Salahare's Art

-To be re-posted in it's entirety in my journal at Deviantart-

My first adventure in an Artist Alley is something I will definitely keep with me for the rest of my live, even if I don't remember a single part of it.

Here was the situation of the Artist Alley at Animeland Wasabi in Denver, CO: in a long, awkward dead-end corridor we were given tables along the wall. There happened to also be a panel at the end of the Hall, so traffic had to be forced through the Artist Alley tables to get to some of the juicier panels such as the Rum Party and Yaoi Panel. I wasn't able to actually get to the table until a couple of hours after people had begun wandering in, and my friend had secured a table an hour before I got there so we weren't situated in the worst possible spot from what I could tell. However, the tables were huge and stuck out far into the hall so there was only room for perhaps a Vash and Legato to walk abreast if there weren't anyone already blocking traffic by sticking in front of an Art Table being convinced that they couldn't live without what was there. (I did get to draw a beautiful gender-bender Vash with a Seme Legato... but that's later in the story. ^_^)

I managed to keep my stuff in relative order, but forgetting to bring my mother's camera as well as the keys to my cash box served to make me greatly depressed. There were so many cool cosplayers who stopped by the table, but my absolute favorite was the sole Farscape guy with one of those little scooter-droids. Second Favorite was this Kaito who asked for a Miku/Kaito pairing I drew custom for them, and then there was this absolutely cute couple who was in the Alley Friday night because they found out that the Formal Dance had cost an additional (and ridiculous) $10 to attend. I felt bad for them and drew them a freebie chibi sketch sitting on a bench with cherry blossoms falling (the formal was called the Sakura Ball).

Which brings me to my next point of fact: There should be some people who received party favors from the formal ball... and the picture was made by me. Yay publicity! I think I'll post the pic up in the Gallery for all to see, sans the extra stuff the ALW staff had added onto it.

I didn't sell very many prints at the con all weekend. I sold one Yoko print. Everything else was from Chibi commissions or the Comic that I finally managed to print on my own using my school's printers, hand-stapled and arranged by me so that I was late to the table once again Saturday afternoon! I missed out on some good sales opportunities, but we also got facepaint to try and milk out some more revenue. Didn't get many people wanting their face painted so late in the Con game, but we had fun painting each others faces.

In the end, I had enough revenue to earn back more than the $100 dollars I stole from my college savings account for the weekend. But if you include all my expenditures this weekend I lost $1.50. I did a bunch of foolish things like buy gas for my mom's car, purchasing a ridiculous panda hat that doesn't even fit my head, and going to King Soopers for chocolate milk and doughnuts.

So what have I learned from this experience? I'll just list the 5 biggest ones:

1) ALWAYS BRING A CAMERA. No joke. I missed out on getting a record of all the cool cosplayers I saw, as well as taking a snap of all the commissions I did so I'd be able to share them on my online galleries... and to show my mom just how cool letting me leave the house for 3 days can really be.

2) MAKE GREATER EFFORT IN ARRANGING SHIFTS. There were 4 of us selling at the table. One of us was selling for two other people, and ended up falling far in the red for overstretching himself. So not only were we crowded behind a table in an already crowded Alley, we were trying to figure out how to present work from 6 different artists on a single 3'x6' table with no cool rigs to hang work off of.

3) DON'T WAIT TO PRINT A COMIC. EVER. Well, don't wait to print anything. But the comic was especially cause for much aggravation and white hairs appearing on my head.

4) NEVER GET GAS IN DOWNTOWN DENVER AT A STATION ON COLFAX AVE. If you live in Denver then you know what I'm talking about.

5) HYDROPLANING IS THE SCARIEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO YOU IN A CAR. Colorado Blizzard. All the snow melted by the time I was on the road to the con... the water did not leave, though, and everyone on I-25 was going at least 60mph. If I slowed down I'd be rear-ended and killed. If I sped up I'd pull out of control, spin out and die at the bottom of a multi-car collision. Yummy.





So in other news, I now have 2 weeks to prepare for semester finals, and then my mom is forcing my dad and I into Nurse's Aid school for the summer. DO NOT WANT. Especially after knowing that I could have made mad profit out of the ALW con if I could have refrained from my ridiculous expenditures.

My friend and I have a website for our comic! Check it: [link] 

It's not really updated yet because I only made it last Thursday when I should have been working on the comic itself, but oh well. Now I just need to focus on finishing my art trade, updating my website, and churning out work while attempting to juggle in study time so that I don't have to repeat a class. Again.

So there has been a ton of additions to the hosting service that I'm now figuring out. Chief of which is a new Image Gallery upgrade that looks a lot better than what was available months ago. I'm uploading pics into separate galleries that will soon be available.

Yes, this means I'm seriously adding to the site now, and I found a way around the 20 page limit. Now there's a MB limit of storage that I'm eyeing closely until I can scrounge up the cash to buy a year-long subscription. I've been taking paid surveys by the boatload for the past month and a half saving just for this upgrade that will include my own domain name! Salahare.com... that's my dream.

I'm also looking forward to finding out if my friends and I really got a table at AnimeLand Wasabi 2009. I'm going into gear figuring out what of my old stuff will make successful prints to sell, and getting the word out to other Wasabi goers that I'll be there selling art, table or no. ^_^