Hey there friend!

Yes Reader, I'm being serious! The convention didn't go as well as I imagined, but thankfully it wasn't that bad :)

Today I'd like to tell you everything that happened, what went wrong, good, and why I'm still excited for the upcoming events!

Grab yourself a drink and let's dive into this special issue ✨

How we prepared for the event

So in case you’re not aware, this Saturday I was in Targi Unikatów in Krakow, a nice creator market, and I had a table with 4 good art friends!

Most of us were doing this for the very first time, so we were not sure what exactly to expect… But first, we had to figure out what to offer!

That’s where my first mistake happened: I seriously underestimated how long it would take to prepare everything. Especially the zines!

I had 3 zines to present: The Escape, a mini gag comic that I was giving away, Bug of the Past, a weird short comic about rediscovering an old video game (with some characters you might recognize), and finally Susie & the Blue Roof Witch, my upcoming picture book in a black and white dithered version.

All of them had something different going wrong, so let me explain!

First, all of them took a really long time to print; or rather, print correctly. I didn’t make a lot of them, but getting the file right with the correct margin and page order was trickier than I thought. But after that, I had to fold and prepare them!

For my Mini Comic, I painstakingly folded and cut 20 sheets of paper one after the other, and it took a good part of my evening!

By the time I was done I had to rush to get the other zines finished. And that’s where the second issue came in!

Bug of The Past didn’t have a cover originally, so I had to make one quickly to make it presentable; and not only does it look a bit too simple (it will play out later), it also came out glitchy!

Oh well I said, at least glitches are part of the story so it’s not such a big issue. And that was until I flipped through the pages and realized: some pages have the text completely missing!

And I was running out of time to figure out why!

Thankfully only one bubble was actually crucial to understand; the other ones were working alright as silent pages! At least that’s what I told myself, because now I needed to move on to the next hurdle: Susie’s book!

I was very proud of my dithering tool, this little web app I made to add a dithering effect to any PDFs. Up until then, I only tried small scales with only a few illustrations to see how it looked; but I had yet to print the whole thing (ink is expensive!).

After fixing some formatting issues, the sheets started to come out one by one… And it’s after letting the ink dry that I slowly realized that, frankly, it wasn’t looking that great.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite happy with my illustrations, but all printed on standard paper, black and white, and folded awkwardly… it just looked like one of those stacks of copies teachers would give you in high school, the one you sort nicely in your folder and never look at again, forgetting what the lesson was about.

But I was running out of time. Damn it. In addition, the zine version was only making sense next to the original (which I don’t have anymore), but I took this to the fair hoping that it would be a conversation starter.

I was a bit demoralized, but thankfully we also had a lot of nice things to decorate our table :)

We packed a gigantic suitcase with frames, prints, fake plants, little kitchen furniture… you’ll see, we had a lot to play with when it comes to making our artworks shine!

How does it actually look like when you’re tabling at an event?

I had no idea how the procedure would be when arriving on the site, but I needed to figure it out quickly because I ended up being the very first to arrive!

Getting out of the Uber, I dragged the very heavy suitcase towards the building, following artist-looking individuals who seemed to have the same goal as me.

I entered what looked like a small basketball court with bleachers on the side.

The court was generally empty if not for the folded tables, the tapes on the ground and the few early arrivers preparing their allocated rectangle to their image.

I thought I would have to present my ID, prove that I got accepted, or anything like this; but no, the door was completely open. I guess it would have been quickly apparent if I took the space of someone else, but I was very surprised!

I actually didn’t even know what was our table number at first, I had to look on the long list of attendants to find it out. We were in the “anime” part of the market (yes, I’m officially an anime artist now 😎), and I could already see some very experienced artists setting up their giant displays.

I arrived at 9 in the morning, and I started installing the table as my friends gradually arrived until 12, the official opening. We were still setting up the prices on the table as the first visitors passed by!

How the event actually went

I probably stood still for 3 hours straight after the opening, eager to welcome our visitors and observe their reactions.

It was very intimidating: first because I don’t speak Polish very well, even tho I understand it better now this is still a big challenge.

And second, as I’m sure you would not be surprised, people who visit the anime alley of a convention tend to be very shy!

It was very hard to make eye contact or say hi in a way that is heard above the background music but not too aggressive.

People tend to look straight down at the table, sometimes even with headphones, and would rarely raise their gaze. But once a contact has been made, it becomes way more relaxed for both the seller and the visitor!

I learned a lot while standing there, so here are some quick lessons I wrote down!

