Entry tags:

anime north, artwork, bleach, comics, doujinshi, manga, painting

Anime North 2009 Report!
This was the first AN since 2003 where I didn't participate in the artist alley, and I have to say it was really refreshing! :)

Instead of getting a table and sitting behind it for the entire convention, I opted to go with the art show Gallery Momiji and showcase and sell several of my works on canvas. Up until the night before the convention, I was frantically working away on them, wishing I hadn't wasted so much time weeks before... O_o;;

But, in any case!


FRIDAY

I got up around 9:00 to get to work on my last-minute con preparations, namely packing my luggage and gessoing the sides of all my canvases so they would be clean and presentable. ^__^ Around noon, I was taking pictures of my two new canvases I painted specifically for AN, just in case they ever did manage to sell. It's great having a big tree that gives shade to our entire deck; just perfect for diffuse lighting (just gotta watch out for any strong beams of light peeking through the leaves ^^).

Kristina, her mom, and Rachelle picked me up around 1:40 and off to Toronto we went!

We arrived at the Doubletree around 3:00, and got up to our room a little later. Although there were three of us, since I had a hotel keycard from years past that I forgot to hand back to front desk, we only had to get a room for two. Yay for saving money! XD But it would have been nice to have a real keycard so I didn't have to rely on Kristina and Rachelle so much to get into the room. Otherwise, things worked out swimmingly.

Kristina and I headed over to the TCC with our art for the art show around 4:45 or so. I had five pieces to lug with me as well as prints for the gallery store. By the time we got to the pre-reg line, it was pretty much non-existent. w00! \(^o^)/ After that, we "snuck" our way into the line going to the main convention hall. The staff didn't seem to mind, apparently. Oh yeah, speaking of staff, I was mistaken for one when entering the TCC. So I was able to bypass the huge line outside. I guess holding a ton of stuff does that for ya. ^__^

So we get into Gallery Momiji and it looks like the staff there were experiencing technical difficulties and such, so much so that they were behind by a few hours on opening the gallery to the public. Pretty much everything was being done on the fly: bidding sheets were being printed off as they were needed, hooks and clips arriving fashionably late, and so on. I found them to be unnecessarily disorganized. I kept thinking "why didn't they print out all those bidding sheets beforehand"? I mean, the deadline for the control sheets was a week before, so you'd assume all that would have been taken care of. Even upon entering the gallery, I had no idea where to go or who to talk to to get things set up. But even so, after an hour or so of waiting, I finally get my bidding sheets done and got it all settled.

The only thing that went seriously wrong was me forgetting to bring the display copies for my poster prints for the gallery store. That was the only thing that was a bit disheartening... So I wasn't able to sell my prints. :(

By this time though, it was about 7:40, and the Nominoichi Flea Market, which I had signed up to participate in, would be starting the calls into the exhibit hall, so I had to rush like a madman up to the hotel room, take the one suitcase entirely devoted to merchandise, and rush over to the Renaissance hotel. I get there about five minutes late after the final call, but I was still able to get into the hall (THANK YOU COSMIC SPIRITUAL ENTITY! XDDDD). Looking all around, I was amazed at all the stuff people had brought with them. Some tables were just overflowing with anime and manga goodies. I had a sizable collection: about 50 assorted manga in both English and Japanese, a few artbooks, some DVDs, a figurine, and other miscellaneous things I won from art contests when I was still part of CTRL-A. There wasn't a whole lot, but it was enough to fill out the table.

9:00 hit, and the throngs of con-goers just tidal-waved into the room! It was insane the number the people in there. "Dealers Room" is the only label I can put to it! But that was what was great about it though; people were buying things up from me in no time at all! I think not even thirty minutes after the hall opened, half my English manga were gone! ^__^ I was constantly rearranging items as things were sold. One person even complimented me on the pristine condition my books were in. Well, that's what you get when you read a manga once and then put it away in some drawer for years on end. XDDDD

I packed up at 11:00. Out of the 27 English manga I had, 4 remained. I was only able to sell 5 of my 21 Japanese manga, but that's to be expected; not many people can read Japanese after all. :) Everything else was sold. At the end of the day, I made about $230. ^__^


SATURDAY

One great thing about not being in the artist alley, aside from having so much free time, is not having to wake up so early in the morning and rushing off to the convention! I got up at 9:00 and didn't leave until 11:30. I was waiting for Kristina to wake up so I could work out the schedule and determine meet-up spots. So in that time, I watched a Hindi film called "Bhootnath" on OMNI. It was pretty cute and funny. :)

After Kristina got ready, we headed down to the TCC. Our first stop was the Cosplay Chess. Kristina got lots of pictures and videos for it while I watched from the sidelines. :) We probably stayed for about 15 to 20 minutes. After that, we went to Gallery Momiji to see how our work was doing in the silent auction. So far, there weren't any bids. The dealers room was our next destination. For me, I was just looking around, not really dead set on buying anything in particular at that moment. Just some quick perusing. ^__^

Once we got over to the Scaredycats booth, Kristina was just in awe of all the swords! She particularily loved Squall's gunblade. :) But what really caught her attention, and what she was so enamoured by was Sephiroth's sword. So much so in fact she raced back to the hotel room to get her credit card so she could get a $25 discount (regular price was $250 O_o;;).

