Something Positive

So Anime Midwest is over and it blew every other con I’ve ever done out of the water. This is the first con where I figured out how to display my pillows prominently, and I also debuted my very soft pillows, which sold exceptionally well.

It made me realize that I think I found my niche, which is doing pillows. It’s both something that I love to do and make profit off of so I want to hang on to this tightly.

I mean, weirdly enough, unlike everything else I do for cons, I don’t hate making pillows! Yeah it’s a pain and there’s always hiccups because I’m still learning, but in the end it’s very rewarding!

That being said, I’ve long despised being a print artist because of many reasons.

1. The time I spend to make a single print feels unrewarding, what if I slave over it and no one buys any? I spent days and days working on this for the sole purpose of selling it, where’s my reward?
2. I don’t like spending that much time on a piece, I get really antsy and don’t have that kind of patience, especially on fanart.
3. There are infinite numbers of print artists who draw the same thing as me but better at these cons, what’s even the point?
4. I don’t feel my style is good for prints in general

Therefore, I hope to start phasing out my prints (or at least keeping only 5-ish of my most popular ones like Jojo or YLIA) and just primarily sell pillows. I want to sell more charms but I find them hard to move, I’m still experimenting with placement on my table. My t-shirts sell well but I don’t like designing them so I’ll probably just have the same 2 forever…

This has really been a game changer for me and how I feel about cons. I have long been very miserable and feeling inadequate because I couldn’t decide what my MO here was. Sure, it’s to make a profit, but there’s nothing I particularly enjoyed about making merchandise for cons, it always felt like a chore. Like chasing whatever was the popular thing and watching my printed art die along with it.

Now, I’m invigorated by finally finding something that doesn’t feel like a waste of my time and makes me feel okay to be where I’m at as an artist. This is fanart I actually LIKE doing and I don’t mind at all. I LIKE doing this. What a novel concept!!!

TL;DR: It took 30 years of being on this miserable fucking earth but, for once, I finally felt like I’ve done something right.