#tracon

also the full png of the rat. could put them in many funny situations.

Products ended up being fairly commonplace items at alleys, prints, stickers, pins... I've heard people being rather reluctant in getting prints due to lack of display space, so I didn't want to have too big pile of those. I thought about getting trading card size prints, but dropped that idea for now due to not having very fitting art for those and other reasons. I also really wanted to try make a little FFXIV comic collection, and after some talks about specs I settled on a 40-page booklet concentrating on my Dawntrail and fishing related comics and illustrations. Initial plan was double the pages, but apparently the staple binding might not have been optimal for such thickness. The booklet and prints were rather teaching about setting the files up for printing, I would bet the people working on the field would be horrified about the setup I did with GIMP :'D

Years ago I made a poll asking if people prefer charms or pin badges, and the winning vote was charms. Yet, I've only made pins :D I tested these all myself to see which might have some looseness in them, and put those up for sale cheaper. They'll stay all safe in an ita-bag after all!

The wooden material in pins and standees got a lot of admiration. I personally wanted to avoid plastic, and first and foremost tried to utilise local businesses in production. Might have to give acrylic a go if I decide to make charms, but at least there are recycled options for those as well.

On the event day I got precious help from my sister in setting up the table and peeling the protective films off the pins and standees. I had earlier done a little mockup display to see how much space the structure will take, which left some dozen centimetres free - not anymore, it was all quite tightly packed!

I'm not the most socially fluid type so I was definitely feeling a bit like fish outta water, fearing that my payment terminal absolutely terminates, not trusting my counting skills and so forth. Then the doors opened and the first customer was a friend who had promised to come buy the booklet, and with that the payment terminal was also proved working. Then on I had a steady stream of visitors, not any big queue or bunch that some other tables had, but just enough to my liking that I could exchange words with people be it about the items, franchises, or my Godzilla shirt.

The sales period lasted for six hours, and time just flew! I stood through the whole duration, attempted to sit at one point but it just felt bit off to me. Still, might've been good to rest legs some more :'D The payment terminal only had problems once, but little restart of the phone app solved that.

So how did sales go? I was torn between my sceptical anticipation and friends' threats over selling out with that amount of items, truth turned out to be something in between. The items on itself don't seem to amount much, but looking at the cash app's display had me wonder, "am I really making this much?" xD All in all the income didn't quite cover the expenses of production and additional fees such as table spot, payment terminal and power supply, but I'm almost certain they would have were this a two-day ordeal.

Pin badges were doing well, but definitely learnt to get more designs per batch. Gonna have work to do to get rid of the Haze pins :'D Sticker sheets might be a better investment than these separate ones I had. Standees got a lot of admiration, but in the end weren't quite a selling point. Comic booklets did a lot better than I thought, given I'm constantly worrying if any of my scribbly style and weird ideas are understandable xD

Prints did a-okay, didn't run out of any designs, the closest being Lunipyati and Nidhogg. Out of A5-sized prints the surprising seller was my FFXIV art contest entry, which warmed my heart.

If you looked at the photos closely, I also had two ancient postcard designs from like maybe ten years ago, One Piece and Monster Hunter themed. Those sold really well, and I even got asked if I had any more One Piece stuff available, unfortunately no :c Monster Hunter might've had more demand too.

And in the end, what did I learn? - Don't bother with Arknights stuff, sadly :'D At least here. - Some different Digimon might've done better, and better range of items than just prints and stickers. - Some original stuff for random passerbys since this particular area didn't require a ticket. Shoutout to that lady who bought a Sylph pin after being reassured they're "good guys"! - Out of FFXIV, fellas are craving more Zenos, Erenville and Koana. - Put a content warning on Phoinix (jokingly) - Gonna try my hand at more sculpting, some Fat Cats found new homes! - Postcards, get them. - Charms might be good as well. - A5-prints might've done better if they were displayed along the A4 ones on the wall. This was mostly because I didn't want to carry that many of the shelf pieces (no car gang). - Make more business cards. I had tools at hand to make more on the fly, and that was some good preparation :D - Put some prints inside the clear files beforehand to avoid those embarrassing minutes trying to slide one in in front of a customer. - Stashing bubble wrap and whatever package materials that come your way is good. - Any longer event would demand some adjustments, and perhaps it'd be fun to share the table with another artist as well! - Artist trail (Taidepolku) was a great place to have the first experience, I can vouch for it!