Artists Alley Information Thread

Selling at Cons is best during the...

Spring	11.5%	[ 117 ]
Summer	29.4%	[ 300 ]
Fall	7.2%	[ 73 ]
Winter	5.5%	[ 56 ]
Any time!	46.5%	[ 474 ]
Total Votes:			[ 1020 ]

[Vicemage]

The only original I ever sold was a sample sketch I did of a Bleach character that I decided I'd shed if someone wanted to give me $10 for it. (Which is the same rate as the commissions it was a sample for.)

[LavenderMintRose]

I was pretty sure I didn't get into Anime Next's Artist Alley, but now it looks like I might have...

[Kyousouka]

11am on 2/15? Maybe I got in too, I signed up at 6:30am that morning. Whoo~!

[Cetriya]

I've sold some orignals, simple water color pieces of my characters, some sketches, 1 water color painting and I think 2 fan arts.

[Kyousouka]

I've sold some sketches, but they have all been just sketches with no finished versions. That's because most of my actual paintings don't have paper sketches, and my paper sketches don't get anywhere.

None of my marker works have sold D:

[Kaxen]

Now that I have a sufficiently-recent example work, my marker work is stuff like this



Still no idea what to price it. @_@ I like doing traditional art, but I always want to get rid of it since I never do anything with them except file them in file cabinets or throw them above my sister's bunk-bed if they're big and never look at them again with the exception of the vampire butt painting I'm just a little too enamored with.

I thought about colored marker commissions (last year I made decent money with black & white and grayscale commissions), but at least half of my Copics are dead-ish. I'd probably spend a lot of money just buying bottles of re-fill ink so I've been thinking about just selling marker doodles so I can just y'know... make art with the specific purpose of using colors that I have a decent amount of. If last year's commissions were indication of anything, commissioners will always ask for the one thing I never expect to do!

...though I will probably buy refills once I have nothing left besides the blindingly bright colors I never use in large amount. Blegh, should probably go hunting for the cheapest place to buy Copic refills.


I would try my hand at getting rid of all those paintings I've painted, but I don't think anyone would buy them and carrying them back and forth would be a royal pain. >_<



Oh and also, how many business cards should I bring?

[Kyousouka]

Kaxen: http://www.oozak.com is the best place I've found for Copic stuff. $5.62 or something per refill, $4.90 if you register an account with them. They have most of the colours, too.

I don't know what to price my Copic stuff either. I want to take Copic commissions as well as sell existing originals, but I'm clueless D:

Bring enough business cards for 10% of the expected attendees, you probably won't even need that many. After three or four cons and a total of maybe 10k attendees, I'm only down about 150-200 :/

[Jayde Panda]

I eat through business cards like mad. I went through over 400 for the 3 conventions I did in 2009. >_< I need to reorder more for Animazement.

I want to do marker commissions too, but I can't ever get myself to bite and buy a decent set--I've only got a set of about 20 colors right now; I try and offset the lack of markers with colored pencil, and it kind of works. >_< But I got one of those basic sets from Michael's so it's a lot of bright colors that are kind of hard to work with. I use Prismacolors btw. I know copics are better, but I still like my Prismacolors, and I think they're decent quality. My problems with commissions at conventions are 1) I fail at pricing them and 2) I'm always afraid someone would ask for something that I wouldn't be able to do well. What do you guys do for reference pics? Are people good about providing you with some references? What kind of stuff do people tend ot ask for?

[LavenderMintRose]

@Kasyrrah: You can always refuse to do a commission, or put up a list of things you don't want to draw (like furries, mecha, or porn, or something).

[Kyousouka]

Yes, don't be afraid to refuse a commission.

For my pencil sketch commissions, I've been asked to draw some OCs and one fanart so far. I've refused one painting commission since it was a bigger one and I didn't have enough time to do it in a timely fashion, the guy took it very well. He was an experienced commissioner, someone new to commissioning might not be so good... but if someone takes a refused commission as a personal attack, they're probably not someone you'd want to draw for, anyway xP

While on a website it's best to provide a list of what you will/won't do right away, I think it's better to go on a case-by-case basis at cons rather than force people to read through text. Online, they're prepared for it, but they're in a totally different mindset at cons.

As for references... ask for them (though most people will bring out the refs as soon as you show interesting without needing to be asked). If not, ask for a written description and read over it to see if you can work with it. If you can't get a strong visual from it, then refuse the commission (I've refused a few commissions like that online). Don't discount text descriptions right away, since some people write so well that their descriptions are as good as any image, without being dry.
Avoid people who'd rather just tell you all about the character and don't have anything prepared for you to hang onto while you draw. You will probably need to refer back to things quickly, and it's faster to look at some sort of reference (even if it's text) than ask them about it. Another problem with such people is that they make up half of what they say on the spot, so if you ask them again, they might say something different. And of course, most commissions that are prepared to pay you well come prepared. Someone who is not prepared is likely new and might not know how commissions even work. A refusal will probably cause them to prepare better for the next time.

[Kaxen]

Kyousouka

Kaxen: http://www.oozak.com is the best place I've found for Copic stuff. $5.62 or something per refill, $4.90 if you register an account with them. They have most of the colours, too.

I don't know what to price my Copic stuff either. I want to take Copic commissions as well as sell existing originals, but I'm clueless D:

Bring enough business cards for 10% of the expected attendees, you probably won't even need that many. After three or four cons and a total of maybe 10k attendees, I'm only down about 150-200 :/

Wow, that is cheap for Copics refills. Last time I bought refills, I spent like $30-ish for five bottles.

I think Anime Expo's attendance was 44,000 last year. O_o ten percent of that seems like a lot.