to @timrlai for all your hard work and all the hard work of the staff and volunteers behind the scenes!
Thank you so much to everyone who came by my table! It was so much fun and I hope to see some of you at TCAF next month too~!
