Artists Alley Information Thread

Selling at Cons is best during the...

Spring	11.6%	[ 83 ]
Summer	30.3%	[ 217 ]
Fall	7.0%	[ 50 ]
Winter	5.3%	[ 38 ]
Any time!	45.7%	[ 327 ]
Total Votes:			[ 715 ]

[muffin babie]

Please excuse my ignorance,
but what happened at Otakon last year?

[Jayde Panda]

Vicemage

You've got a very cute, clean style. smile I looked over some of your more recent stuff after looking at the two you linked, and based on at least the marker one I think you could manage doing some marker commissions at a con. I'm not sure what brand or color range you have, but you can always start small and build, too; I started out with under 20 Copics (I'm over 60 now and growing... >.> ) and two months of moderate practise, and did okay with them. And you had the stronger first effort on that one, so I think if you want to try color commissions at a convention, that would be the way to go, at least for now. smile

I do need some practice though I think. The big problem is that I only have a very small set of Prismacolors; the colors you see on that one sample...that's about all the colors I have. ><; But it's something I can eventually invest in.

[[Kako]]

muffin babie

Please excuse my ignorance,
but what happened at Otakon last year?

Given the site this is on, you should of course take this with a grain of salt. But this basically summarises what seems to have happened. :

[Nyawyn]

haha wow, the entry certainly has grown over the course of the year.

It doesn't take into consideration accurate reporting from Otakon's perspective but then again its not like its a respected news site either.

It really makes me sad just how, insane its gotten with respect to this whole situation. Its kind of a situation (and this is my opinion so feel free to disagree) where there is fault on multiple sides, both with the artists for over abuse of fanart and the exploitation of a loophole as well as the conventions for inadequately creating an effective set of policies, and in some cases failing to enforce them adequately and fairly.

The latter is really what has been a focus of my concern. I try not to wade too deep into the fanart: good or bad debate as i can see and respect opinions of both sides, but all i want is for a convention to pick a policy and enforce it fairly. Sadly, that just doesn't always happen .

[Fiammetta Rey]

I'm living with false hope

And my eyes just want to see a ray of light

I'm gonna find it in my fairy tale...

Otakon's official response to the incident.

... yeah.

I remember seeing those tables and being like... "wait, what?"

[Nyawyn]

ya know, its kinda amusing to me and also kinda frustrating, but ever since i started doing tables at conventions, it's seemed that just about every year Otakon has some major problem take place within their artist alley, particularly with respect to their rules and policies.

[Kaxen]

EEK! I just got my table for Anime Expo. whee

I'm so excited. Now it is official.

...unless I do the paper work wrong. Oh seller's permit...

And now to put my butt into overdrive about finishing my comics.

[[Kako]]

Congrats. smile I can't afford to go to AX this year, but I'm thinking I might give it a try next year. I've heard that it's been getting better again. (I attended '05, '06, and '07, and it was just getting progressively worse.)

[Nyawyn]

I'm curious, what aspect was done poorly and what kept getting worse? (im curious to compare it to how the local cons in my area are)

Id love to see something of a list where its updated to reflect, not just the basic info that's needed but also a review of how well things are handled, how big the crowds get, staff service etc etc.

[[Kako]]

Well, I only was part of the AA for '07, which I'll get to in a minute, but here's a basic breakdown of each year.

2005 - Was utterly awesome. I'm a bit jaded, because it was my first convention and I walked in without any expectations. I didn't participate in many major events, but it was pretty easy to get around in and the dealer's room was nice.
2006 - Went with my friends rather than being alone, and it was honestly disastrous. We did group registration and the convention lost our reg information. There wasn't any wireless internet accessible, so we couldn't give them our confirmation email. (We had to take a 4 or 5 hour train ride in order to get there, so it's not like we could get to anyone's house or anything. D: ) We all had to register again, if I recall correctly, and it meant hours of waiting and searching and processing. The convention attendance had grown quite a bit from the year before, while the staff had not. So all of the staff members seemed tightly stretched. Most of the major events were badly organised. The AMV competition, for instance, had tickets handed out the day prior to the event. But the fact that the tickets were handed out was not publicised, so most people weren't aware of this. The people who didn't get tickets were made to wait for hours in a non-air-conditioned room (in L.A. heat) with no explanation of what was going on until about ten out of the hundreds of people who were waiting were allowed into the competition and everyone else was turned away. (Again, without an explanation.) I swear, a riot nearly took place. The convention was overall okay, good enough to go back to the next year.
2007 - The convention moved from the Anaheim convention center to the Long Beach convention center. The LB con center was larger, but the layout wasn't as easy to move about in. Again, more people attended but the staff seemed to have grown to match this time around. I can't say exactly what was wrong with it that year... but things simply weren't enjoyable. I've spoken to a lot of other people who attended, and got similar reviews. The con just wasn't fun. Although I had spent $50 on a table in the AA, I actually only wound up spending one day at the table. They were facing gigantic glass walls, and the heat and light of the sun coming through was simply unbearable. When I was actually trying to find where to get my table, none of the staff knew where the AA was supposed to be.

I think that AX just got too big, and the staff didn't know how to manage that many people and still keep it fun. :

[Nyawyn]

ah wow sounds like there needs to be some reorganizing and rethinking to accomodate the grown and other changes that come with it.

[[Kako]]

I heard it was better last year, though. ^^; So maybe they're starting to really learn to handle the size?

[Nyawyn]

Perhaps, and thats good if they are learning from their mistakes.


Its definitely frustrating when you just have a evident lack of communication going around, and i definitely don't think that its just that convention that has that problem. There's also a relationship to size of convention and efficiency of communication. The fact is, many conventions just don't have an effective means of getting all of their staffers on the same page, that or they're just not very good at it once they grow to a certain size. The sad thing is, im not so sure there is an effective means to do this to the level it needs to be at, considering its not like a job where eveyone has the same means of receiving information and someone at the top sends a mass memo; although while email does work effectively for this its not always utilized effectively) Turnover in positions contributes largely to this as well. (and I'm speaking from personal experiences from staffing on this one)

[Kaxen]

AX does wretched crowd control. I hate going in. It always seems to take hours and hours to get the damned badge even with pre-registering.

I like Comic-Con, you can get in so fast. @_@

Long Beach was definitely not fun. I liked Anaheim Convention Center the best.

But my friend said AX08 wasn't so bad (I only went to Comic Con last summer). Though Comic-Con is getting too big also. The lines for getting into panels was horrendous. I had to line up so damn early to get into the Avatar panel that I sat through a panel on Prison Break!