First Artist Alley: Onicon 2015
Oh man, kept putting this off! I hope my rambles are helpful and not too rambly. Most of this came from off the top of my head! Finding information about attending artist alley for the first time wasn’t the easiest, so I hope that in reading this you might learn a little bit from my observations and mistakes.
Me and Trav on our way back from the con! YeaaaHH!
For a bit of an introduction, I’m Mew, I love to do art stuff and currently work as a freelancer doing game type things. I’ve always been a little nervous about letting my art into the internet/public but this year I finally decided to sign up for a table at anime convention. I chose Onicon because it’s the only con I’ve been to before, and because it’s somewhat small. The weather was pretty bad that weekend which kinda sucks but it was a pretty great, if not highly disorganized con. The weather tho seriously like, the doors would SWING open and blow tons of the art displays into oblivion. It was bad. Con on a beach in bad weather yo.
Price high, then lower prices if necessary.
Instead of calculating my man hours spent on every individual piece, I took into account the cost of the print/paper and compared my pricing to other booths I saw, both on the web and in real life. I decided to shoot for the lower end, as it was my first con. This was a mistake! I was able to break even with a little bit of profit to spare, but I think I could have made more and also be less harmful to other booths’ business around me (definitely keep this part in mind when you set prices!).
My biggest mistake was pricing my stickers at 2 for 1$--this promoted people buying MASS amounts of stickers at once, running me quickly out of stock and forcing me to have to find multiple stickers from my less-than-ideal sticker organization every time someone wanted to purchase one. This was the most overwhelming part of my booth, having to collect stickers and put them in a bag, which meant the customer waiting, and potential customers being discouraged from coming closer to the booth due to the current person waiting for me.
I made back roughly what I spent on the sticker sheets, running out of many of the more popular characters such as Midna and Zelda. For how many stickers I had to sell, it was a poor decision to price them so low. One of the artists I met (pikaponn!! you rock) recommended that I only offer special deals if people buy multiple, rather than having the stickers be a deal with just one purchase. Definitely going to re-think sticker pricing next time, as I was selling good quality vinyl stickers and I didn’t really make money on them even though I sold a lot.
Set up your table so people can see it from far away /and/ close up!
Protip: Set up your display beforehand and see what fits where.
A small issue we had is with my booth setup--I used those cube wire racks that are super heavy and they were pretty great, BUT I made a mistake in setting them up. I placed them so that a large flat grid faced out to customers, and put it near the end of the table. This worked in the sense that people could easily see prints, but worked against me when they were very close to the booth because they had to crane their necks to see the high prints.
Next time, I’m going to flip it around so that the cube part faces customers, giving me the option to stack physical objects suck as books/plushies on the cubes, and generally have more space to hang things while also being further away from the front of the table. Hopefully this description makes sense lol.
Set boundaries with friends.
Another problem I came across was with a friend we invited to attend the con. We had different expectations of what the con was going to be, which lead to a quarrel that happened at my booth. Make sure that, if you’re attending with a friend, you very clearly let them know that the artist alley is a full-day commitment (we were there from 9-8 every day more or less) and that it is a place of business.
Represent a broad variety of interests.
After finally setting up my booth I realized that my booth was basically The Fire Emblem-One Piece Booth (TM). Lol. This is great and all but people didn’t come to buy 5 Fire Emblem prints! I got asked to do commissions quite often and I think this may have been the reason for that. I pretty much only had FE/OP fanart along with my originals, with few exceptions. I have a ton of interests, so I’m thinking about trying to explore some more fanart worlds in the future.
My mom made me some little Maromi (Paranoia Agent) plushies and they were very popular. Making artwork of stuff that everyone loves (Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, FMA, Akira) seems like a good bet as a talking point. I had a fairly popular Dragon Ball print that lots of people recognized and loved.
Large items and small objects were most popular.
My most popular items were my 13x19 One Piece print, and my Zelda stickers, although most of my stock was in 8.5x11 prints. I think for next time I’m going to focus on big pieces printed on large paper and tiny stickers and charms and such--the medium stuff didn’t really do well and it doesn’t really have much of a presence. I thought a mid-priced item (10$) would be right for some people, but people were primarily either big spenders (15$+) or just wanting to spend a couple bucks. Not to say this didn’t have exceptions, but the majority fell into those categories.
