Despite pretty awesome guests, Comicpalooza is the small fry amidst the Memorial Day weekend conventions. Fanime, Anime Boston, Anime North, Animazement, and Phoenix Comic Con are all that weekend. BUT if you're in Houston and you'll be there at this small fry, then you can come find me. 8D (Click to enlarge)



Annnnnd of course, the weekend after I'll be at A-kon in Dallas. I WILL BE SOMEWHERE THERE. COME FIND ME. AND BRING ME COFFEE.

So A-kon finally finished sending out Artist Alley confirmations last night, but unfortunately, my hotelmates were not among those that got in, so I'm out a room for the con at the moment. Who did get in? You guys got space for one more? ;__; I'd really like to stay in the Hilton Anatole if possible. I'm not a big fan of needing to go back and forth from the con hotel and somewhere else, especially since I hear parking is going to be a huge ordeal at the new hotel this year. The Doubletree is apparently on the same block as the Anatole, so that's cool too? I'll be keeping most of my stuff in AA, so I won't take up a lot of room. Lemme knowwwww. D;

In other news, I wrote an in-depth review of ArtistsnClients.com, which I mentioned in my other journal lambasting dA's commission platform. Like everything else I write, it's kind of long, but hopefully it's informative. I'm honestly hoping word of AnC gets around Tumblr more, since Tumblr is where I see commission posts reblogged all day long and I'd love to see more of those users utilize AnC. If you could reblog my Tumblr post about the review, I'd appreciate it?

Other than that, it's been kind of a slow month, not because I've had too much to do, but the opposite? I've had a lot of time to do things and I don't know what I should be doing so I end up doing nothing at all. ._. It's dumb. My print deadline for Comicpalooza/A-kon is coming up really fast though, so we'll see how many new things I can finish between now and then. Nragh.

FIRST UP. Late con reports. ECCC report is HERE: [link] (6700 words) and Sakura-Con report is HERE: [link] (5900 words)

SECOND. I got into A-kon, so my next conventions are Comicpalooza and A-kon back-to-back on Memorial weekend and the weekend after, in Houston and Dallas respectively. Come see me, Texas, 'cause I won't be back until IKKiCON!

I do really, really wish A-kon would finish sending out Artist Alley confirmations though because while I know I'm in, I think only a third of notifications have gone out, and I'd reaaaaally like to know if all my friends are in or not. .-. It is six weeks to the convention. I am really frustrated by this. Among other things, there are carpools and hotel situations to sort out, y'know?

I guess that's all there really is, update-wise....I went ahead and entered the lottery for Otakon (because I dunno!), but I didn't make it in the first wave of 'winners'. We'll see how the rest of the waves go. I'm not especially set on going, but...we'll see.

So how are you guys?

I'll be at Sakura-Con this weekend! Here's how to find me! (Click to enlarge)



A lot of other cool people are going to be there too, including ~Dr-Kara, ~torikat, *dauntingfire, *sakkysa, *finni, and A LOT OF OTHERS I should just give up trying to list hahahaha. 8_8

New prints include:



The original drawing for Jack will also be for sale in the Art Show, along with Celestia, Nightmare Moon, and a few other older pieces. I don't think I want to part with the originals for Cadance or Twilight just yet, but we'll see, haha.

ANYWAY SEE YOU GUYS THIS WEEKEND. If you bring me coffee, I will draw you things and/or give you free stuff. For real.

ECCC is this weekend! Here is how to find me amidst the hundreds of other artists and shiny things there! x___x (Click to enlarge)



I didn't get as many new things done as I would have liked, but I will have prints of the below, as well as new buttons of Eeveelutions attacking.



If you're in town for the show, be sure to also visit the Ltd. Art Gallery on Friday night for the MINTCondition #2 gallery opening~. Limited edition prints and the framed originals of these will be for sale there:



If you're holding out on coming over here until Sakura-Con, I WILL SEE YOU THERE TOO and hopefully have some more princess ponies for you aahhahaha. <_<

Last week, I finally finished my amazingly late con report for Aki Con. It's 8200+ words long, but only the last two sections are really important. The tl;dr version is that Aki Con is a shady business that doesn't really care about its customers, and I hope people think twice before supporting them in the future.

I also finished my IKKiCON report, which is far less drama-filled, but still manages to be 4000+ words. I think IKKiCON is the convention I've gone to the most number of times (3 as an artist, 4 total). It's kind of nice to have that since I've moved around too much in the last few years to make any other con a constant.

Anyway!

