**Anime-Zing 2013 recap and Raffel Winner**

Even though I returned from Anime-Zing yesterday I’m still pretty worn out and tired from all the excitement and work. I had so much fun and met so many people and I did a lot better with my sales then I thought I would. I didn’t want to hold off from the recap nor from announcing the raffle winner so I’ll first go ahead and announce the winner of the 1 year anniversary raffle, I already contacted the winner by email but just encase you didn’t receive my email the winner of the raffle is *Junko Commissaire*
Thank you so much to everyone who participated! Next time I will go ahead and not be so chicken and try out a fan art contest; I think I really have to start having more confidence in myself that others will like my work as much as I like my work and would be interested in entering a drawing contest to win a prize for it ^^; This kind of brings me to some of the things that I learned while at Anime-Zing.

I went into Anime-Zing with the mind set that I wasn’t expecting to make very many sells at all any of the three days that I was there; I think with my inability to get very many commission request online when I had opened up commission back in my Deviantart stage I kind of had a dark outlook on how things would turn out sales wise with the convention. Lucklily that wasn’t the case at all and I was blown away by the response that I received at the convention.

Being a stay at home mom and working on comics and art just about non-stop and being the only one working on my art I don’t get much feedback from anyone, besides the amazing comments that I receive from my website from all of you kind readers, it gets a little lonely and quite while working on all this comic/visual novel work. So by the time I had finaly finished working on Love! Love! Fighting! Vol1 I at first felt accomplished but when I sat down and had time to rest that’s when negative thoughts and insecurities started to seep in and I started to worry that others wouldn’t like what I did, even though I was still happy with what I was able to do and how far I had come. I still knew and felt that I had a lot to learn and still wanted to go back and change things but I’ve learned that if I keep trying to go back and change the past then I won’t really be able to have much of a future because I keep worrying about stuff that’s already happened instead of focusing on what I can do to make things better for the things to come, forgive me if what I’m saying sounds confusing I’m still a little tired so I’ll try to keep it as short and simple as possible ^^;

Anyways after getting the books back from my printers *RA Direct comics :3 They have a 3-4 day turn around for their print run so for those who are interested you should really check then out!* I got the rest of my things ready and headed out to the convention and on the first day when I had to get my table set up it was raining and I really tried my best to go with a straight bang kind of hair style but the rain and my natural curly hair was fighting against my plans so it  didn’t really turn out the way I had liked, my bangs were still some what straight but a little puffy and parts of my hair started to curl up so I pulled it in a pony tail. I probably should have went with my natural curly hair style but I wanted to try a different style with the outfits that I brought….okay I’m kind of getting of subject here =___= anyways it was raining on the day that I had to set up my table and I ended up getting locked outside the back door of the hotel so I had to drive my car back around to the lobby area and carry the rest of my things back and forth from the car to the artist room. By the time I had everything finally at the table I was sweaty and tired but I started setting my boxes up.

I was a little nervous about who I was going to be tabling next to. I’m a very serious and quite person by nature when it comes to meeting new people but after I meet them then I tend to warm up and start to show my loud and awkward side so I tired my best to make sure to keep my awkwardness down to a minimal. I’ve had to go to speech class when I was younger because I’ve had problems saying certain letters and words so sometimes people still misunderstand some of the things I say because of the way I say it or because I might talk to fast so that also another reason why I was so nervous to start up conversations with the other artist around me but thankful my other tabling artist were very nice.

I met a nice woman who was tabling next to me with her boyfriend and she was kind enough to show me how to do a shell crocheting technique. She was so good at it and made it look so easy and I use to be able to do it when I was younger but when I tired following her directions it looked nothing like hers and I got frustrated and unraveled what I did and went back to what I knew that I could do and that was drawing. She was working on a megaman hat and I really wanted to get that hat and I really loved her white mage shall that she made also Q^Q She was soooooo talented!!

