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A-Kon 2005. Got there Thursday morning after catching a ride from one of the dealer's room directors, and after having about 3 hours of sleep. Note that I'd had about 4 hours of sleep the night before, so I was mostly strung out and developed a migraine over the course of the day. Not fun. Anyway, helped with setup as much as I could in a brain-dead state to in exchange for crash space in the dealer liaison crash suite Thursday night since my roommates weren't getting in until Friday.
Registration opened at 6:30 Thursday night, and I wandered down there to see if I could get my pre-reg badge, to discover the horror that was The Line. Onsite reg, for those who didn't pre-reg was fairly short, but the pre-registration line, for those who'd sent their money in earlier, was bunched up in a series of tight switchbacks for a while, the stretched out alll the way down the length of the preconference area, turned the corner, ran the width of the area, and then came back up a bit.
This is a 40,000 square foot area. The pre-reg line is that thing that squiggles a lot at the top, then stretches out in a tail down the floorplan. Compare it to the onsite registration line. I think it says somethng that paying $5-10 extra and registering at the con would probably be well worth the money in the hassle saved if you're coming in on Thursday. I didn't see the lines on Friday or Saturday, so I can't compare.
I don't know the final attendance count, but a friend of mine onstaff told me they were "very happy" and that pre-reg had been up 20% since last year. They didn't quite make 10K last year, but I think that they exceeded it this year.
I decided to come back about 9:30 or so and see what was up with the line. When I eventually did, it was just as long. I saw the Lomik Market people setting up and wandered over to introduce myself, whereupon the KM head said "I've got your badge. Here," and handed it to me.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tesstrosa and darkisawa told me when they found me a short while later that they'd discovered that the KM had their badges only after standing in The Line for an hour and a half.
Crashed early, for a con, at about 11. Woke up and went down to the Komik Market area to discover that they'd completely redone the layout from the Ginormous Rectangle o' Doom to a series of large islands, and that I andtesstrosa were apparently in just about the exact same spot we were in last year. Only this time they'd put a small arcade that included four DDR machines of various flavors in the space directly across from us, so we spent the entire weekend screaming at people over the din. I am still slightly hoarse from that.
This is a rough approximation of what I remember of the KM layout and our position. I can't remember whether I was on the 2nd or 3rd island, or even whether there were 4 or 5 islands (the one at the bottom of the picture is the autograph area).
It was a good start to the con when people started buying stuff from me before I'd even got halfway through setting up the table. I'm not too surprised - I was there about 9 AM and the dealer's room wouldn't open for two more hours, so there were lots of people wandering around with money burning holes in their pockets and I am always more than happy to help with that problem. I sold out of the Saiyuki "Boys in the Band" print at the 8x10 size on Friday, and I could have sold twice as many as I did, probably.
I managed to get into the art show as a walk-in, which turned out to be a Very Good Thing that I'll get to later.
The doujinshi sold enough to pay for itself and I sent 10 copies up withpzb sent me to put on my table. She sold about half the prints and gained a huge number of compliments on her work, and I can tell you the prints look better than the online images there, and since I own one original of hers, the originals look even better than the prints.
Most of my friends caravaned down to College Station on Saturday for a wedding, and I stayed at the con.tesstrosa, nightambre and I stayed late on Saturday, which was a good idea because all those people wandering around after the dealers' room closed and before the cosplay started were still in the mood to buy, especially if they only had one-day passes to the con.
After that, I went to the room and finished a couple of commissions, the wandered down and joined the infamous Dwayne Party that happens every year, when a friend of mine rents a suite and throws a party that starts sometime after cosplay ends and doesn't end until the last drunken reveller staggers out, blinking, into the hot, bright sun of Sunday noonish. I discovered that between exhaustion and my medication, I was totally hammered after a drink and a half and left shortly after the last of my roommates did, so I could get to the room before passing out and still have lights on to get ready for bed by.
Sunday was much slower that Saturday, naturally, except that this was the day that I got slammed with commissions - five of them. I only finished two, but the person who asked for the other three suggested I mail them to her when I was done, and I shall do my best to get that done this week - they're not incredibly hard and I'll post copies of them here because they are Saiyuki-themed and youdirty-minded people will love them.
I have no qualms about posting commissions online because at ten bucks a pop, nobody's buying copyright. :)
Packed up and left about 4, and went with my friends Toby and Dan to eat and hang out with a couple of other friends who didn't do the con this year, then ended up home about 9 to a very desperate cat who had eaten almost half of her food! and was thus in imminent danger of starving to death.
