I’ve staffed again at the Art Show for this year’s Anime Expo. There’s really nothing glorifying about the job, as anyone who had staffed before knows, but you get to spend 4-5 days in relative seclusion from the horror of your real life (as stated in my previous post) and really, just hanging out with friends.
With some careful planning, we’ve been able to run the show much smoother than before. I’ve really gone workaholic this year – it was four days of roughly 8 hour shifts and all I took was 30 minutes of break that’s forced on me. Somehow I really enjoy physical labor when it’s forced on me. My physique obviously isn’t built for it but I like slave work… I think it’s one of the few links between me and my father, who does manual labor every work day and enjoys it quite a bit.
Like last year, I’ve decided to put something up on sale myself, but I’ve only spent 5 hours as opposed to 3 months preparing the stuff for the show. Last year, I went all out and did four large, elaborate pieces that took months just to design poses, hairstyles, costumes, backgrounds, etc… and them fuckers didn’t even pass by to look, because it’s too “original” to sell.
So this year, I did the exact opposite of what I did last year. The rules established are as follows:
1) Must be fan art of fairly popular anime (but I didn’t sell out enough apparently, I’ll spell out more on the individual pieces)
2) Must not be a CG print
3) Must be cheap ass
Following these new golden standards I’ve come up with the following. By the time I wanted pictures of them they’re already framed, so excuse the poor quality of the pictures… well, not like you’re missing much, trust me. Also, the ones I tried to sell are colored – I hand copied these sketches onto another sheet of paper and then inked and colored them, but honestly the pencils are better… I haven’t touched my markers for over a year before I pulled them out to work on these pieces (some of the markers were so unused the colors leaked out of the caps -_-)
Without further ado: (man, I haven’t posted art up for quite awhile, have I?)
(for the uninitiated, you can find out how the actual armors are suppose to look like from
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/items/armorsets/)
Here is a picture of Rena from Higurashi, wearing full Dreadnaught (Warrior, Tier 3 Raid Set). Yes, it’s an effin’ WOW/Anime crossover, but I thought with the population of a small nation and the fact that most of the guildmates from my guild/former guilds enjoyed anime, I thought it’d be a good idea to combine my larger and lesser obsessions in my art stuff (WoW being my bigger obsession right now). As it turns out, only the twenty-thirty somethings seem to recognize the armors for what they are, so once again I’ve missed the mark somewhat on the fan base.
Status: Not sold. I really thought Rena in krazy mode would be awsome wearing the darkly Dreadnaught and waving The Untamed Blade like a manic, it’s the one idea that inspired me to do all the pieces for this year. In the end, I think this piece turns out to be the worst – in the colored version the eyes doesn’t show up well at all, Higurashi is apparently too obscure for most to even get the reference, and her expression and pose… nothing seems right, damnit.
Osaka (please commit suicide if you don’t know which series this is from) wearing full Darkmantle (Rogue, Dungeon Set 2) duel wielding kitchen knives with Unholy enchants on both of them. This was the second picture that lighted up in my head right after the Rena one. Her eyes were totally not dozing off in the colored version, and I couldn’t get the cool darkmantle sparkles right, but at least it’s sold~
Status: Sold for min bid (5g… ur I mean $5).
Miho from MegaTokyo, in full Felheart (Warlock, Tier 1 Raid Set) with the Necrowombicon in her hand. I sort of promised myself to do MT fan art after last year’s failure, and this just came natually to my mind. At first, I worried that the clashing colors of the Felheart set would make the colored version look bad, but in the end it was the best colored armor out of the four I did. Unfortunately, in the colored version, I totally butchered the eye and the eye-shade…
Status: Not sold… I guess MT isn’t as popular on the West Coast as much as it is on the East Coast… although the colored version of this picture is my personal favorite.
Chii from Chobits, in full Virtuous (Priest, Dungeon Set 2) set wielding a wand of some sort (too lazy to research this one). Honestly the scenario is impossible to reproduce in game – psychic scream produces the fear symbol above the rat’s head, but when you wand it to death the symbol disappears… oh who the hell cares. I went with Virtuous instead of Devout because I am already doing Darkmantle, which is blue, and apparently every other damn caster set that doesn’t look like an acid trip is colored blue, and I want to do a caster to balance out the character choices (2 meeles, 2 casters).
Status: Sold, I actually got a bid of $5 and $6 on this one. Honestly, doing Chii was an afterthought compared to the other three, my original idea was to have Orihime from Bleach do a leekspin (yes, I’m still obsessed over that thing), but she turns out to be too hard to draw – she’s just too god damn generic. Then I was stuck on a long time deciding who to do, then I remembered that CLAMP was one of the guests of honor and ding! Out came the idea to drag out something old but popular.
In conclusion, it seems that in order for your stuff to be worth jack, you have to sell your soul to do the most unoriginal, pixel for pixel generic fan art imaginable from the most generic, mainstream anime series…
Although this year’s big seller is Kingdom Hearts 2, instead of Inu-Yasha or Naruto or etc. Hmm.