VanCAF and anthologies!

If you guys didn't get a chance to go to VANCAF this year, you are missing out! It is by far our favorite Vancouver area convention, the vibe is spot on and it's full of original creators! We spend so much of the day talking with other enthusiastic creators and would-be creators and they all seem to have a good attitude and community spirit! Also because it is free to attend, you get to see new faces each time and the flow of customers for exhibitors is constantly refreshing.

If you didn't check it out this year, be sure to come next year, you wont regret it!

In other news, submissions have begun coming in for the Science Fiction Anthology. If you haven't already started, I suggest you get on with it, because the deadline is still July 31, 13.
This anthology still doesn't have a name, but we will see what the majority of the submissions are before we name it because if we name it something spacey and we get mostly biological experiment type stories, then that wouldn't make sense.

A new Season

Well, this year started off very slowly and hectically. From January until now we've been so busy that we've barely had a chance to do anything.
We moved both our home and Studio in the beginning of February (I wont even go into details about how long and hard that was and how much went wrong) and 1 week after that move, we had to help the art store we work at move.
As you can imagine, that was a thoroughly exhausting month.

We've finally settled down and got most everything unpacked and we can start being Gurukitty's again!

Top of our priority is to get the remainder of the Indiegogo mail outs done. They were delayed because of issues with the printing, and we actually only got them all a few weeks ago, mid-move. So we are getting all those prints made and envelopes labeled and books signed and we will be mailing them out as fast as we possibly can!

This new anthology was actually a huge success, I haven't crunched the number yet really, but I'm sure we've sold more of this one than we have of Ghost Tales and we haven't even launched it at a convention yet.

Speaking of conventions, we are going to be at Fanexpo Vancouver in April, as well as Calgary expo the weekend after and that's going to be the start of our convention year. We are not going to be at at many cons this year, we are taking the most successful ones of last year and only doing them. 2012 was the year we saw for ourselves what conventions work for us, and now we will be more choosy.

Our next anthology is going to be announced very very soon (hopefully today) as soon as I've edited and worked on the write up a bit more and made some final decisions.

So, that's whats been happening and whats coming up!

The fanart trap

It is really hard to sell an original idea. There is no doubt about that, even mainstream comic companies know that, thats why all these movies are being made of old stories and characters.

But remember Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, Iron Man and all the rest were original ideas once too.

We are sitting at minicomi, a small one day comic festival (mostly manga/anime), at our table trying to sell our original ideas, art and comics.
Across from us is a table selling 13x19 prints for $5 more than us of My Little Pony and various animes I'm unfamiliar with.
Beside us is some Princess Mononoke fanart, down the aisle is Zelda and some Adventure Time and Pokemon plushies.
Table after table is people making a profit off of other peoples ideas, hard work, and imagination.

It makes it even harder to sell an original idea, when you are surrounded by the familiar.

What we also see are some tables trying to sell their original ideas by selling fanart at the same time, this is what we call the "fanart trap".

Often these are artists that have been trying for a long time to sell their original ideas, or were fanart artists before and have a new original concept.
These people have often thought that they could gain an audience or fanbase by having familiar characters peppered in their displays. They very often have been struggling to make a profit for a long time and just sold out, or they are too afraid to jump in all the way.
Admittedly, with the right audience in the right time and the right place, this can work, but the reality is that most of the time all those ingredients just dont come together.

Once you go down that path it is hard to get out, this is why its a trap. People tend to get addicted to the sales at the end of the day and forget that their original story or characters are still ignored, hidden and lonely.

Having an original story or idea is only 1/2 the battle, most artists and business owners spend more time marketting and pushing their ideas than they do working on them. A sad fact for sure, but I asure you its true.

The only real way to get yourself known for your ideas is to make sure that your ideas and your face are what are out there. Yes, it is harder, but it is also much more rewarding down the road and you wont have to dig yourself out of the trap.

I find it very annoying to hear someone at a table with fanart and their original stuff, complaining that no one looks at their original stuff. DUH! You've distracted them with pop culture, familiarity and memories.
It's your own fault.

Im not trying to preach about the immorality and disrespect of selling fanart, what I want to convey is that its not an easy money making solution. It will make things harder for you, and its already hard enough.

For everyone who is trying to sell their original stuff, dont give up, dont sell out, and keep pushing yourself!
Your original idea today could be the next generations super fandom and immortality will be yours!

Some advice, pick your conventions wisely, research and see which ones enforce fanart rules and which dont.
Most larger corporate ones will be stricter on those policies, as they are a business. Though the corporate ones do have a lot of official mainstream stuff, stick to artists alley.
If you are in the greater Vancouver area, Vancaf was a great original artists con.
Vancouver Comiccon is surprisingly good for that as well, its small and bi-monthly, but you can earn back your table cost easy.