I have decided that her paper-shredding habit is mostly to get attention from me because there were no new shreds of paper on the floor when I returned, and there was a wadded-up piece of paper that should not have escaped unscathed if she was just shredding paper for the fun of it.
Continued in the next post.
Registration opened at 6:30 Thursday night, and I wandered down there to see if I could get my pre-reg badge, to discover the horror that was The Line. Onsite reg, for those who didn't pre-reg was fairly short, but the pre-registration line, for those who'd sent their money in earlier, was bunched up in a series of tight switchbacks for a while, the stretched out alll the way down the length of the preconference area, turned the corner, ran the width of the area, and then came back up a bit.
This is a 40,000 square foot area. The pre-reg line is that thing that squiggles a lot at the top, then stretches out in a tail down the floorplan. Compare it to the onsite registration line. I think it says somethng that paying $5-10 extra and registering at the con would probably be well worth the money in the hassle saved if you're coming in on Thursday. I didn't see the lines on Friday or Saturday, so I can't compare.
I don't know the final attendance count, but a friend of mine onstaff told me they were "very happy" and that pre-reg had been up 20% since last year. They didn't quite make 10K last year, but I think that they exceeded it this year.
I decided to come back about 9:30 or so and see what was up with the line. When I eventually did, it was just as long. I saw the Lomik Market people setting up and wandered over to introduce myself, whereupon the KM head said "I've got your badge. Here," and handed it to me.
tesstrosa and darkisawa told me when they found me a short while later that they'd discovered that the KM had their badges only after standing in The Line for an hour and a half.Crashed early, for a con, at about 11. Woke up and went down to the Komik Market area to discover that they'd completely redone the layout from the Ginormous Rectangle o' Doom to a series of large islands, and that I and
tesstrosa were apparently in just about the exact same spot we were in last year. Only this time they'd put a small arcade that included four DDR machines of various flavors in the space directly across from us, so we spent the entire weekend screaming at people over the din. I am still slightly hoarse from that.This is a rough approximation of what I remember of the KM layout and our position. I can't remember whether I was on the 2nd or 3rd island, or even whether there were 4 or 5 islands (the one at the bottom of the picture is the autograph area).
It was a good start to the con when people started buying stuff from me before I'd even got halfway through setting up the table. I'm not too surprised - I was there about 9 AM and the dealer's room wouldn't open for two more hours, so there were lots of people wandering around with money burning holes in their pockets and I am always more than happy to help with that problem. I sold out of the Saiyuki "Boys in the Band" print at the 8x10 size on Friday, and I could have sold twice as many as I did, probably.
I managed to get into the art show as a walk-in, which turned out to be a Very Good Thing that I'll get to later.
The doujinshi sold enough to pay for itself and I sent 10 copies up with
pzb sent me to put on my table. She sold about half the prints and gained a huge number of compliments on her work, and I can tell you the prints look better than the online images there, and since I own one original of hers, the originals look even better than the prints. Most of my friends caravaned down to College Station on Saturday for a wedding, and I stayed at the con.
tesstrosa, nightambre and I stayed late on Saturday, which was a good idea because all those people wandering around after the dealers' room closed and before the cosplay started were still in the mood to buy, especially if they only had one-day passes to the con.After that, I went to the room and finished a couple of commissions, the wandered down and joined the infamous Dwayne Party that happens every year, when a friend of mine rents a suite and throws a party that starts sometime after cosplay ends and doesn't end until the last drunken reveller staggers out, blinking, into the hot, bright sun of Sunday noonish. I discovered that between exhaustion and my medication, I was totally hammered after a drink and a half and left shortly after the last of my roommates did, so I could get to the room before passing out and still have lights on to get ready for bed by.
Sunday was much slower that Saturday, naturally, except that this was the day that I got slammed with commissions - five of them. I only finished two, but the person who asked for the other three suggested I mail them to her when I was done, and I shall do my best to get that done this week - they're not incredibly hard and I'll post copies of them here because they are Saiyuki-themed and you
I have no qualms about posting commissions online because at ten bucks a pop, nobody's buying copyright. :)
Packed up and left about 4, and went with my friends Toby and Dan to eat and hang out with a couple of other friends who didn't do the con this year, then ended up home about 9 to a very desperate cat who had eaten almost half of her food! and was thus in imminent danger of starving to death.
I have decided that her paper-shredding habit is mostly to get attention from me because there were no new shreds of paper on the floor when I returned, and there was a wadded-up piece of paper that should not have escaped unscathed if she was just shredding paper for the fun of it.
Continued in the next post.