I also saw so many adorable coseplayers! I just had to stop and ask a few of them for pictures. I also took some pictures of my table once I finished setting it up. So once the show started people slowly started floating in and I was so happy to see that people where showing interest in my story Bottled Prince even though I didn’t have the printed book out yet. There was one gentleman that I had the pleasure to talk to bought one of the art prints of Nana from Bottled Prince. I hope he contacts me because he left behind one of the Mother Day’s cards that he bought and I want to let him know when Bottled Prince is finally in print. After getting such kind feedback about Bottled Prince from so many people I decided to go ahead and print out vol 1 and 2 for Anime Iowa. I’m not sure if I have enough pages to make a vol 3 but I do believe I have enough to print out vol 1-2.

Also I was so happy to see how much people enjoyed Love! Love! Fighting! and I was touched by the kind compliments about my art. I didn’t even care that they didn’t stop to by anything just hearing them say “You’re art is so good.”Really made me smile! I made sure to try to tell them that if they’d like to read the comic online then they can find the link on my business card and I thanked them. I know I was smiling so much and I’m sure my laughing could probably be heard all the way outside. Even my aunt was getting on me about being so loud but I was just so overwhelmed and so touched and thankful for the encouraging words that I couldn’t help but thank others and laugh with joy. When I had the chance I would try to give people pointers about different comic techniques that I learned or sites that might help aspiring artist get a little pocket money for them.

I had to reassure one person that I was talking to that they are fine and they can ask me as many question as they would like. I could tell that they felt bad because they might have thought that they were driving away people from my table because they might have thought they were taking up my time by asking me all these questions but I made sure to reassure them that they are fine and they can ask as many questions as they have and that I wish that I had someone that I could’ve asked questions to when I first started out. I know that going to the Artist Alley the main goal is to sell and make a profit but another one of my goals is also about the networking and to also help other aspiring artist that might not have had the connections or opportunities that I had or try to pass on the things that I learned to other rising artist that might not have know about certain valuable things like sponsorship sites or getting your stuff out there or getting your site on wordpress and the different CMS platforms that you can use. Money is important but everyone has their own style when handling the artist alley and when talking with people and for me I’m very passionate about art and if I can make money then that’s a plus but if I can help someone who might have been in the situation that I was in when I was first starting out then that’s even better because I remember how it felt and how lonely and sad it was and I remember the tears and pain I went through and if I can help others try to have a smooth journey and possibly have a better outcome then I don’t mind getting my hands a little dirty by doing so.

So I say that to say state that I met a lot of wonderful people and some very talented artist who didn’t really know of a lot of the golden opportunities that they are missing out on and who haven’t really been givin much direction from people around them so I do hope they shoot me an email or try to stay in contact so that I can let them know about any contest or art oppotunities that I may find out about and pass it along. It’s all about the networking and I’m really starting to learn that.

