Tag: convention

Industrious Illustrating #36 – Con Ja Nai 2023

Robin Leave a comment

Hello again! If you’ve been following this column since last year, you’ll have seen the post I made last year about tabling at Con Ja Nai 2022! Well, now it’s 2023, and that means Con Ja Nai 2023, UMich’s free one-day anime convention, is tomorrow, April 8th, in the MLB from 12 to 10! I’l be at Table B3 selling prints of my art from 12 to 6 (Artist Alley hours)! Here’s my location circled on the map:

 

And here’s a catalog of the prints I’ll have available:

 

There’ll also be a computer available at my artist alley table for playing through a demo of “Flamechaser”, the yuri mecha visual novel I’m drawing the art for, so come check it out! I hope to see some of you guys there!

Industrious Illustrating #18 – Ten Thousand Buddhas

Robin Leave a comment

Hello again to another week of Industrious Illustrating!

Last week I tabled at Youmacon with my tablemate Ria, another STAMPS student. My half of the booth was on the left, while hers was on the right. I blocked out everyone’s faces in the below picture to preserve their privacy.

By the end of the weekend, both of us had recouped all of our production costs as well as the cost of the table spot, and we’d made several hundred dollars in profit on top of that. Our total revenue was somewhere in the low four figures range split between the two of us. While we don’t plan on splitting a table again because we could both use the full 8′ table for our displays, we’re both hoping to apply to Youmacon again and table next year if possible!

Anyway, while I’m currently trying to keep up with a deluge of work and deadlines before Thanksgiving Break, I took some time last night to make a quick painted study of a photograph I took at the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Hong Kong this past summer. I focused on describing the value relationships and lighting as quickly and efficiently as possible rather than letting myself get mired in the details. Hopefully I can find more time to make these studies so that I can brush up on my painting skills and build up a better visual library in my head.

Good luck to everyone working on exams and projects close to the end of the semester, and see you again next week!

Industrious Illustrating #16 – Table Layout

Robin Leave a comment

Boo! You didn’t expect an Industrious Illustrating post on Halloween, did you? Yes, this post is three days late, but that’s part of the spooky surprise!

In reality, I’ve been so busy with preparing for Youmacon, aka the first big pop culture-related convention I’m selling at, that updating this weekly column slipped my mind. But I can now share the test table setup I made with my tablemate yesterday! We don’t have all of our prints displayed yet, and we’ll probably move some things around as well to maximize visibility, but this is close to what our final table setup will look like this weekend! Also, I wish I could share what our table number is, but that’ll likely have to wait until the post I make this Friday (first day of Youmacon). If any readers are planning on attending Youmacon 2022 in Detroit, I look forward to seeing you there!

Speaking honestly here, while I do enjoy working on more refined and detailed paintings to turn into prints, I also feel like I’ve been slacking a lot on making life studies and personal artwork, rather than just painting what I think will sell to an audience. That’s not to say that I feel like I’m not making progress in my art, but I do feel like I could be pushing myself in more ways than I am at the moment.

Even though it’s not New Year’s yet — we still have Thanksgiving and Christmas left to go before the end of 2022 — my resolution is to study more of the pictures I took of the scenery and other peoples’ artwork while exploring Hong Kong this summer and implement those studies into my artwork as an illustrator and character designer.

Anyway, I hope to see you guys this Friday either in person or with my next Industrious Illustrating column!