Good evening*! ✨

I hope you are doing fantastic today :)

This week we have a very special edition of the newsletter, as I just came back from Krakow Comics Festival after coming back from a business trip! I'll tell you how the event went and what I'm taking out from it 😊

I hope you'll enjoy!

A very intensive start

In case you missed me talking about these past few months, last weekend I took part with some friends in Krakowski Festiwal Komiksu, Krakow’s annual Comics festival :)

Before this, I only participated in one creator market, and to say the least the experience was rough; back then, I told the whole story in this newsletter!

Despite everything, I look fondly at this first experience, and I’m grateful that it prepared me for the intensive weekend that was about to come.

To give you some context, last week I was away for a business trip - or rather a yearly seminar with my company. It was really nice, but very socially intense and, above all, 2,000 km away from home.

On Friday evening, after almost 3 hours on the train, I barely caught my flight back home and landed right as the train stopped operating for the night.

I arrived home at midnight, and we needed to get ready to leave right after 6!

Thankfully my partner had already prepared our suitcase with supplies, and the experience made it easier to know what to take or not!

And it was fueled by adrenaline and coffee that we arrived at the venue, ready to take our spot :D

The doors finally opened!

Right after the opening, we could see clearly that this was different from our previous event:

First off, there were a lot more people, and they were definitely our crowd! Lots of cosplayers, anime fans, other artists, and just very nice people in general 😊 We had a lot of great chats with them!

And we were so surprised by how many people were happy to buy, despite the fact that they paid for the entrance!

This success was mainly due to the crowd, but this time we were much more prepared, and I had way better products to offer; namely my A6 prints, with their soft touch finish that I’m so proud of. I hope they will look nice on people’s walls :)

Interestingly enough, someone suggested only adding the finish to one side: they wanted to write on the back to send it to someone! I’ll definitely keep it in mind for the next printing batch.

A moment that completely caught me off-guard is when someone came to our table, and right away pointed at my stack of books.

If you don’t know, for more than 6 months I worked very hard on an illustrated children’s book, Susie & the Blue Roof Witch. I shared the whole process in this newsletter, and KFK was its official debut!

And because it premiered at the event, there was a bit of promotion about it; not much, but enough to catch this woman’s interest! 🥰

Overall, as you can guess, the event was very intense for me; but I thankfully had awesome friends sharing the table with me so I was able to take breaks when I needed to!

I’m forever grateful to not have gone into it on my own, which is something I’m trying to learn these past few months!

My work was shown on the big screen!

In the middle of the afternoon, as I walked towards the cafeteria, I noticed a big poster on the wall; and surprise surprise, I’m the one who made the art for it!

​Last week, I shared with you the work I’ve done for the poster of an upcoming documentary I’m taking part in :)

The documentary is titled “Creative Heroes: people behind the comics”, and is about artists and creatives and their journey from amateurs to professionals (or not!).

After meeting the team making it, they let me free to do whatever I wanted as a first version of the poster. I really appreciated having complete creative control!

This weekend during the event they organized a screening of the first trailer!

It was my first time seeing any of the footage, and I really love what they are going for now that I was able to see it with my own eyes; they took special care to interview a wide array of people, at different stages of their creative journey. Which I really appreciate!

Sadly they cannot publish it on YouTube yet, as film festivals don’t like to display something that has been widely available publicly (it’s a world with its own rules).

I hope this documentary will see the light of day, and whatever happens I’m happy to have contributed :D

You can follow the project on their Instagram!​

The aftermath, and finally some (short) time to recover

Overall, I’m really happy with how the event went! Miles ahead of the previous market I did.

But that was intense to say the least, and I was quite bummed out that after everything, I still needed to go back to work the next morning.

But on the other hand, this made me grateful that doing these conventions and being an artist is not my job. This is my hobby and passion, even though I sink a lot of effort and money into it.

If I had financial pressure on the event, I would have considered it a complete failure: I would have taken a table alone to maximize sales for myself, I wouldn’t have shared anything with my friendly neighbors, and I would have been extremely worried when fewer people showed up on Sunday.

For now I’d be happy to just invite more people to follow my journey on this very newsletter, and I could do this more if I broke even in the process! :)

I have big plans, but putting a lot of pressure on those events is not one of them!

Now my actual plan is to recover and quick, since in 2 weeks I’ll be doing this again; this time for 3 days, and on a much larger scale!

That’s right, from July 11th to the 13th I’ll be at another event in Krakow, RyuCon!!

This one is very intimidating; it’s longer, more popular, and it was a serious investment to get a table in the first place! But hopefully it will be fun ✨

Either way, I’ll bring you along for the ride!

Cool art from friends and neighbors 🌼

I’ll leave you with links to all my friends I was sharing my booth with, as well as table neighbors and cool people :)

​@connie.mtv​

​@oelazet​

​Ada Guzik​

​@astheri_art​

​@spacecrumble​

​@zaglabek​

​Erufin (thank you for this silly little guy)

Alright!! Thank you so much for reading this week's very special entry 😊

Next week, Tuesday morning (I was a bit late today), we will come back to a slower rhythm with more art and chill vibes, as I prepare for the next big event coming up!

See you next week! And in the meantime,

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Take care,
- Nighten

This email is part of my art Newsletter. Invite a friend to join the club: https://club.nighten.fr​

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* I usually send those email at 9am every Tuesday, but I ran out of time and had to work longer. We are back on schedule next week!