2013 CONVENTION SCHEDULE

ECCC (Mar 1-3: Seattle, WA)
Sakura-Con (Mar 29-31: Seattle, WA)
Comicpalooza (May 24-26: Houston, TX)
A-kon (May 31-June 2: Dallas, TX)
Everfree NW (July 5-7: Seattle, WA)
Kumoricon (Aug 31-Sept 2: Vancouver, WA)
Rainfurrest (Sept 26-29: Seattle, WA)
Jet City Comic Show (Nov 2: Tacoma, WA)
IKKiCON (Dec 27-29: Austin, TX)

( Attended; Confirmed; Pending)

I am really, really nervous about ECCC because it will be my new "biggest con ever" and still outside my comfort zone in terms of genre/audience. I really want to have a new minicomic or something by then, but I dunno what to do for it. x__x Really looking forward to Sakura-Con though because I will get to hang out with ~Dr-Kara and ~theartboss and ~torikat again.

New on the list are Everfree NW, which will be my first pony con (I'm stupidly excited for this, you don't even knowwww) and Rainfurrest. I haven't done a furry con in ages, so I'm kinda looking forward to that too. I'm technically still on the waitlist for a dealer's table at Rainfurrest, but I'm feeling pretty good about moving up on the list. Even if I don't get a table though, I'll have stuff in the art show and will be attending.

The rest of the schedule is pretty similar to last year. Fingers crossed as always for A-kon, and hoping I actually get into Kumoricon this year?

I guess that is all for now...I have a billion things I wanna draw, but the hardest part is getting started. <__<

Warning: opinions ahead.

So, by now you might have heard about deviantART's new commission platform. The news article is hilariously vague about the details of commissioner/artist interactions and how the whole thing works, but the whole thing screams terrible anyway.

In the first place, 20% taken off the top is outrageous. There isn't even a better percentage for premium subscribers (though let's be honest, the "better" rates subbers get on prints are still outrageous). The $40 USD cap on commission costs is a bit hilarious to me. On one hand, since the 20% fee is outrageous, who would even want to offer more expensive commissions? If you set something for $60, you're losing a whole $12. If you set something for $100, you're losing $20. But even for amounts under $40, 20% is ridiculous. The cap also encourages artists to undersell themselves if they want to offer commissions through dA, and that has been a pervasive problem for a long time already.

dA has taken a "hands off" approach to commissioner/artist disputes and dispenses this hilariously terrible answer to the question of how to settle such disputes: "Artists should always consider issuing a refund in the case of a Buyer who is unhappy, however artists are not required to provide a refund." This line in particular really makes me go wtf: "Upon receiving a refund the buyer should return the digital file or provide the artist with confirmation that the file has been destroyed."

This sort of "policy" is helpful to neither artists nor commissioners. Suggesting artists consider refunds despite finishing their work just because the client is "unhappy" is irresponsible; and still it offers absolutely no protection to commissioners -- the pressure's on the artist to make a decision for better or worse. There are way too many reasons disputes happen and this solution to disputes is not a solution at all.

The platform doesn't seem to offer artists an opportunity to converse with commissioners before deciding to accept, which also means the artist cannot adjust the base cost of a commission should a client have something really complex in mind. While the artist can request payout via check or Paypal, commissioner must pay in dA points, which is really inconvenient, and ensures the commissioner also loses some money when converting cash to points.

The whole thing just screams of indifference to both artists and commissioners while generating maximum profits for dA.  As someone who takes commissions and also regularly commissions others, both sides of these transactions are important to me, and dA feels like it's trying to rip both sides off. Anyone can understand that dA is a business and needs to make money, but there are certainly ways to make money without ripping off the entire community. :/

For anyone liking the idea of a platform to manage commissions though, I urge you to check out Artists & Clients. It's still a very new site, and it's not yet perfect (among my complaints: 10% fee is still pretty freakin' high), but I think it's off to a way better start than dA. Its tiny development team is very responsive to questions and encouraging of suggestions. New ideas get implemented relatively quickly (most recently, I mentioned something about commission/artist disputes and the dev pushed through a solution in less than a week), and I'm interested in seeing it continue to improve.

And thus ends an impromptu journal FULL OF OPINIONSSS~~~.

I owe you guys some con reports and probably an entry about my 2013 con schedule, but this will have to wait for now. I PROMISE I'LL TALK MORE ABOUT CONVENTIONS SOON~. Hope everyone is having a good new year so far. x____x

So my webstore, FakeLemonade.com, has actually been properly up and running for a while, but I've been really slow and lazy about adding items, so I never bothered to mention it, haha. And I'm STILL adding things, but a majority of my con table offerings are up now. I have some button sets I won't add until my stock comes back from Baltimore, but other than that, it's just pages and pages of original drawings and ACEOs that I would like to get rid of. XD So yeah! Check that out?

International customers! Unfortunately, the store isn't set up to handle International shipping right now and it will be a while before I'll be able to configure that, but I'm totally open to shipping Internationally. If you email me your order and address, I will happily invoice you and handle your order via email.