Now I also want to say that I had my first convention art trade! I was only able to walk around and look at the other tables on either Saturday and Sunday when things started to slow down and I ended up meeting Caroline of Plus Size Cosplay She had first came up to my table I think on Friday and I don’t know if she realized but my aunt was fussing or had just been fussing *or she might not have said she was fussing but talking* to me about my comic and how I should have more confidence or something like that I can’t really remember all the way but I was getting fussed at or nagged at about something *which was out of love, that I do know <3* but when Caroline had told me how much she had liked the comic and mentioned about the pretty coco pie part that really made my day! She was such a cool, sweet, and funny person! I don’t know if she noticed but all the while when she was talking to me I was studying the shape of her eyes and I was thinking “Hey her eye shape is kind of like almond shape and cuts of the iris kind of at the top.” and I thought she looked so pretty ^^ Whenever I talk to people I study there face and try to remember so that I can do a better job a drawing different types of character designs. Also this is kind of random but I thought it was funny because I believe it was on the last day and I think all but two of the artist had arrived at the artist alley but none of the dealers had showed up and Caroline and her other table partner were sitting and everyone was talking amongst themselves and someone had pointed that out that the dealers weren’t here. Now Caroloine was seated to where she could be seen clearly by everyone by her table partner was hidden behind the wire cubes that had these black clothes behind them so you couldn’t see him but you could hear him so when someone had mentioned about the dealers not being there the next thing you hear is a voice over by Caroline’s table saying “Look at those dealers being lazy; wanting sleep…” We started laughing and Caroline pointed out how people where going to think it’s her saying that stuff because know one can see him and then I pointed out just how sleep deprived artist are if they think getting sleep is being lazy. It was a lot of fun XD but also Caroline and I did an Art trade! I was so honored that she wanted to do an art trade with me! I really love the way she drew Oriana! I really have such a hard time making things look cute and innocent without it looking like they’ll cut your head off but with the way she drew Oriana she looks cute and innocent with a hint of “Hey, How you doing~;)” I love it! Look at her showing her knees and stuff! XD I’m going to hang this up in my work room because this is like my first real life art trade and the first actual fan art that I received of Oriana Q^Q I’m seriously so touched that I might cry! For those of you who want to see my half of the art trade go ahead and hope over to this link here and take a peek :link~

Caroline’s Lovely Drawing Of Oriana

I had stopped over by her table and was looking through her art and saw that she drew pocky people and I decided that I wanted to draw something cute like her’s so I sat down and tired my hand at something cute……I’m sure some of you might already know the outcome of what happens when I try to draw something cute……instead of a cute pocky girls she turned into a chocolate pocky assassin. Her line is “You will eat the pocky and you will enjoy it.” I decided to go ahead and ink it in and I’ll end up turning that into a print later on because I ended up coming up with a cute silly story for her. It’s centered around candy and her job is to protect the star candy kids, the kids are based off the little sugar star candies that are really colorful, Caroline gave me that idea when we were talking back and forth about what I should draw. Since I hate rice cake I think I’ll have the person that annoys her be some kind of race cake person. I might turn it into a short visual novel ^^ anyways I ended up inking it in and someone liked it so much that they commissioned me to draw her in a Sailor uniform ^^

My Chocolate Pocky Assassin

My Chocolate Pocky Salior Assassin *I feel that she she is glaring at me…..*
 

 

I was asked a questioned by Brandon *the gentleman who I mentioned from earlier* and he asked if I had ever been lost in a foreign country because of how realistic the story was and he asked if I did research or ever traveled over there or at least a question along those lines. I told him that I haven’t been lost in a foreign country but I did get lost in a new town that I had just moved to when I was still in high school. I want everyone to know first off that I’ve never been to South Korea and I don’t want anyone to think that I am pretending that I have been or anything like that ^^; I’m trying to learn the language but right now all that I know is just from me doing major studying and researching. A lot of things I do pull from my life like the feeling of being lost or the feeling of being out of place is pull from personal experience and other times I pull from what I’ve heard or read others go through. I do worry that sometimes people might take things over board and get upset like for instance when Caroline had told me that she really liked the Coco pie part and how that made me so happy; I was worried because I know of other people who actually hate being called coco pie or don’t like things like that but there are other people who love it so I’ve learned that I will just draw and write about things that I enjoy and that way I will end up drawing in those who have similar interest like me.

This is my new table layout

Another shot of my table

A closer shot of the table ^^;

Now at an angel

Now at another angel

One last shot of my table =^^=

I really liked her rainbow dash outfit.

I loved her wig and flowers ontop of her head :3

I really thought she did such a good job so I just had to get a picture.

I loved the color blue of her wig so I asked for a picture.

She was such a sweet girl! I was shocked when she told me that she made that herself. She did a very good job!

She just looked to adorbale that I just had to get a picture! I loved her pink wig!

I really wish I had a wig like that! I loved her whole outfit! It was so pretty!