I realize that this generally works in a con-by-con basis, but I will probably stop making new 8.5x11s and focus on large and small! I haven’t really delved into chibis much and now I really want to because people liked my Zelda stickers a lot :3
Packing a printer was a good idea for con #1!
As my first con, I really had nooo clue what the heck to print! So I played it pretty safe and only made 5 copies of each fanart print, and 3 copies of each original. I am lucky enough to live close to this con and own a printer, so we brought the printer into the hotel room. I ended up having to print 15 more of the One Piece print, because it sold out on day 1 (did not expect this). We made a few other prints too but mostly it was just nice having the ability to print more. This was kind of a pain to have to print more but also benefited me because I played it too safe.
Don’t be shy!!
My biggest regret! I’m a shy dummy who was too scared to talk to most of the artists in the alley even though I greatly admired all of you! I really really appreciate the artists who were kind enough to come talk to me! I wanna try harder at making friends next time! Also I really appreciate all of the cool people who came and chatted with me in general. I didn’t really know what to expect, so I was absolutely floored to meet people who loved my art, and even recognized me from tumblr. 0:
Take commissions if you can handle it.
Another regret was that I pre-emptively decided not to take commissions, because I feared that my booth buddy would not help as much as he did (bless) and that I’d get too overwhelmed and stressed. By Saturday I was doodling random stuff with copics that sold quickly! If I had been offering commissions I think I could have been drawing with more purpose, getting more face time with fans and get more experience working quickly. I will def offer sketch commissions next year (I’m also thinking about making an official looking commission post on my tumblr.
Invest in some stuff to store it all in!
We bought this thing and it fell apart while we were carrying it! We not only do we need to buy a new storage holding thing, but we also need a dolly of some sort! Highly recommend over our terrible method:
Literally me just holding my big prints and taking them from the car to the room to the car to the table. They actually got wet at one point! I packaged them pre-preemptively in clear bags with cardboard backing though, whew for that!
Don’t be weak and buy a ton of cool One Piece stuff with your profits.
You’re running a business dangit! Stop buying toys!
Cosplaying while working is hard and you are awesome if you’re capable of it.
I spent probably 150$~ and tons of time on three cosplays that I intended to wear for this occasion! I packed up all of them and was super prudent in keeping them unwrinkled, then as soon as I got to the con and realized how little time I had to get ready, I decided to wear a fem Trafalgar Law cosplay on Friday. The wig was so stupid and itchy and I kept rubbing my makeup off that I decided that I would have no chance at survival if I were wearing my Nico Robin or Crocodile cosplay with high heeled shoes and props. So I just wore my Law hoodie and regular clothes for the other two days.
I didn’t actually take any pictures of any of my cosplays so have me in my boyfriend’s Luffy clothes. It was too cold for him to wear it at the con, sadly.
I initially saw it as a reason for people to come up to the booth and chat, but people could barely even see me behind my wire rack of art! I also rarely left the table because I felt guilty leaving my boyfriend by himself. I would have really liked to meet the huge pack of One Piece cosplayers in Texas but I’m ultimately too shy .
Originals vs. Fanart
This convention had a 50/50 rule which I abided by quite strictly. I ended up being surprised at the amount of originals which sold! Lots of people really liked my witchsona and my OC, Fig, which was just really awesome and I wish I wasn’t such a social doof or else I’d have talked to those people all night. Definitely did a lot better with fanart though, as an artist with characters who aren’t particularly well-established.
I feel a bit torn about selling fanart in general to be honest--I’m profiting off of someone else’s work, exceptionally popular or not! But I did it, and I didn’t get struck by any sort of deity, and people really wanted to buy it so I’m sorta taking it as a success. I think as my art improves I’ll be inclined to draw less fanart, because what’s really important to me are ultimately my own ideas. I definitely wouldn’t knock on anyone for drawing and selling fanart prints personally, as long as the original creator doesn’t specify otherwise (Undertale iirc?)
Finally:
I just want to reinforce that these thoughts come from a single experience and may not accurately represent how every con is! If I said a dumb thing then tell me and I’ll see what I can do to make it not dumb. :>
