Geek Girl Con ’22 Recap

Geek Girl Con ’22 Recap

Photograph of my assorted art zine, Crab Rare Arts Best, next to my calico cat, neatly arranged on a bean bag.

Where to Sell my New Zine?
I recently compiled a selection of my Pandemic drawings into an art zine. The fun of zines is sharing them with someone who will read them.

Photo of my calico cat turning away from an open zine in my hands. Drat!C’mon. Just read my stuff…

Having exhausted my household of zine-readers, I decided to table at Geek Girl Con. This is a convention that takes place in Seattle and was on hiatus during the COVID days. I had only tabled once before but the feeling of the convention was, well, a weight off my shoulders. Geek Girl Con feels a lot more personal than big comic cons, but it still has lots of people attending and there is plenty of workshops and panels to attend. I don’t feel bad for being an indie creator at GGC! In fact I feel very encouraged to continue doing my own thing. The sales last time I went weren’t bad either.

Digital artwork of a dragon chomping a dove. This is painted in a medieval style. The dragon is on a red background with a title of 'crab rare arts best' in the background. Doves perch in the tree, fearful of the dragon.Crab Rare Arts Best – my new 48-page zine featuring odds and ends, including drawings, doodles, and short comics.

This zine is named via magic square, so the title isn’t supposed to make sense. Scraps of knowledge were collated by ancient people and protected with magic squares instead of properly being titled. So I did that in the same vein. It’s 48 pages of unrestrained nonsense, pulled together by virtue of ‘this is everything I happen to have on my desktop right now’.

I also created giclée prints of my elasmotherium unicorn, my gastronomy chart, my medieval cat meme, and various small artworks I’d made on my livestream. I used my inkjet printer and archival-quality cotton paper. To fill in the rest of the table, I brought leftover acrylic fossil charms (some of which were in blind boxes) and some older zines from pre-pandemic times. Warlock’d and Hands & Feet made their appearance. Then Devin and I masked up, loaded everything up in the car, promptly snapped off the side-view mirror while backing out of our garage, and called in a Lyft to get the rest of the way to the convention. I totally forgot my banner so I sent Devin back for it. He arrived with all my forgotten stuff and also…dumplings. He’s sort of amazing.

Digital artwork of an elasmotheirum depicted as being unicorn-like in a field of interlocking flowers. The 'unicorn' has clearly stomped its way into a small fenced paddock, leaving ruin in its wake. The pomegranate tree from which the unicorn snacked is falling over. Regardless, the unicorn wears a beautiful blue collar studded with gems as well as a gold chain twining around the tree. It's a pastiche of the classical medieval tapestry 'The Unicorn in Captivity.'Of Pomegranates and Unicorns –  $60 print I had for sale.

I thought for sure this print was going to be the star of my show. I even made extra copies and an additional design with the recently-reconstructed horn. I only sold one, and I only sold it while I was away from the table! Maybe I should have Devin pitch this one in the future.

Digital artwork of a constellation chart. The joke is that these constellations are all food-themed, so that the chart is a 'gastronomy' chart instead of an 'astronomy' chart. The artist's personal favorites are 'Burger-cules' for Hercules and Drink-o the Dragon. Gastronomy Chart — Another $60 print I had for sale.

Much to my delight, Gastronomy Chart sold several copies. I even had it hiding behind the bone charms because the contrast of the dark night sky made the bones pop out. People still had a fun time discovering it and that probably added to its charm. I was worried about this one because online it’s never been very popular. Just goes to show that social media literally means nothing when it comes to point of sale.

Digital artwork done in the style of a 14th century illuminated manuscript piece. A small calico cat is angrily plinking away at keys on a pipe organ, while passive-aggressive flowers curl and twist up to the cat's thoughts: Mother!! print — a $40 offering at a smaller size than the big luxury prints, same quality of paper and printing though.

This passive-aggressive cat meme was the surprise hit of the show. You can really tell when someone is responding to something on the table. People would run up and show their friends or reference roommates. Glad I made a few prints of these as a joke. I couldn’t even use my tactic of redirecting purchases from the pricey $40 print to the $15 zine — People just wanted the cat, and they were willing to pay the meme premium.

In terms of other sales, I sold the average amount of zines, and was surprised by the enthusiasm for some of my older zines. Someday I will shift those out of rotation. Still have a few left.

Among the various cosplayers and con-goers near my table, I encountered a very tame iguana on top of its owner’s shoulders and I got to pet it. Everyone was wearing masks. My usual sales tactic of handing people stuff off my table to handle it was a little awkward, considering. Devin was also somewhat better at selling my stuff than me. I think he pulled in more sales. Lesson learned: I should just go walk around and relax more at these things.

You may have noticed the high quality of photos taken of my table in a previous post. At the convention, I met an amazing photographer (AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps) who offered to take shots of my table. Sporting an impressive portfolio of print media photography, I was very excited to make her acquaintance and see what she saw through her lens. The organizers at Geek Girl Con put her in touch with me and it turned into a cool collaborative adventure.

