Here’s a quick rundown of RF.

Thursday: I got in just as the dealer’s room was closing. I’m told that there were some serious amounts of money flying around the room that day – one friend sold a fursuit she’d brought mostly as a teaser display for her fursuit-building services and thus had her con more than paid for – but I didn’t see it myself. All I was able to do was drop my suitcase full of merch behind the table and be chased out before they locked the room down for the night.

I hooked up with Nick for the panel he was doing on writing for erotic comics; he kinda dragged me up onto it and I had some things to say about our process when we did Absinthe. Plus near the end I took a moment to urge people to just get off their asses and make something, because if you plan and plan and worry you’ll never get anywhere – make a first attempt, critique it, try again and do your best to not make the same mistakes again; repeat until awesome.

Who did I eat dinner with? I don’t remember! Aargh. Maybe I ate alone? I know I went to the steakhouse in the hotel alone, then bailed when I realized the only thing on the menu was streaks priced for expense accounts; I knew I’d be making money but I didn’t feel like spending $50 for a hotel restaurant meal before seeing how the con would go. Oh right! Then I went up to Maly and Jon’s room and helped save them from the pizzas they’d ordered while they slouched around in their costume pajamas and put together the racks for their table. Maly had this absolutely absurd pink inflatable dolphin with a long rainbow shaft coming out of its belly – in a way that totally did not look anywhere as near as dirty as it sounds to type – which I dubbed “The Ancient Dolphin Hammer of Zillyhoo” because while I am not A Homestuck I have read pretty much the entirety of that comic.

I danced for a bit. Didn’t push myself to stay too long, I wanted to get up in time to set up in the morning.

Amara and Josh got in around midnight, and sleep happened.

Friday: I got out of bed and went to the dealer’s room. Set up in time for it to open. I got a couple of complex commissions – one from a regular, the other from a friend of said regular – and got one of them done at the table that day, in between selling enough stuff to pay for my con even if I wasn’t sharing a room. I only had two so far, so I felt no qualms about taking my time and really knocking them out of the park. The first one required searching the net for images of wood lice.

I failed to show up for the panel on webcomics I was supposed to do with Dana; I’d put it into my calendar as being on Saturday some time ago. Possibly when looking at an earlier version of the panel grid, possibly I was just an idiot, I dunno. She said she handled it well herself, and was even kind enough to plug my comic and its Kickstarter for me.

I went out to dinner with Erin, Berbalang, Sigil, and like five other people whose names I do not remember. It was pretty good; I got rather tipsy off of the glass of cider I had with my meal, and was thus dancing pretty crazily and loosely when I got back to the con and hit the dance for an hour or two.

Saturday: Business was slower. I forgot my cashbox in the room, but it really wasn’t a problem – ever since the introduction of Square, furry cons have really shifted over to credit cards for the most part. It varies from con to con; some are still more cash-based (I was shocked by how much cash I did at Anthrocon), but for the most part I really bring the cashbox to furry cons as a formality. Comic cons, on the other hand, seem to still love cash. I didn’t go back to get it, and it wasn’t really a problem – I think I had to bug Amara (who was sitting next to me) for change all of once.

I didn’t have a chance to go get the cashbox because I’d had to go back home for a box full of Tarot decks; I’d only brought like a half-dozen, after most of my sales at the comic con last week being Rita, and I was down to one after Friday. Orv was kind enough to give me a lift, so it was only about eleven when I got back into the dealer’s room with the decks instead of probably like… two? if I’d taken the bus home for it. I gave him the second badge I’d somehow ended up with due to some mix-ups with getting my badge late on Thursday when the dealer badges were being shuffled between the dealer’s room and registration.

I started handing out fliers for Rita with a secret code on the back: when the Kickstarter for volume 2 gets to the fulfillment survey stage, I’m going to have a place for low-end purchasers to enter this code, and they’ll get it signed with a little head drawing as if they’d bought it directly from me at a con. A little bonus, and maybe a gentle little push to go pledge for it soon.

