AN and stuffs

AN was over a week ago but I was so tired over the weekend, then my relatives immigrated DURING AN and I had to spend a whole day chauffeuring them to get their SIN card, take care of customs, get my aunt to and back from school and all related fun stuff that I just… slept through most of Monday. Then the rest of the week was spent working on a proper picture for Carciphona’s new layout, finishing up commissions, getting SOME progress on inking more pages in order for myself to not feel so bad about falling behind and kept pushing off posting about AN hahaha

but I’m posting about it now and it’s gonna be LOOOONGGG and not just about AN :D there’s so much crap I have to do… I wish I could just draw pages and work on illusts all day and when I’m done I could just be like HEY LOOK GUYS A NEW BOOK then disappear from the world once more lol ]:

My stand looks same old ghetto always; I spent some effort on bringing things that may pretty up the desktop but it barely feels that way at a glance anyway because there’s so much crap on the table LOL AND NOT THAT PEOPLE CARE MUCH. I forgot to bring those little metal wires on the first day to tie my poles to the table so it was like falling over all day so much that another artist in AA was kind enough to offer to show me how she keeps her stand straight. I also forgot to bring my display prints………… so I wasted 20 brand new prints and remade the display on the spot ): that took like half an hour when my display prints are already taped and ready to be clipped up in matter of minutes. I supposed it could be a lot worse and I should be glad that I didn’t forget my ID or merch or something else stupid.

My cousin was there to help me and she was soOOOOO good at remembering people’s faces… or I’m just bad… because there were a lot of people who kept coming back to my table either to look or to buy more stuff, and I’d just be like hi!!!! and my cousin would be like she came back x times, or she was here with her mom before and now she’s here alone, or he bought x and y before, and I’d just be like LOL REALLY I CAN’T REMEMBER I’M SO SORRY… alzheimers in my twenties ):

I think I would’ve died without my cousin there because I did astonishingly well this year at AN. Last year was my big debut with my manga in print and my artbook, both of which missed AN because I couldn’t attend. I also did many new prints last year that were a lot more well received than my old stuff from years before, so I guess all of that added together with the year jump really made the difference between this year and 2010 huge. I also was not afraid to sell my books because I could bring as many as I wanted unlike cons I had to fly to; I encouraged people to buy books together and a lot of people did, whereas in other cons I would not sell multiple books for less. I’m not sure if this was what worked, or the fact that I had a lot more new stuff at AN, so I’m still scared to bring books to other cons since the consequences are steep if I fail to sell them. But whatever the case was, it felt really sweet to be back at a home con and greeted by so many returning fans! Before and after cons I am always meh about having to go outside and face people, but I don’t get too bothered about it because I know when I’m actually there and speaking to people who come to find me, I am always able to enjoy it.

I dressed up a little nicer on the second day and I felt like a total skank LOL. Normally I would just throw a hoodie over myself and call it done, but I forced myself to at least dress a little more nicely this year, or even put on some makeup like a GIRL but I’ll have to take this slowly, I don’t think I can handle this appearance thing all at once ): I sure hope this is not a factor in helping my sales but god knows I’m always wrong about shit like this ]:During setup and take down though I had to walk on gravel with my precious pair of heels because of my shitty parking spot and I felt like I was walking on money LOL;;;;

I brought two sketched pages of CP to ink at the con; I almost finished 1 on Friday, but for some reason, I just didn’t feel like working on them AT ALL for the rest of the con. I finished 2 or 3 at NYAF and it was pretty awesome, it also helped me to not have to stare at my customers awkwardly and get in their way of browsing my work, so I don’t know why I just didn’t want to do ANYTHING at AN this year except to just sit there :T I also got a lot of random drawing inspiration there, as always when I’m far away from tools and in this case, occupied with manning my table. I clean forgot about them when I got home anyway so w/e didn’t happen

OK ONTO THE NEXT TOPIC

I made this for Carciphona’s new website layout! The birds are overdone but relevance first, right? I’m rather happy with this layout–I was with the last one too, but not anymore–because I finally learned to exercise a little constrain over what should be in focus and what should not, and the front page is a lot less cluttered than before. New pages are hopefully more noticeable and although I really really wanted to plaster a big link to printed versions of the book, I figured I could leave that to the manga viewer page after someone has already seen some pages and maybe have some grounds of judgment, rather than leading them straight off my site. At least now that the site is cleaned up and I have a presentable piece of welcome image that I am content with, I can go about making some promotional pieces out of it and go buy some web ads or something!

I’m on page 56 in terms of inking; based on a rough pace I listed down for myself in February purely for reference purposes, I’m 50 pages behind in terms of how far I would like to be at HAHA YEAH UNREALISTIC GOALS GOOOOOO!! This was made with Christmas as the goal for the release of volume 3, but I guess most likely won’t make it ): I really like making books for some reason and I wanted to finish something before the end of the year. Maybe I will pick up the pace throughout the summer; maybe I’ll slow down even more, who knows!

I’m JUST getting to my favourite part of volume 3 now and I looked over the thumbnails to make some revisions yesterday. I had avoided doing that for a while so I could read it with a clear mind later and get some feel for anything that’s terribly out of place, and I was actually quite engaged by how the events unwind around this part, whereas usually I would just read with a clenched embarrassed mind like I’m reading hentai in public lmfao ””””orz I hope I will be able to retain at least some of these feelings when I turn them into finished pages ]: Humility is good for my growth, but sometimes being able to honestly promote my works without feeling like I’m boasting all the time or feeling like other people are wasting money on me would be nice Q_Q