I’m home from Anthrocon! I did my accounts sitting in the Pittsburgh airport; I’m about $80 in the red. Which is not bad when you consider that my expenses were around $1300. I think I’ll be going back next year; I could have done a few things differently and probably have had a couple hundred less in expenses and turned a little profit. Hopefully this amount of sales wasn’t a one-time thing due to pent-up demand for the Tarot deck by East Coast folks – I shipped out a box of 24 decks, and shipped back 9.
I really have nothing to say about various parts of the con. I got in around midnight Thursday, set up in the dealer’s room first thing Friday, missed that night’s dance due to being tired and jet lagged, spent all Saturday in the dealer’s room, hit the dance, spent all Sunday in the dealer’s room, and was sad to discover Anthrocon does not have an official dead dog dance. I did all of one panel at the end, which was a pretty fun discussion of “advanced graphic storytelling” that touched on various things.
Made some new friends, got photographed posing on top of the GoH’s amazing sports car (I now have a perfect author photo for Rita), went out to dinner with the Furoticon people, I mean it was a con I guess? Supposedly there were almost 5600 attendees but it didn’t really feel like it from where I was in the dealer’s room.
AC’s dealer’s room felt huge and intimidating when I first went as a congoer a few years ago. But this year? It felt modest. Probably because I showed at ECCC earlier this year. I’m kinda graduating from the furry scene, and my idea of “huge con” is changing.
Sales were weird. I made almost half my expenses on Friday, which I normally expect to be kind of ass even on a four-day con. Saturday felt dead, though I made a decent chunk when all was said and done – the fursuit parade may have been a contributor to that, what with setting it up, and with it being a super long march that I’m told left suiters pretty damn tired. Dunno. It wasn’t just me, either; Ursula wandered by my table at one point and SHE was having slow sales on Saturday.
Sales were also weird in what I sold. Normally I do a fair number of table commissions and sell a handful of prints. This con, I sold a TON of prints and only got FOUR table commissions all con. Three of the four incurred the Complicated Character surcharge, which was a little frustrating – I’m fine with doing that kind of stuff, but it’s a little frustrating to go from one complex piece to the next with no chance to take a break on a more normal character.
I will close this with a few Vine videos I recorded that I think kinda sum up the experience of, well, ANY furry con to be honest.
lonely
squeakers
bangarang
education part 1 (starring sigil and nate)
education part 2 (starring sigil, nate, and ec major’s crotch)