I got my second table commission done. It involved googling for images of thrones, bearded dragons, and naked old ladies. Near the end of the day, I took a couple of simpler ones which I figured I’d get done Sunday.

I hooked up with Dana, Orv, and Nikki for dinner. We went to a pizza joint; we decided to punt on negotiation for a big pizza and just order individual ones, which I was QUITE HAPPY with after two days of sitting behind a table gently encouraging people to buy my stuff. We shared a pitcher of beer though.

They dropped me off at the con, then went home – they live close enough to the airport that they’re not getting a room. I, of course, hit the dance floor. Sadly it was “retro night”, which I never warm to; it was made worse by the fact that the DJ I came in on had a habit of inserting minute-long breaks with absolutely no beat to them between tracks. In my opinion, if a DJ looks out on the floor and sees a bunch of people just kinda vaguely swaying to no particular rhythm, they are Doing It Wrong. It picked up for one set, then went back to being stunningly uninteresting to my booty, so I went back to the room and slept around one. Amara was done with the huge pile of homework she’d ended up with and gearing up to go out in her bird costume around then.

Sunday: I left my cash box in the room again! Though this time I went back to get it as I’d made it in well before the doors opened. I’d been hoping to work on the first of the two commissions I had left in that time, but I ended up running around instead.

On the way to the dealer’s room, I saw a 7′ tall inflatable blue plesiosaur in the hotel lobby. There were some guys standing around it talking; one of them was sitting on its back as casually as if it was an every day occurrence. This kind of thing is a large part of why I love coming to furry cons – I’m starting to expand my horizons to comic book conventions and finding some success there, but I just don’t see anywhere as much whimsey there. Comic cons are about business, furry cons are about the crazy party.

I got one of my two remaining commissions done that day. I ended up putting an environment on it, and that got a little complicated. I’ll be doing the last one in the next few days.

I hauled most of my stuff out of the dealer’s room, then ran back to that area and slipped into the back door of the closing ceremonies so I could sit up front. This was so I could stand up during the ceremonies when next year’s con chair announced the artist GOH, and then later stand up and unfurl the poster-sized prints of the fliers I’d done when he announced the theme. As I left to pick up the rest of my stuff, it was a major blast to see people clustered around copies of my drawing, excitedly discussing how much they were going to enjoy next year’s theme.

I chatted with a few people who congratulated me, then went back to the hotel room and just crashed. I kind of decided to blow off the dead dog dance; I felt more tired than I feel like I usually do at the end of RF. My guess is that I was kind of running on fumes when I started, due to doing Rose City Comic-Con down in Portland the weekend before, and crunching to launch the Kickstarter before the con in the hopes of getting a little boost to it when people went to learn a little about next year’s Rainfurrest artist GoH. At any rate, I reluctantly figured I’d be waking up Monday morning. But that was not to be; Josh came in around midnight with some friends who chatted and woke me up. After everyone else left, I decided, well, I’m awake, and there’s still some dead dog dance left. I pulled on my galaxy-print catsuit, went on down to the dance, and danced the con into the ground.

I’ve been making a habit of staying Sunday night and hitting the dead dog dance at the past few furry cons I’ve been dealing at. It feels good to just move my body for a couple hours after all that sitting, and it also makes me feel good to kind of participate in ritually closing the space of the convention – a furry con is not Normal Life; it’s got a bit of the wild carnival bacchanalia nature of something like Burning Man nowadays, and things like that need closure.

And then I came back to the hotel and went to sleep. Woke up around nineish, got most of my stuff packed up, put my phone on to charge (it’s thoroughly drained right now), and started writing this.

In general, I feel like I did good this con. I made money, I had a lot of fun. I tried a new thing with my table commissions – I was doing stuff in ink, then throwing down a tiny bit of grey marker to make things really pop – and it worked out. And next year I’ll probably have a LOT more attention on me. I’m gonna need to get a minion, what with being the artist GOH!

