In 2009 I decided to stop mucking about in fanstuff. I loved drawing it, but I lost someone important to me in 2009. She was, oddly enough, my doppelganger in a way. We shared similar histories, Asian parentage, similar career paths, and such. But she was way more confident about tossing that path for what she determined was the one she loved more.
She was a person of immense integrity, even more so in the artistic sphere. I miss her terribly and miss her inspiration.
But she kicked me in the butt before she moved on from this world, and she and I said we’d be mostly playing with our own toys from now on, not those of others.
And the odd thing was when I was a kid, my sister and didn’t really have a lot of TV or popular media to draw our entertainment from. We were largely fine as kids inventing Dallas-type melodramas of our own with whatever poor toys happened to be handy. We were masters of story and puppetry as well as making up the most ridiculous sagas one can create for armies of bears and rabbits.
I didn’t need fandom. I never even cared much about pop stars, movie stars, music stars, whatever… our stories were way cooler. And somehow I had gotten way too immersed in it and caring about what was popular, and in light of everything that happened in 2009, it was stupid.
But all this doesn’t really excuse the lack of art you know. I think I doodled more, but painted far less. I think most of my pictures in 2011 came from sketches I did at conventions. What happened?
I’m not much of a blogger about each of the anime conventions I go to anymore. I have a full-time job, a few full-time side projects (writing-wise — *cough*TalesoftheBigBadWolf*cough*) and therefore at best I can only pick up driveable regional conventions or one or two long distance ones that would involve vacation time.
Because time is money, I need to pick conventions that are worth the stress of preparation and have some measurable or immeasurable benefit.
Rather than write about each experience, I developed a table and sat down one evening this past fall to sort out my thoughts by filling in data points in this table. I used this process to help me think through my decision whether to apply or go the following year (which is where the table ends).
The rows signify some aspect of the convention or my own preparation that I felt could possibly influence my overall experience. I’ll discuss the reasons for each factor below, in hopes that some of the newer folks to the AA actually start thinking through this prior to applying to “any convention USA.” Because of our current economic landscape, I urge new artists to be careful about where they jump. As always, start local to avoid costly food or lodging fees and start with a convention that doesn’t break your existing budget. Sales are never guaranteed!
These were the variables that I used in the linked
worksheet.
