I’m not a cat mother, I’m a cat aunt. I love my nephew dearly. We spend quality time together often, but it seems he’s been getting more and more attached lately. When my roommate (the actual cat mother) leaves for class, he will come running into my room desperate for attention. A lot of times he’ll crawl up on my lap, purring loud while I work, occasionally pawing at my typing hands as if I’ve made up a game for him to play. But my new favorite maneuver is his talent of jumping to the top of my chair; he bounces with the ferocity of a cartoon pogo stick. Afterwards, he’ll sit on the backside of the chair and stare at the back of my head. Sometimes he sets his hands on my shoulders, too, as if he’s giving me a massage and encouraging my hard work. Most of the time it hinders my work more than it helps me, but I’ll never complain about a cute cat disrupting my day. Have a great week and a great upcoming break!
No problem man. I’m going to be honest, I was really tired today and I don’t think I did well. But you being there really helped me.
No human being can give one hundred percent every day.
That’s true. You gain what you give.
Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 8:00PM, 11/11/2023
how easy is it to define the number one hundred? to exert maximum effort at the gym is to repeat a set until your arms start to tremble and the muscles give way. must we live the same way? i imagine you poring over a textbook until your eyes glaze over. maximum effort does not equal maximum success. perhaps maximum success is a function of time, an exponential improvement. a chemical delirium – dopamine or serotonin, what’s the difference? one molecule away from madness // from heartbreak // from shutting yourself out — in — away — behind — above…
I used to work at a flower shop, did I tell you that? That’s why my favorite flower is white lily.
Not roses?
They die too fast. I put them in the fridge and after a few days they start wilting. Don’t ever order roses, they always die. I seen them.
Washtenaw + Pittsfield, 3:00PM, 10/30/2023
the cardinal flower of love, so quick to die! i could spend all summer researching the history and symbolism of flowers. beauty is an interpretation, but so is love, and hate, and passion, and almost every adjective in the dictionary. it’s up to perception, the view from above. you stare at the rose too much and the color drains — from your face, from your eyes — and drips to the dirt. the grass bends to collect the drops. you smile and your teeth are stained scarlet.
How much for this candle jar? Oh, forty percent off? That’s great!
Yeah, we’re trying to get rid of our Halloween inventory now.
I really should get this. My kids will love it. I’m a science teacher, you see, and my last name is Bones, so I try to decorate my classroom with them…
Found Gallery, 11:00AM, 11/4/2023
the world we live in is made up of multitudes. in another universe, i have mr. bones as a science teacher. on the first day of class he gets up and shows us a plastic skeleton. i graduate high school, graduate college, and invite him to my wedding. thanks for teaching me about the cranium, i say. he points to his head, an inside joke — among other things. we laugh and drink brandy and attend each of our children’s sports games. we go to bed and rise and realize that we don’t exist. ’tis but the figment of imagination! i imagine an eighteenth-century playwright scoping out the details of my life. he probes and probes until he feels nothing but flesh and eight spindly legs and a web of memories encased in silk.
This week I needed to animate a series of frames with multiple moving parts happening at once. So far in this project, the subject of the frame is usually stationary while the background moves, or the only movement is light. These elements tend to be a lot quicker to animate because they only require a couple frames switching back and forth or only one layer than needs to be changed. In this scene, I need to keep track of the light (where it reflects, how it moves), water (how it interacts with the hand), shadow (in the mirror), and the hand itself moving (distance, color, etc.). With so many moving parts I’ve found its almost necessary to finish a scene like this all in one go, as even with well labelled layers its hard to keep track of everything that needs to change from one frame to the next. This is definitely a hurtle I’ll continue running into as my animation gets more complex, but for now this is a great way to get used to all the types of movements I need to consider in each scene.
icwr@t001:~$ cd CC213/AAR/2743/11
icwr@t001:~$ ls
AAR_30J1-002.log
AAR_5E02-001.log
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OPENING FILE AAR_5E02-001.log
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Report ID: #3039532209
Date Reported: 2743-11-04
Reported By: Richard Brinley RB7830 - CC213
Report Summary
This report details the events and results of Operation 5E02, also known as the Ociys Offensive. The purpose of the operation was to ensure KSA control of interstellar ports within KHEPRI-3 local space.
KSA control was successfully maintained in the sector, but not without significant losses: three KSA Horizon starships were destroyed or deemed otherwise unsalvageable, and an estimated additional 930 personnel were lost in the subsequent creation of an uncontrolled artificial black hole within local space. HIC forces suffered similar losses: two Horizon starships and an estimated additional 2,300 personnel were lost.
Observations made by surviving personnel in several post-action reports, debriefs, and individual concerns raised indicated that the black hole appeared to [CORRUPTED]
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REACHED END OF FILE AAR_5E02-001.log
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OPENING FILE AAR_5E02-001-A.jpeg
Fig. A: thermal image transmitted from KSA Station Delta on KHEPRI-3a, shortly before loss of communication and assumed total destruction of the Station.
There they are! The fancy Fae-Dragons (this is a misnomer they’re all fancy)! I toned down the saturation of the red I usually sketch with.
When I designed the citizens of this court, I had the tropics on my mind: jungle birds, bugs, and fancy flowers. Feathers, wings, and bug heads. I also gave them a vintage bent, at least for the commoners. I imagine those with bird wings will fold them in a way to resemble a shawl or short cloak, like the gargoyles from Gargoyles.
An additional concept I had but didn’t include was them having transparent limbs stuffed with flowers, like those glass decorations with flowers in the middle. Or maybe some have glass scales they press flowers behind. Lots of room for expansion here.
Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! In previous weeks I’ve gone over profit margins and event types that artists can sell at. This week, I’m discussing a few different types of merchandise that I personally offer and their most common prices at pop culture convention Artist Alleys and online sales. Since this is another long post, I put my list underneath a Read More:
I used to sell stickers, but I stopped because the thin profit margin wasn’t worth how much trouble it was to market and display them in exchange for enough money to maybe buy myself a single boba per sticker. Other artists see great success with selling large volumes of them or in addition to higher priced items though. It all depends on your business strategy! Keep in mind that some event venues will outright ban stickers and other sticky-backed items (phone grips, window decals, etc.) because of potential vandalism.
Buttons/Pins ($3-$15+)
While buttons and pins are sometimes used interchangeably as terms, they describe different types of merchandise. Buttons are typically laminated paper pressed into a metal backing with a safety pin attached on the back to secure it to clothing or other soft materials. Pins are typically wood, acrylic, metal, or enamel with an attached pin post (shaped like a metal nail) and “clutch” (typically rubber or metal) to attach it to soft materials. Pins are also typically more expensive than buttons because of the higher production cost that comes from outsourcing them to a manufacturer rather than being able to mass-produce them at home using a button press. However, these two types of merch are oftentimes displayed together on table displays using corkboard, canvas banners, vinyl cubes, etc. Prices on buttons and pins vary a lot and are generally dependent on the production cost, size, materials, etc.
I currently sell some specialty buttons shaped like coffins or made of soft plush material and a few pins either made out of metal in the shape of a bottle cap or made of responsibly sourced wood. They’re not my bestsellers, but I’ll see how they’ll do over time as I accumulate more online sales and attend more events to sell my art.
Most of my coffin-shaped button designs
A wood pin I’ve made with a fat squirrel design.
Acrylic Charms ($8-$20+)
Acrylic charms are printed 2D artwork sealed within a (typically) laser-cut piece of acrylic cut to the artwork’s outline. The most common size of charm that I see is 2.5 inches with a clear border around the design and a hole in the top with a metal keychain clasp for hanging the charm on something else.
These typically sell for about $12-15, which may seem like a lot for such a small and simple item until you remember that acrylic charms are almost all produced in China (so, higher shipping costs than sourcing domestically like you can for prints) and are relatively sturdy and long-lasting compared to stickers or prints.
Larger charms and charms with special finishes/gimmicks such as holographic finish, foil accents, attached hanging acrylic pieces, special clasp designs, an internal compartment with shakable acrylic pieces, etc. can sell for a higher price, typically somewhere between $20-$30. Charms smaller than 2.5 inches can go for lower, typically somewhere between $8-$10. There’s also charms made of other materials such as metal, wood, PVC, and enamel, but they’re a lot less common than acrylic charms either for durability or cost reasons.
Charms sell best for me through online sales compared to other merchandise types. I assume this is because charms take up less space and that the charms I offer are in a niche that doesn’t have many other artists making small merchandise (mecha/robots) even when compared to the broader internet.
Two recent acrylic charm designs I made that far surpassed my sales expectations when I listed them online
Prints ($10-$25+)
Prints without specialty finishes like holographic (rainbow crystal) laminate or metallic spot foil accents are fairly cheap to produce, totaling about 1 dollar per print for 11×17 inch prints and even lower for smaller prints like 8.5×11″ or 4×6″ prints. Their high price point compared to their production cost comes from the length of time a typical print artwork takes compared to smaller merchandise with simpler designs, and also their relative large size compared to other forms of cheap-to-produce merch such as stickers and buttons. This still means that their profit margins are much better compared to other merchandise types, which also means that competition in the print-selling market is extremely competitive, especially in Artist Alley.
The most common prices I see for common print sizes at pop culture conventions is $10 for 4×6/5×7 prints, $15 for 8×10/8.5×11″ prints, $20-$25 for 11×17/12×18″ prints, and much higher for anything larger. Specialty finishes up the prices per print size by at least $5, though in my experience customers are willing to pay an additional $10 or more for a special shiny-looking print. However, these prices are actually relatively low compared to how much fine artists charge for prints at fine art events, as the typical attendee there is expecting higher prices compared to the average anime or comic con attendee.
My best-seller at cons is by far prints, though prints also account for a majority of the merchandise that I offer in the first place.
Examples of holographic finish prints that I sell online and at my Artist Alley table
Apparel ($20+)
I don’t personally sell apparel because of the high cost per unit (at least $10 per printed shirt) and the amount of stock I’d have to order for sizes S through XL without knowing if it’d actually sell, but there’s some artists who sell shirts or sweaters either printed on by a third-party manufacturer or that they screenprint on themselves. There’s a decent amount of potential money to be made by selling apparel since it’s not a common Artist Alley item and a lot of customers see appeal in functional items, but it also takes up a lot of storage space (a problem especially for weight restrictions on flights for faraway events) and you end up having to compete on price with fast-fashion corporations who can afford razor-thin profit margins far more than an independent artist can.
Other merchandise?
Keep in mind that this list is far from exhaustive and that there’s lots of other things that you can either create yourself or get your art printed on! This is just meant as a quick introduction/overview of commonly sold merchandise types in the specific type of small art business that I currently work in.
Remember that the advantages of selling mass-produced merchandise based on an original drawing instead of focusing on selling one-of-a-kind original art pieces are that you can reuse your designs infinitely and across various types of merchandise to potentially make lots of sales across a long period of time from a few hours of labor. Your budget and time are the true limiting factors when it comes to what kind of merchandise you can create and offer as an independent artist!
Anyway, Motor City Comic Con is next weekend (November 10-12), so I’m waiting on several merchandise orders to ship in ahead of that con. I’ll be debuting new merchandise like rubber deskmats and double foil prints to experiment with what my customer base likes best, and I’ll be sure to write a column after that convention talking about how my first comic con tabling experience went!