I keep on thinking I want to start offering at-con Illustrator commissions, especially now that I have a laptop that can go pretty much all day without a recharge. I dunno. I may try it at FC. Former artist GoHs, did you have any time left for table commissions between dealing with selling stuff like crazy all con long?

Rainfurrest 2013 was pretty damn good. Big thanks to everyone who stopped by my table and made it profitable and fun!

And now that the closing ceremonies are over, I can finally post the news I’ve been keeping mum about for the past month.

I think you should be able to tell what the theme is from my flier.

Today felt a lot slower than yesterday. I did about half the business I did Saturday. Looking at my numbers, if I’d made it into the room block for dealers I would have just about broken even; not bad for my first time at a con. Add to that the events mentioned yesterday, and I think this was a success – I filled in the form to sign up for next year.

Also, this morning Evan Dahm was talking about Miéville’s “The City & The City” on Twitter. Which lead me to do a quick little sketch of how I’d handle it if I adapted it to a comic – the basic schtick is that it takes place in two cities that share the same location but absolutely nothing else, and it is flat-out illegal to interact with, or take note of anything happening in the city you’re not “in”. I, unsurprisingly, would use different limited palettes to depict things in the two cities.

The night before last, I was reluctant to pack. It’s only been a couple weeks since my trip to New Orleans, and I still haven’t recovered from it in some ways. But I did. I packed clothes into the same suitcase as my merch, and went to bed. The next day I dragged myself down to Union Station and got on the train, with a little help hauling my heavy bag up into the train from a woman carrying a Stormtrooper helmet.

I got there and set up, slouched around a bit, then hooked up with Amara and Matt for conversation and BEER. I fell into bed around one, and woke up early Saturday morning with a slight hangover. Not a huge one; it was easily dispelled by a couple glasses of water.

On the way to the convention center, I did some math in my head. I realized that there is absolutely no way I could make a profit this con, even if I sold every single bit of merch I’d brought. I’d missed out on the $80/night block of hotel rooms reserved for dealers, and ended up getting a nice room in the Doubletree with a single king bed and a balcony. It was basically either that or a crapshoot on something cheap on Hotwire, and I didn’t want to be miserable at my first time at a con. So I kinda splurged, and decided to halfway consider this a vacation.

Knowing that my table performance could not have ANYTHING to do with how the weekend went was really freeing. I was able to avoid that high stress zone when OMG NOBODY’S BUYING STUFF I’M DOOMED on the beginning of the first day, and just casually engage people who slowed to a stop because my art caught their eye. My first sale came pretty early in the day, to a woman dressed up as Gwendolyn from Saga. Later on Lee Moyer passed by and we caught up on what’s been up in our respective lives since we met at Foolscap a couple of years. And later still Mike Dringenberg came by and grabbed a Rita, gushing about how gorgeous my art is. I don’t think I’ve ever had two wikinotable people come talk to me in one day before.

I realized that I’d sold close to half of the Ritas I’d brought. Only a couple Tarot decks, but there were several people who oohed and aahed over it, who I’m pretty sure will be back at my table tomorrow, or visiting my site after their next paycheck.

I got the next page of Rita something like 98% done during the lulls, really all I need to do is shape the panel transition from the previous page, and copy the edge of some stuff from the new page to the previous page.

Mike had wandered by again near the end of dealer’s room hours, and we were talking about our respective escapades in burning out on animation. On a whim I invited him out to dinner. We went to Sizzle Pie and shouted at each other over the music for a bit.

That…. you know, that’s a pretty damn good first day for a con I was kinda cursing Past Peggy for signing up for, two days ago. I need to figure out how to just Not Care if I make a profit more often without the drastic measure of paying more than I could possibly make at the con for a hotel room.

I have absolutely no expectations for tomorrow beyond it ending with karaoke with some of the Portland folks and Erin. And beer. Portland always seems to involve beer.