And so while she was off on her mission, I opted to stay and look around the artist alley (a.k.a. the Comic Market!). I met with a few people I know from deviantART and LiveJournal. In particular, I met Allie, a.k.a. perishing-twinkie. She's a really awesome person! Her Kuroshitsuji print was simply exquisite! So I ended up buying that along with her Ryuk print, which is just as awesome. ^__^

I also met with Ichigo-Oh (whom I was beside in the AA last year), and skwerly and her fiancée akui:ill-intent. We chatted for a bit and I bought issues 3 and 4 of Lucian Fallen from them. I'm going to have to re-read the beginning again; it's been eight or nine months since I bought the first two issues! ^__^ I headed back to the dealer's room to meet up with Kristina again. She got her sword, with a very satisfied look on her face. XDDD We walked back to the Doubletree and made it just in time for Lar DeSouza's panel. Rachelle was there waiting for us in her Naraku costume. :) I had no idea who this guy was or what he did; Kristina and Rachelle just dragged me to it, heheh. A lot of the jokes went WAY over my head, but all in all, it was an enjoyable experience. :)

A few hours later, we went for dinner at Tucker's Marketplace. Although it was a buffet, I wasn't too keen on eating a whole lot; that's just how I am. With me, it's usually two plates then straight to dessert with one dish of ice cream. That's all I need. :) Kristina made the comment about getting your money's worth, but I don't care about that. You shouldn't eat too much at dinner anyway. :) The vanilla ice cream was pretty good though. ^__^

After that, we walked back to the Doubletree for the Astronomy thing that was supposed to be going on at 9:00. We searched everywhere for the tent that was supposed to be in the parking lot, but to no avail. We did end up finding it, but there was no tent to speak of, heheh. The sky was still rather cloudy, so the people organizing the event were having trouble finding stars in the sky. XD We didn't stay for long. We did a lot of wandering around the Doubletree, mainly getting photos of all the cosplayers. We went to another panel, then went to the late night 404's performance. I think we only stayed for an hour, then headed back to our hotel room.

One thing that disappointed me quite a bit this year was the lack of anime airing on the hotel's exclusive channel. That was pretty much the only channel I would ever watch whenever I was in the hotel room. It was great to find new shows to watch. I discovered Lovely Complex in 2007 and Bamboo Blade in 2008 that way. I hope they don't forget about it next year... :P


SUNDAY

The first order of business was heading straight to the art show and seeing if anything was bid on. I got there to discover that two paintings were gone! So that was awesome. :D I had thought they were part of the live auction, but they weren't, hahah. They also happened to be the two paintings I had done specifically for AN, so them being bought up is a really good sign. ^__^

Next order of business was going to the dealer's room and buying the manga volumes I needed to get. The most important being Genshiken, because the Chapters bookstore I go to never had the first volume. So I ended up buying six volumes. XD I also got Candidate for Goddess 2, Ouran High School Host Club 11, Fruits Basket 22, Tsubasa 19, and ×××Holic 12. That was the extent of my dealer's room shopping. :) I walked around the comic market for about an hour, waiting to meet Kristina at 1:00 at Gallery Momiji to pick up the remaining artwork and money for the sold paintings. I got a few buttons here and there, some doujinshi, and other stuff.

Some pictures of all the goodness I bought up!

One thing I noticed this year was the sheer amount of poster prints. I was kinda hoping to buy lots of 8.5 × 11 prints so I could put them in a binder, but posters seemed to rule. And on top of that, the paper quality for a lot of them was much to be desired. One Bleach poster I bought, for instance, was priced at $12, but the paper it was printed on was so flimsy it wrinkled like nobody's business. In comparison, the posters I bought from Allie were printed on really nice thick cardstock, giving them actual substance.

Also with taking my time walking around the Comic Market, it really showed me how reasonably priced my own prints and posters have been in comparison. I saw a few 8.5 × 11 prints going for $10, and even some 11 * 17 prints going for $15. Just cut those in half and you'll have what I'd charge for mine more or less respectively. Although I do reasonably well (as in break even and make some profit on top of that) year after year, what I lack above all is a healthy variety of designs to choose from, so that's something I'm going to have to remedy for next year. :)

At Gallery Momiji, Kristina and I went through the artist pick-up. The two paintings I sold got me $210. w00~!! \(^o^)/ So along with the flea market earnings, AN paid for itself in flying colours. For next year, I'm definitely gonna have a lot more work to sell. I had better get started on that real soon. ;)

For the rest of the afternoon, we all went here and there, but the main attraction was the AMVs. Kristina was all hyped up for them, lol. Some of them were pretty awesome. ^__^ Once they ended, we went over to one of the video rooms still in use and watched an episode of Ouran High School Host Club. It was fun watching anime with a group of people. I kind of miss that atmosphere; the last time I did that was many years ago at CTRL-A. I should probably start going back to that some time.

Although AN was coming to a close and I was ready to just find a spot to sit and wait for Kristina's mom to pick us up, Kristina was intent on going to see other things lol. So we snuck in to a Sailor Moon panel for about 15 minutes. It was fun listening to people talk about the show, like who their favourite villains were and the Japanese voice actors and what other roles they played (I think it was mentioned that the voice actor of Sailor Moon's first voice role was a hippo if I'm not mistaken XDDDD).

There's nothing more really to say, so that was Anime North 2009 for me. :) This time around, I actually felt really satisfied by the end of it, which wasn't always the case when I was part of the artist alley.

So AN was definitely a great time! ^__^