11/7/2023 0 Comments Awa artist alley sign upIt’s empowering to be able to just make stuff, to create end products that you know are in demand. While the comics and animation industry has certainly changed in the last decade as well, cons remain a great way for artists to connect directly with an audience, and to fill a demand in a niche. I looked for other art-related work, but it was easier to adapt to something I was already doing than to pass the gatekeeper tests for industry jobs. It’s normal to book shows months in advance, and pretty soon, my schedule was planned a year out, and another year out, and another. Over time, the rest of the con became less of a draw, and the money and validation of Artist Alley became the focus and priority. I started doing cons in college, largely because it seemed like a fun way to make up the costs of going to a convention in the first place. I don’t think any of the artists who are full-time convention artists today intended for it to happen. Availability of online streaming, simulcasts and simulpubs for anime and manga has shortened fandom lifespans, and artists in these communities have ramped up production cycles to a breakneck pace. The accessibility of overseas manufacturing through sites like Alibaba has made making professional-quality goods and merchandise possible for even high school and college students. It’s only with the rapid growth of the convention scene in general over the last fifteen years that doing 25-40 conventions a year as an independent artist became not only possible, but financially worthwhile. They were never intended to be serious places of business or a way for professional artists to make a significant portion of their income. The Evolution of the Alleyįan convention Artist Alleys started out as a place for hobbyists to show off their fanwork and maybe take a few commissions or make a few print sales. I’ve seen a lot of different conventions change over the last decade, but it’s interesting to be able to have year-over-year data for one con specifically and consistently. Ikkicon wasn’t my first Artist Alley (that was Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008), but it was my first convention ever back in 2007, and it’s the convention I’ve gone back to the most as an artist. The convention has been over New Years since 2010, and depending on when the weekend falls, sometimes the dates are split between years, sometimes there’s no show a calendar year, or two shows a calendar year - so they’ve used numbers to denote the con, rather than year. That was December 31st, 2010 through January 2nd, 2011. IKKiCON 5 was my first time tabling there. This past December was my 10th consecutive year doing Artist Alley at IKKiCON in Austin.
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