In other news, Otakon was exhausting and the first thing I did when I got home was sleep for 18+ hours. Not even kidding. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, bought things, chatted, and spied me behind my ridiculous print wall! <3 Special thanks of course to my awesome hotelmates, , , , and Mukki, who were not as annoying as they could have been. ;3 Additional thanks to who brought me coffee and gave me Pocky, who was an awesome across-the-aisle neighbor, and I GUESS who let me bum on her doghair-infested couch before and after the con, fed me way too much food, and sat me down for a season and a half of Big Bang Theory in between me making her watch BBC Sherlock. U_U

There will be a ridiculously long con report eventually, but man, right now I am supposed to be doing Camp NaNoWriMo or something, shit. D;

The con schedule for the rest of the year is pretty chillaxy, with the one-day Jet City Comic Show in late September, then Aki-Con in October, and IKKiCON near New Years. I will miss you guys at San Japan, but I am not sad I don't have to get on a plane again until December. U_U Four planes (I had a layover both to and from Baltimore) in a week is too many, man.

Ahahaha I am so tired of stressing over this con. D; But just about everything is done I think... just some art show pieces to figure out this week, and then I'm flying out to Baltimore on the 23rd and hanging out with *Miyukitty a few days before the con.

HERE IS WHERE TO FIND ME IN ARTIST ALLEY. Click to enlarge.



HERE IS A BUNCH OF NEW STUFF I WILL HAVE.



I sent in my print order before I finished these, but if I can, I might try to get a handful of copies of these too:



And whatever art show stuff I can get done. They will probably all be 4"x6" pieces because of space issues. But yeah! Come visit me at Otakonnnnnn. These other cool people will be there toooooooooo:

... actually, I feel like half of dA is going to be there and it would take me forever to list even just the people I know personally. SO JUST COME. COME AND BUY EVERYONE'S PRETTY THINGS.

Thanks to everyone that stopped by, chatted a while, or bought things from me at Comicpalooza and A-kon~. Things were pretty hectic while I was in Texas, but it was a good time all around and worth the trouble, I think. The two cons are back-to-back next year as well, so hopefully I'll be able to do both shows again. :3 My Comicpalooza report is HERE, but it may be another week or two before I can finish my A-kon report. Stay tuned~.

My next convention is Otakon, and I have a billion things I want to go between now and then. Still super excited about that since I haven't been on the east coast at all since I graduated in 2010. I should also be getting word about Kumoricon by the end of the week. If I get in, I'll need to figure out how I'm getting to Vancouver (WA, not BC) for Labour Day weekend. o: Do I know anyone going to Kumoricon? Ride/hotel share maybe?

In other news, my roommate is planning to move out and go back to school and I need someone to take over her half of the lease until at least mid-January. :> We live in a quiet, residential neighborhood just south of Capitol Hill in Seattle. We have easy bus access to Capitol Hill and downtown, a spectacular view of Lake Washington from one block west and have several acres of park and hiking trails nearby. If you know someone who might be interested, I'd appreciate if this could get passed around? Move-in date is flexible, but roomie'd like to be out by start-of-term in September. Interested parties can email me. "kiriska" uses gmail. Thaaaanks.

If you didn't already know, I'll be at Comicpalooza in Houston this weekend! Here is a map (click to enlarge).



And I will also be at A-kon in Dallas next weekend! Here is another map!



I have new things!



I will also have some pieces in the A-kon art show, so if you were interested in owning the originals for any of these, be sure to check that out!



I won't be back in Texas again until Ikkicon in December, so come find me~~.

My Emerald City Comic Con report is HERE and is 4915 words long. The tl;dr version is that it was fun and I spent too much money.

My Sakura-Con report is HERE and is a mind-numbing, record-shattering personal best/worse at 8628 words. The tl;dr version is that it was okay and hanging out with ~WhiteOblivion was awesome and lol I watched all of Tiger and Bunny in three days.

Also, I never mentioned it here, but I've been doing guest strips to Anime News Nina, Anime News Network's webcomic, for March and April. Four of the six strips I did are up, and the other two should be up by the end of the month. I'll probably post them all to dA after that. ANN is a pretty fun webcomic and is worth checking out in general, so I'm super stoked to have been able to contribute.

ALSO, you might notice that I updated my website and changed my main domain to KIRISKA.com because that is probably easier for everyone. You should go poke around if you haven't already.

I feel like I should have more to say since it's been a while since my last update, but I just wrote a 8.6k word report and I AM SO TIRED OF WRITING AHAHAHAHAHA.

/sob

ANYWAY. ALL YOU KIDS THAT WENT TO ANIME BOSTON, ANIME MATSURI, OR MTAC INSTEAD. HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND.