The convention took place on the 7th February, even before going to the convention I had to decide how to set up my table for the convention, what to sell and decide on what my Budget would be. So I planned out the budget first, I decide to go for not a budget because I have never done anything like this before but I gave myself an aim of find the stuff cheap. I also decide to design postcard of my artwork so that it can fit onto a wall without consuming too much spaces but I also notice this a lot when I went to previous conventions from my past experiences I have noticed that this is popular choice among artists.
With the prints I decide to go for eight different designs, so then I can have an even number of fan art drawings and original sketches. Here the designs at the bottom. With the fan art sketches I have written on the that I do not own the right of these characters and they belong to their creators or/and company. The overall quantity that I want is ten of each because Fumio told me that I should go for ten to fifthteen because then I have limited stock on the day and that I do not spend a fortune on over stock. The company that I have done for my prints is Doxdirect which is a cheap company that offer free postage and promise good quality. I was not sure about the design but overall this turned out to be a good company to go for and I will continue business with them.
The next thing that I need to go was to design my business cards. With this I wanted to go for a single card design that I something that was eye-catching. So I went for a creative of me that showed my Crazy design. (See below for an outcome) The other thing that I wanted from my business cards is that the image with be the main focus so I made the card double side so that I can have my information on the side.
The list of stuff that I need for convention and what price:
Table cloth- £7.50
Prints- £14.40 with free postage from Doxdirect
Business cards - £29.98 for a 100
Letter holder - £5.81
A4 Cello bags - £5.99Cardboard for the back of the prints- £3
Table - £20
Money box- £15
£50 for change on the day
Overall cost: £151.68
To cover the cost of everything I have divided the price by eight to get the price of £18.96 then I divided this by ten to get the price of each print. So with this budge I then to make the money back by selling the prints at basically £2 each. So I will sell them for one pound more to gain a profit.
When I got there on the day, I had to get there at 8:30 to set up my table. To see my layout look at the picture below.
Overall at the end of the day I made a profit of £6 pounds on my prints, so I did not make much out of the day but I did hand out my business cards and it was generally nice to hear that it was a great design. I have also talked to other artists at the convention and it was great to hear their advice such as become for refined in what you want to do as an illustrator and what I should sell. I also sold my very first commission. (see picture below)
The facts that I was told by the fellow artist was that I need to refine my artists career route, so with me I want to become an comic designer. When I told them this information, they told me that I should give myself a little task which was to create a short story and illustrated by the end of the week. The other fact I was told that I mostly need to make my work more fan art because the audience that are going there are only interested in their own fandom but they said still do original work, just make that 1/4 of the table.
With this work experience I want to continue this idea of going to conventions to sell my artwork because it great way to get my name out there because of large group of people and it has helped me realized what I want to do as a career now.
My business card illustration
My table on the day
My work and Janica work on the table
Setting up
Print One
Print Two
Print Three
Print Four
Print Five
Print Six
Print Seven
Print Eight
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