More people attract more people

There is this interesting phenomenon where as soon as someone was standing in front of the table (even if it was one of us adjusting something!) people would be more likely to stop by and look at what we have.

But it goes the other way as well: too many people or chatting for too long with someone will push new people away, as they don’t want to stay in crowded places or bother you in the middle of a chat.

So if you’re ever selling at a market, send one of your friends to play the customer! Or be that friend for someone else! 😌

People love cats and Hatsune Miku

Surprising to nobody, fanart was very much in vogue in the tables around us; and for good reason, as people really love them! Our very first sale was actually a Hatsune Miku pin! And all things featuring cats and cute things were very popular in general :)

Beyond their appeal, I think fanarts are very effective at being a “scroll stopper”, or rather something that makes you stop as you’re going through the motion.

I don’t really want to draw fanart (I’m not into any popular fandom anyway), but that’s a concept I’ll definitely think about in the future!

Speaking of scroll stoppers, I made one that actually worked quite well! But with a twist

People don’t want to pay what things are worth

Now I understand, the economy is not that great, we live in a weird era, only teenagers and young adults visited us and I know they don’t have a huge budget, but look at this guy:

This beautiful, one of a kind painting, a rare original by yours truly, featuring such an elegant duck; it was there, fairly priced, and yet people dared to negotiate 😞

But in all seriousness, I decided to put one of my paintings on the table for 1,000,000 PLN as a joke, and some people laughed at it! :D

Although some were very confused or even were upset when I refused to sell it for a few bucks; I’ll definitely try to be more clear that it’s only there as a joke next time!

The disastrous aftermath, and lessons learned!

Now! Onto the juicy part!

At 18, after being there for 9 hours and welcoming people for 6, we finally were able to pack everything back and evaluate how the day went.

We decided to give the earnings of each item sold to the artist who made it. We took note of each sale and started counting and splitting the money. I was the first one to receive my share!

The result?

11.61€.

A whopping 50 PLN to take home.

I was pretty confused at first, a bit salty too, but now I understand what happened: I was betting a lot on the A3 prints, because I personally love them and I think they look amazing (that’s why I give them away in this newsletter!). But during the convention, we sold none of them. Zero.

And it was my big hope for the convention!

Truth is, as we discovered thanks to our neighbors, that at this kind of event anything above A4 has trouble selling.

In contrast, stickers, pins, and A6 were fast sellers; but me I only had a few small prints!

Also, nobody joined the newsletter! :( The link was on the zine that I was giving away, but I'll need to think of a better strategy next time!

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Honestly now, I’m happy to have had this humbling experience; you need one of those from time to time. And at least it’s clear to me now what I did wrong!

There are so many obvious things I want to improve, like bringing business cards (didn’t have those!), water, and I need to learn more ways to greet people in Polish!

Despite everything, despite earning 11 bucks for 10 hours of work, I’m still super happy to have done this market.

I’m glad few people showed up overall, because I needed to dip my toe first, I’m glad my friends got better results than me, I’m glad I learned so much while accomplishing a dream of mine.

So now that my first bad impression has passed, I’m really excited to table in a few months at KFK, Krakow comics festival :)

I want to try new things, make better products and fun things to welcome the visitors! And make more connection with other artists! It’s gonna be fun!

Please look at my cool art friends!

Now I couldn’t conclude this special edition without sharing with you the artists I shared the table with :D

Connie - She’s a very cool manga artist, and a very fun person to be around! She’s also the person who initiated this whole group, so I’m very grateful :)

​@connie.mtv​

Ola - She makes beautiful watercolor, ink and charcoal illustrations; it’s crazy how much she can do! She had to hold back for us 😌

​@oelazet​

Ada - It was actually her birthday on the day of the event! She usually makes realistic landscape paintings, but for the event she had a very fun series of pretty and relatable quotes!

​Ada Guzik​

Amelia - I already told you about her in previous issues! But in case you missed it, she’s a very talented digital painter, with an incredible sense of colors. She has an incredible gift to make everything vibrate on the page! She’s also my gf, and a great inspiration ☺️

​@astheri_art​

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And that's it for this week! Thank you so much for reading this special convention issue, I hope you enjoyed it :)

It was a bit intimidating to share my struggles with such transparency, but I had a lot of fun writing it in the end, and I hope it showed!

I'll see you next Tuesday for a more calm newsletter (I have to show you the progress I made on my next illustration), and hopefully finally some good news for the book!

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your day, and as always,

​

Take care,
- Nighten