Minicomi is very fanart heavy, as most anime cons are because Japan is more fanart tolerant.
You can go, just remember what your competing with and dont let them sway you or discourage you to falling into "the trap".
If you have a strong anime style, obviously an anime con is where you want to be, but its going to be easier to sell a generic obvious anime image than a generic slightly anime influence image, so keep those kinds of things in mind.
In some cases it may be better to be an attendee and just hand out postcards advertising your stuff than trying to sell at a table. Make sure they are graphical and clearly show your style.

The last peice of advice is to join your local comics community. Connect with other original creators, art jam with them and form bonds.

Create on!

Twitter and facebook

Vacaf is now over! This has turned out to be a pretty fantastic convention! We are so impressed with the organization and location of this convention. So fantastic. I won an auction for 2 framed comic pages by Jeff Ellis, from the exploded view anthology. Through the kindness of someone else who out bid us on 2 Jonathan Dalton Lords of death and life comic pages i have one of those pages as well. Both of these artists are friends from cloudscapecomics !  Good times!
Often times at conventions we get people asking us about how we do what we do.
We are really lucky because we have the 2 of us and we both have a different set of skills, that probably evolved from working together for so long.
So i thougt i'd give a few bits of information on how we've used twitter and facebook to our advantage. I'm not saying that what we do is the way to success, its just some things that have worked for us

TWITTER
- when you start a twitter account name it well. Simple text. That makes it easier to remember and verbally promote.
- to gain followers, follow others. We went to other comic artists that were prominant in the comic industry, and local people and followed all the people thst follow them, and that they follow. Many of them will follow ou back or at least check out your stuff.
- make sure you have a simple, descriptive bio on your account. That way when you do follow you them, they will see instantly what you do. Also that you aren't a porn bot.
- interact with people. If someone @'s you, respond to them.
- promote other peoples work. Retweet them often, and be supportive. Don't make all your social media into a ad for yourself. You'll be boring pretty quickly, and you dont really inspire people to promote you in turn.
- keep a seperate twitter for personal vs comic work.

FACEBOOK
- Set up your custom url for your facebook page. You can do that once you have 25 followers (I think). It's in the account settings.
- Make a page, rather than a group. A page is the one people can "like". People will like more freely than join.
- Be active! Post photos, works in progress, events, convention appearances, promote other artists. But dont be spammy.
- Don't beg or whine. Earn or followers, and appreciate what ones you have.
- If you have nothing going on to promote, use that time to learn about your followers. Post polls and invite them to post art or information on your page.

- for both twitter and facebook make sure you put the links on your website and business cards.

This stuff has worked for us. We're far from super famous right now but we have a few excited and eager fans and we love them. It takes a while to increase your followers and it takes work but it will work if you work at it.

Later on we will show you the awesome artwork we got at Vancaf!
Im on a train right now though haha!
Thank you so much to everyone who visited us at Vancaf!

Calgary Expo day 2

day 2 had a slow start but it picked up later one. It was crowded and sometimes the line ups for things were so long you had to walk for 5 minutes to see what they were lining up for.
At one point the fire marshall prevented them from letting more expo attendees into the building, and i guess people are pretty pissed off about it.

Now, there are a few things that irk me about this convention. We choose the economy booth because it looked like it was going to be an area we would fit in at. the map said "artist alley, small press, non profit" so we know the artist alley was separate from the booths, so we assumed that the small press and non profit would also be split up. Not the case. actually I didn't see non profit at all in the area, and I felt like we were the only ones that qualified as small press in our row. John is a film maker beside us, which sort of works, but then to the other side of us is 2 people selling old comics, in comic boxes - not small press at all, or non profit. the other stuff in the area is small time retailers and sort of "miscellaneous" booths, nd worst of all, most of them re fanart!!!! I felt a bit foolish thinking that we would be surrounded with others like us - with original ideas and personal projects to promote. I know fanart dominates these shows (despite LEGAL issues conventions blatantly ignore) but we thought by having a booth in an area called small press we would at least see less of it. We are very disappointed in the table area/set up of our booth. If we get a table next year we are only going to go for Artist Alley.

I found some copic artists and distributed fist bumps accordingly.

So, thats that. tomorrow is the last day, then right after we jump on the 15 hour bus trip with Beth, home again.
After we rest a bit we ill update our shop with some of the left over stock, so watch for it. Some new stuff coming along :)

Calgary expo day 1

Well, today was our first day at Calgary Expo. It was ok. We didn't break any records today but we did have a phenomenal amount of people teling us they thougt our artwork was amazing and that they really liked our stuff. A nice young lady said she really loved ojr copic tutorials online and that was nice. The compliments from the atendees are really nice, and its really nice to have a new audience.

Heres some photos of the con, and beth wagner at her table, hee