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.
- 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?
- 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.
- There are infinite numbers of print artists who draw the same thing as me but better at these cons, what’s even the point?
- 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.
It’s great that you found your con calling. Naturally, the next step is body pillows huehuehue.