I also met someone from the Sequential Artists Workshop in person for the first time! We both live in the Northwest area so it was cool to get my local social circle widened a little.

Photograph of a watercolor print arranged on a warm table, next to a cow-shaped succulent pot and on top of a cloth with delicate leaf embroidery. Paintbrushes lie near the print. The print itself is a bright crop of a restful, happy blue whaleshark swimming through a school of yellow fish in teal water.Look at this adorable whale shark print by Rebecca Martinez!

I picked up a moon rabbit sticker from Rebecca and couldn’t be happier with the design aesthetic. Now I just have to get back to drawing traditionally so I can get a new sketchbook, as I like to crown my sketchbooks with stickers. I highly recommend grabbing something from Rebecca’s Etsy shop if you can. It’s certainly inspiring me to do something digital, so that I have somewhere to send all this leftover stuff from the convention.

Should You Do Geek Girl Con?
All in all, Geek Girl Con only lasted one day, but it worked out really well. People had to buy then and there so I did about as well as I do during a three-day convention. It does make me wish that artist alleys were only open for one day, so that artists have more time to browse around and escape their tables during the rest of the con. I adore this convention and highly recommend it as just big enough to get visitors to your table, and just small enough to make you feel like you’re part of something special.

As far as health safety goes — everyone wore masks. It was still tricky to navigate health boundaries because part of a convention is handling merchandise and saying hello to tons of people. I know I accidentally thrust my hand out to a baffled person because I had totally forgotten not to do that anymore. In general I could feel my social skills grinding slowly into gear, but never really overcoming the awkwardness of basically holing up for 3 years with my partner and losing all of my small social groups in the process. There wasn’t anything particularly special in terms of health requirements outside of the masks and I believe (?) a vaccination requirement as well. So, do this one at your own risk when it comes to skirting COVID.

Geek Girl Con also does plenty of remote outreach via their Twitch channel. Geek Girl Con is something you can interact with all year round from any distance that is safe. I really appreciate all the work they do to make a safe vibe for a convention. Just really positive and light all around.

 

 

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Digital artwork of the absolute oh my god edgiest edgelord dagger ever. It has an obsidian blade, purple leather wraps, a brass handle with a weird clover design on it. It's surrounded by a halo of abstract angels and pool-table green fields with fleurs on them. You can probably order this knife out of a knife enthusiast magazine. It would also not look out of place in Hot Topic. And this knife is not a phase, Mom!

Where to Stick This Knife?
One fine morning a little over a year ago, I set up a silly poll on Twitter. I asked everyone, since we were all thieves in a treasure room, which item to steal. About thirty-seven thieves weighed in and decided upon, among other things, taking a single knife from the treasure store.

In response to this, I created the absolute shiniest treasure knife possible. I streamed its creation live on my weekly Twitch stream. I gave the knife an obsidian blade, per chat’s insistence. Then I messed around with the symmetry brush because that seems to draw people in. I imagine it looks really cool live to see a mandala spiral out of nothing. I based a color scheme on the silly obsidian used to craft the improbably blade, and while it somewhat reminds me of the green felt on a billiards table, I liked it.

The knife then sat, fairly un-used, for a long time. I came up with a mystical moonphase archery set to accompany it later, but there’s something a little more special about the knife.

Digital artwork combining medieval lunar charts with book illumination, a wooden Ottoman horse bow, and fletched arrows. It is gilded with gold. The lunar chart combines the phases of the moon with eclipse patterns. A green orb representing Earth is in the middle. The bow has an arrow strung to it and is aimed downwards.

Flash forward to Geek Girl Con ’22. It was going to be my first in-person convention since the end of the Pandemic. I’ll have a more detailed post about this con later. It was very, very good. It was sort of a reinvention for me, moving away from painterly offerings and into more comic-book style art.

Photograph of my table at Geek Girl Con, courtesy of AnnaMarie Jackson-Phelps of Violet Daisy Games. The Warlock'd zine is posed on top of a gold tablecloth. More copies of it and the Crab Rare Arts Best zine are cropped by the composition. In the background, there's a couple of prints: One is the moonphase bow and arrow set, and the other is the edgy obsidian knife.Hey! I recognize that knife back there. Photo courtesy of AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps.

One of the reasons I go to conventions is that I meet so many great people. The person I met of note with regards to this post was AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps, a game photographer and TTRPG designer. She took this and many other photos for me. Then AnnaMarie granted me permission to share the photos on my blog. It was really kind of her and I hope she had a great time!

You Don’t Meet in a Tavern
In the follow-up email, AnnaMaria asked if I’d be interested in participating in her upcoming TTRPG prompt book, You Don’t Meet in a Tavern. While I couldn’t immediately commit to making new art for the book, I wondered…Maybe…maybe there was a home for my edgy obsidian knife here? I had a really honest open conversation with AnnaMaria about art licensing and I’m definitely very happy with what we decided to do.

I’m pleased to announce that my knife will appear in this collection! Keep an eye on Violet Daisy Games for more information.

Care to read more?

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Want to chat about this?