But right now I think I’m gonna close the computer and lie here naked in a dark room, with the balcony door wide open and the sounds of Portland drifting in.

After spending about three minutes talking to myself in a silly voice about how THE A BACONS, THEY CALL TO ME! THEY SAY UNTO ME: PEGGY! EAT OF WE A BACONS THAT WE MAY BECOME YOU! while preparing some breakfast, I have come to a conclusion. I think it is very important that I share this conclusion with you, the Internet.

I am a very silly person.

edit: Breakfast eaten. I AM BECOME A BACONS.

Last night, my ex-with-benefits came over. We went out to dinner at the little Italian restaurant around the corner. When we went back to my place, we watched some exceedingly stylized porn – it was nothing but long, lingering shots of a woman in various latex outfits, pretending to be distressed at the various situations she was tied up in. No other person. No narrative. No dialogue. No music. Just her little moans and the various sounds of her predicament. I started reacting to it as an art film, not as something designed to turn me on; I envisioned an installation piece, a 24-hour loop of nothing but various scenes like this.

Eventually we did the kinds of things that tend to happen when one is curled up on a big comfy beanbag chair with their ex-with-benefits, and went to bed.

I feel incredibly urbane and adult when things like this happen. Especially when they’re intertwined with incredibly mundane things like pouring baking soda and vinegar down the sink to try and tame That Foul Scent That Occasionally Visits The Kitchen.

Hmm. It felt like summer would never end – and then, all of a sudden, it’s done. I went to New Orleans with predictions of Seattle temperatures in the low nineties; I came back and drizzle and grey have begun. Today I put the summer hats in the closet, and I think it may be time to pull the False God out of its resting place in the studio closet soon.

Oddly enough, despite it being less sunny, I’m waking up bouncy and energetic around 9AM. It might be jetlag, I dunno. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

On today’s task list: shower, draw page 112 of Rita (and hopefully get it up before midnight), spend a couple hours being tattooed, work on header images for the kickstarter, get petted by Nick.

So this pretty cool compilation of short animation popped up on Metafilter. It’s a side project of a bunch of pros and students, based around the theme of “ghost stories”. Lots of pretty work in a bunch of different styles.

Late Night Work Club presents GHOST STORIES from Late Night Work Club on Vimeo.

It kinda made me want to animate a short. I tried to resist this urge, but about halfway through, it was too much. Animator brain had woken up and was digging around in the ideas sitting around to see if anything could be done in a scale that makes it a semi-sane project.

Then animator brain found an idea I’d filed away explicitly for a short film: appropriate the dense, beat-driven obliqueness of this trailer for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

I really love the way it leaves you with an impression of a story. I’ve never seen the film, and may never, but I love this trailer. The slow drive up to the mansion threads through the whole thing, holding it together and being obviously very important. You stop blinking, focused on this rapid montage of images; the music creates a mood and helps stitch everything into one piece.

I wanted to see if this trick worked with a very, very different soundtrack. So I ripped the video, threw it into Premiere, and mashed it up with the first thing iTunes played that had a very very constant beat.

Yeah, this works. There’s a really awkward bit 2/3 of the way through where I chopped a big chunk of the source track out and really didn’t bother trying to hide the seams; it wasn’t worth it for a quick experiment like this.

Now to decide if I want to come up with a feature-length story, throw 95% of it away, and do about 100 separate scenes with pretty much no re-use possible between them. Or less if I keep it shorter. Which might mean the slow build of one continuous shot through the whole thing loses its power, I dunno. I’ll find out if I ever get to the point of making boards, I guess.

edit. Next step in this feasibility study: grab an animated feature, edit it like this, see if it actually works. The eye takes a little longer to make sense of a moving drawing than of a moving photo, as a rule, and it may not be possible to cut this rapidly and keep things legible. I’m torrenting ‘Treasure Planet’ as a test subject, and will have it handy the next time I feel like playing with this idea…