We survived a last minute convention (but my suitcase didn't) :(
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Art & Inspiration letters from NIGHTEͶ (Nathan Guilhot)
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Good morning Reader! :)
Welcome back, and thank you for joining me again this week!
I was expecting this to be a very calm, maybe even boring edition, but it turns out I completely forgot I had a convention coming up! So my weekend ended up being much busier than expected, in a very nice way :)
Let’s get started!
But before than, I would like to thank our sponsors, Zephir and Nela, 2 little parrot girls we are taking care of for a week or two 🙂↕️
We are grateful for their presence and cute noises (most of the time) 🦜🦜
Sketching in the café
Before we start on the main subject, here are some sketches I did this week! :)
On Saturday I went back to the sketching meeting I’ve been going to recently, where we meet in a café with friends and other artists, drink coffee, and draw together.
It’s a very cosy routine, but this time I had a bit of trouble warming up – mostly because I was sitting in a corner with very low light, so I couldn’t really see my sketch clearly. Not ideal!
But because of that, I had to get out of my comfort zone a little and draw directly with ink instead of making a proper pencil sketch first, like I usually do.
It was a little scary at first, but actually a very nice exercise. There is something freeing about not being able to fix everything. You just make a line, accept it, and move on.
That's were I write from
The company was also very nice, which definitely helps :)
The convention season has started!
So like I said in the intro, the biggest event this week was that on Sunday I was at Targi Unikatów Anime!
We got accepted recently, and somehow I completely forgot it was arriving this soon. Thankfully, I didn’t have too much to prepare from scratch, since I already had my usual stock ready: prints, keychains, and all the props we usually bring to markets.
Still, doing a market is never exactly “easy”.
Thankfully this one was quite manageable in theory: it was only one day, and the venue was around 25 minutes by tram from our place. But we still had to prepare everything, pack the stock, make sure we didn’t forget anything, and then carry a very, very heavy suitcase to the venue (I swear it was probably heavier than me T-T )
We had to arrive about two hours early to set up the table, arrange the prints, prepare the display, and make the space look nice before the first visitors at 11 :)
Check out this video if you want to see how it was like :)
I’m actually really happy with how the table looked this time! We’ve been improving the display every single time and it really pays of.
I say we because as you might know, I’m sharing those table with a few friends so that we can help each others out along the way!
This time we had some accessories to hang things properly to our structure -- the structure being a repurposed rabbit cage, but it works very well as a display support!
Look at this beautiful DIY shelf 🙂↕️
Thanks to that, I was able to show my keychains properly for the first time, which made me very happy :)
As the name suggests, Targi Unikatów Anime had a strong anime focus. My art is not exactly anime, but still maybe anime-adjacent? I think there is some overlap with people who enjoy anime, especially in the colors, cityscapes, and cosy details, but I definitely wasn’t the most anime artist in the room.
Still, it was very fun to be there!
The location made it even more interesting, because the market took place at the Manggha Museum in Kraków, a museum dedicated to Japanese culture. I really love this place, and it has a very interesting story behind it if you ever want to look into it.
Since I was sharing the table with friends, we had very little space behind the table: Between everyone’s stock, bags, boxes, and food, it quickly became a bit of a mess.
But sharing the table also made the day much easier and more pleasant. We were able to take turns, relay each other, and go get food or take a break while someone else stayed at the table.
If you ever want to do a market someday, I really recommend doing it with someone if you can!
Standing there alone for six hours would not have been fun 🙏
We had all kinds of people coming to the table, which was very nice. Groups of teenagers in cosplay, parents with young children, people who were just curious, and even a few people we recognized from previous events :D
The venue was a bit small, but very accessible, so the crowd got quite dense at times. It was encouraging, but also a little overwhelming, especially compared to last year.
Actually, this event reminded me of my very first convention, because it was organized by the same people. Back then, I think I made around 11 euros in sales.
Not profit. Sales 🙂↕️
That's all I brought from almost the same event last year 😄
This time went much better. I made enough to cover the table and some of the other costs, which is already very encouraging. It’s still not something I would live off, of course, but that’s not really my goal with those events.
I do them for fun, and to put my art in front of people who might enjoy it.
And for that, it was a very satisfying day, especially for a one-day event :)
It also marks the start of convention season after the winter break, and I’m very excited to say that we have been accepted to Ryucon in July!
This one is a much, much bigger event, and lasts 3 consecutive days, so I’m very curious to see how it will go for us.
I also hope I’ll be more prepared when it comes to transport, because on the way back from the market, the suitcase actually broke :(
I had to drag it, carry it through stairs, and then bring it back up to the apartment at the end of the day. Very glamorous life as you can see haha
But overall, I’m very happy we went there, and I’m ready to do it again :) (with a new suitcase this time)
Seven new videos this week
Finally, here are the seven new videos I posted since last week:
