If you've just stumbled across this journal through another user or a community, or come here looking for new artwork between updates of my website, I am sorry to say that this journal is friends-only due to repeated privacy issues. If you'd like to be added as a friend, add me. I usually get around to updating my list every few weeks. I don't like to censor what I say here, so chances are if you're under 16 I'm not going to add you back unless I know you.

Not as painterly as my usual style? Blame it on finding out, about 36 hours before the convention, that I'd be going to AnimeBoston after all. Not that a waitlist table opened up, but someone decided to up and give me theirs, having only gotten half of one and deciding he wasn't ready for selling his work. (I managed to upgrade that to a full table on Saturday, but that's getting a bit ahead of myself.)

I've only ever last-minuted one con before - last year's AnimeNext. I can safely say that I'm a lot more prepared than I was then. Despite so little warning, I was able to get everything together and be successful... not that the convention itself helped all that much. If you don't know the story, AnimeBoston is, perhaps, the worst-run convention I've ever been to. ELEVEN HOUR LINES, PEOPLE!@ You can't possibly run a convention double the size of Katsucon, fast approaching the size of Otakon, and not have some degree of flexiblity when your system goes utterly and completely awry. Fail fail fail! I arrived at 9:30am on Friday, having to do the regular registration line for, again, the first time in a year. Getting there that early, nimgrim and I, along with our friend Eric (I can't remember your livejournal!), waited a mere six and a half hours in line! I'll entirely grant that sometimes screw-ups happen, and something you thought would work great actually turns out to suck, but wow... someone should have taken it on themselves to start fixing it either Thursday night or Friday morning!

Whew... that being said, I can't fault most of the rest of the convention for the horrible nightmare that was registration, I guess. Artist alley was well run, and the staff there was nice. I was told that panels and such were enjoyable, at least on Saturday when a good portion of the people had gotten though the line, then come back rested. The convention center was also great - I can see the convention continuing to expand for years there.

( And now, a tremendous timeline - twelve years of my art... see the progress! )

Yeah, I've been quiet for awhile. I have no good excuse.


( pencils and inks for that one here )
( L's version of heaven, pencils only )
( Arash - nimgrim's RP character )
( naughty Zelda pencils - worksafe preview )

If you enter the coupon code "springbunny" at my store, you get $5 off any order of $30 or more.

The slightly leaky toilet that has caused intermittent grief for over a year is finally being repaired. I don't think that would have happened had our hot water heater not given out, though. It'll be nice, after they leave, to enjoy a long, hot shower after two days of lukewarm to frigid bathing. At least the house doesn't look quite like the disaster area it did 20 hours ago - no matter who's coming over, I always clean up, even for repairmen. I think it's part of a paranoia that both Mark and I share, though he seems to have it worse than I do. Right now they're chipping through the cement subflooring for some reason I'm not equipped to fathom. Likely, this toilet hasn't been serviced since the apartment was built and thus has 30+ years of badness lurking beneath.

Conventions, Good:
(My list for the year, thus far.)

Katsucon
February 15-17
Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington DC

Castle Point Anime Convention
April 13
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, NJ

AnimeNEXT
June 20-22
Meadowlands Exposition Center / Holiday Inn
Secaucus, NJ

ColossalCon
June 26-29
Hilton Cleveland East / Beachwood
Cleveland, OH

ConnectiCon
August 1-3
Connecticut Convention Center
Hartford, CT

Otakon
August 8-10
Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, MD

AnimeUSA
October 10-12
Hyatt Regency Crystal City
Arlington, VA

Zenkaikon
October 17-18
Valley Forge Scanticon Hotel and Conference Center
King of Prussia, PA

Nekocon
November 7-9
Hampton Roads Convention Center
Hampton, VA

Conventions, Bad:
(To which I direct my rage.)

AnimeBoston
March 21-23
Hynes Convention Center
Boston, MA

Conventions, Explanation:

First of all, at the moment, AnimeBoston can bite my ass. True, I don't have enough pride to not go, should the opportunity arise, but damn... I was sitting on their website the moment registration opened and was one of many who were shut out because of an error on their site. Since the Artist Alley filled up in 23 seconds despite this, I'm sure they don't care about those of us who missed out, and certainly I haven't seen any apology to anyone for it. Immediately after, I sent an inquiry about a dealer's room table, even though their information wasn't even posted yet, and got no reply. When it was posted, about a week later, nearly all of the tables were filled before that was posted. I sent a second inquiry, only to get a reply yet another week plus later to say that the tables were filled. This pretty much leaves me with nothing between mid-February and late June. RAGE

I wish I could go further afield, but I just can't figure out a way to get two people, our stuff, and our stock from point A to very far away point B and back in a timely and reasonably inexpensive manner. At least inexpensive enough to make the trip worthwhile. What I need is advice from artists who travel the country for their convention appearances. Are they all attending as guests and getting their tables/rooms/registrations comped?

Room Sharing

Right now, the only conventions where we have a full room are Otakon and Katsucon. Anyone attending the others, we're open to room-sharing, especially with other artists. For most of these, it'd be a maximum of two other people. The exceptions are Connecticon, where we have a room, but it's a king bed (we can bring an inflatable mattress or ask for a rollaway), and Nekocon, where we're in the Embassy Suites with two double beds and a pull-out sleeper sofa, meaning possibly up to four. For AnimeNext, we have a room in the Embassy Suites right next to the convention center, but only for Friday and Saturday nights (not Thursday), and it's a King Suite, but two others could take the pull-out sleeper sofa. We're especially interested in a solid, two-person roommate situation for AnimeUSA, as we're right in the convention hotel for a change.

Otaku Diet (see this post)

I've got a lot of thoughts on this one - looked into printing it as a t-shirt and a poster. The problem is a very risky and expensive initial layout, at the very least for the posters. No one seems to want to pay the $20 for the 13x19 poster I can print here, but in order to bring the price down to $10 or $15 for a 13x19 or 18x24", I'd have to print a run of at least 500. That's a tremendous amount of faith on a single picture. The situation is even worse for t-shirts. No one, simply no one, wants to wear a white t-shirt. I'm willing to give it a try again on using iron-on transfers for dark cloth, but in the past they've always been tricky at best and shirt-ruining at worst. I've hard a hard time stomaching the idea of ordering 500+ t-shirts and laying out several grand to get a halfway decent price per shirt. Introducing t-shirts into the sales mix would also be a stocking nightmare. Can you imagine the space a stack of 500 shirts would take up? Then how would I move them to cons, let alone have table space to sell them? It's quickly getting to the point where I need dealer's room table space.

----

Right now I wish I were napping, or at least working. I can't do either of those things with strange people in the house.

Spending a couple of hours at Mitsuwa on Sunday was enough to inspire this one.

I haven't written for a month and a half now. The New York Anime Festival was uneventful enough to not bother with a convention report, though meeting aimeekitty was nice. I did reasonably well on my diet up until Christmas, at which point things kind of fell apart. I'm scared to look at the scale, so I probably won't until I've been good for awhile longer. I did manage to lose more than 50 pounds last year, though. Now I just need to do better. Both Christmas and New Year's were a lot of fun - it was nice to spend time with nimgrim's parents for one, then ladyofthesea, alphadeus, and many more for the other.

Medical Woes of the Now

Unfortunately, the whole month, and continuing, was marred by health issues. Just after the NYAF, I went to the doctor for what I thought would be a routine prescription renewal. This lead to a saga that had me in for blood tests immediately after and an ultrasound the next day (the bills for these coming to about a grand). It turns out that the excruciating pains I've been getting are neither me being a wuss nor all in my head. I have gallstones - lots of them, and really need surgery to have it removed. A few days ago I had a brief appointment with the surgeon who basically said it needed to be taken out as soon as possible. He sort of nodded, then was replaced by a nurse or assistant or something who cheerfully said, "Let's get this set up!" Then continued with the dread words, "What insurance do you have?"

Of course I said none, because I'm a poor artist bitch who's sinking in debt. Rarely have I seen an expression alter so comically. She went from bright eyed to deer in the headlights/what do I do now, and replied with, "Ooh. I'll just get 'other person'," and scampered from the room. Other person explained that the surgery would have to be paid up front since I had no insurance. If it's done at an ambulatory care facility, the surgeon's fee would be $1500, but she wasn't sure how much the rest would be - probably five or six thousand dollars. If I wanted it done in the actual hospital, it'd be $14,000 or so. Mind you, this is apparently a half-hour procedure and, despite it being fairly major abdominal surgery, you don't even stay overnight unless there are complications. I wish I could charge nearly thirty-thousand dollars an hour for anything I did. That's somewhere up there with printer ink being over $1 a milliliter.

I feel so helpless over everything. Every step I take, I feel like life in general tries to push me back. I'd like to get into a running stride every once in awhile, you know? A solid plan, solid work, a solid future... At least helplessness is making me angry rather than depressed. That's good, isn't it? It gives me strength to keep trying. That, and Mark. He believes in me, and I believe in him. Somehow, this will all work out.

The Post Office can bite my ass

It's bad enough that in this tiny little speck of a town, there is no mail delivery. Whenever I want to pick it up, it's uphill both ways (a steep valley lies between us). What's worse is the string of blunders that have been happening recently. The first I may have already written about, and happened awhile ago, which my first payment to the New York Anime Festival going missing. I still need to get in touch with the police about that. Even if it's only $80, that's still a lot o me. The second - a small package I sent several days before Christmas has not yet made it to its destination in England. Perhaps if I'd sent it standard mail I could understand, but I sent it not Priority, but Express. According to the tracking information, it disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic. Third, and most bile-raising, rage-inducing, they've apparently lost about two weeks' worth of our mail. Between Christmas and two days ago, I simply didn't have a chance to get to the post office during its ridiculously short hours. Under normal circumstances, they'd bundle the mail and put it in a locker, leaving either a key or a yellow "pick this up" slip in the actual box. When I did get a chance to pick it up, there was a yellow slip, but no one could find our mail. It's entirely likely that my Nekocon art show check was in there, as well as who knows how many bills, letters, credit card applications... It's probable at this point that they put the key in the wrong box, and someone else has all of our mail. What can be done about this? Nothing. Wait and hope, I guess. Either they find it, someone returns it, or... who knows?

Unseen Arts

Just a couple of commissions that I haven't put up because they were commissions. Sorry about the smallness and watermarking.

( full images behind the cut )

( Political Matching Quiz... results not shocking )

Continuing my parade of females, and probably the last thing I'll do before AnimeUSA. Everyone's looking for Samus these days.

This cake is delicious and moist.

I'm making a note here, "Great success." It's hard to overstate my satisfaction...

Enough of the silly. Consider this a diet splurge - I never would have made it if we didn't have at least two people over to help share its massive massiveness.



There were no fish-shaped candies or crackers, though. :(

I'm sure anyone on my friends list who is attending AnimeUSA already has a room, but just to get it out there:

Hilton Crystal City at Washington Reagan National Airport
I have a two-queen beds room Thursday/Friday/Saturday night. My boyfriend, nimgrim and I have one bed and we're looking for two people for the other. Cost - $82.50/person forall three nights (that includes tax). The walk is only about a block and a half, and no need to cross the highway.

Definite preferences:

• Non-smokers (the room itself is non-smoking)
• Female + female or female + male (sorry guys)
• 18+ (only because we're a little iffy on the responsibility forsomething like that - one 18+, one 18- might be okay, such as siblings or parent/child)

And why is there porn music in the background as some hobby farmer lovingly strokes his giant pumpkin? Seriously, world-record pumpkin growing? Am I this bored? No, really, some of these people are really weird, what with the pumpking naming and crying...

That over, Shikkaricon was a lot of fun. It was my first one-day con. (Zenkaikon was supposed to be the first, but with both Mark and I sick, that just didn't happen.) There weren't a huge number of people there, but the energy was great and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. There were only a tiny number of dealers and artists, but it was in proportion with the convention attendance, which I'm glad for.

Friday night before the con, in the pouring rain, nimgrim and I went to Shocktoberfest. Two of the four attractions were closed, but we got a partial refund and the ones we did get to experience were great! kerridwynne, you definitely need to come next year. We really want to get a big group together, actually. Ten people would be wonderful, especially if we can all see everything and not get rained out.

In other good news, I finally found out this morning that I got a table for AnimeUSA! It looks like I'll be seeing you there, kerridwynne. Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do about the hotel problem. Last minute hotel reservations always suck, and they're so much more expensive. Oh well, I think it'll be worth it. I hope it will. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Not the con itself, though. I have no idea how that went. No, this is the first con I've ever had the misfortune to miss due to illness. At MangaNext the previous weekend, we'd invited a whole bunch of friends to celebrate nimgrim's birthday. One of them turned out to have bronchitis that was nearly moving into pneumonia. Mark was sick almost as soon as we got home, but I took a few more days. On Friday, we thought that Mark was well on the way to recovery and I'd only gotten a touch of the plague, so we ventured out to get last minute con supplies. Of course, the effort and the cold all but knocked me out. By about 2am, my fever was going up and I'd started shivering fits violent enough that I was having trouble breathing. So, sickness, no Zenkaikon, great possibility of not paying bills. Great. I'm still coughing almost constantly and have yet to figure out how a human head can contain this much snot.

I also lack the energy to clean, so the house looks like a couple of bums live here. I hate it when I can't make it look nice in here. I had it so close before I got sick... Uuuggh...

MangaNext is this weekend. I am hoping and praying that it isn't the miserable little pile of fail that was T-Mode. Since it's not a first year con and it's put together by the same people who run the (very successful) AnimeNext, I have a tiny bit more faith in it, but I really need a good convention to put us back along the path to struggling out of massive, crushing debt. -_- I still haven't heard anything about AnimeUSA. Last I checked, I was third on the waitlist, but still no cancellations. I was really hoping to get a table. Anyone wanting to split half-and-half?

Onto art. Yep, another pinup, but at least I'm doing finished, full pieces again.



And the adult version, for all you pervs who like to see teh nekkid wimmenz.

So I started re-watching Hellsing a few days ago. I'm already beyond where I stopped last time I tried to watch the series, and I'm enjoying it immeasurably more. I find Seras adorable, so she was a good choice to start out a new series that nimgrim and I have been talking about ever since the first hours of T-Mode.

T-Mode.

Biggest. bust. ever.

God, I hope I never attend another convention that sad in my life. If there were more than 200 people there including dealers, artists, staff, volunteers, and guests, I would be shocked. In almost four years of attending conventions I've never failed to at least break even. I think I managed to make enough to cover one of the two artist alley tables that I got... but not the second table, mine or Mark's badges, the electricity, hotel, parking, taxes, travel expenses...

I feel bad for having promised Jackie an educational trip, since she was interested in selling some of her work at cons, but the only possible lesson learned this past weekend was "never attend this convention again".

Without mentioning names, I spent most of the our time there wishing to bash in the face of a certain braindead, misogynistic, elitist, holier-than-thou waste of molecules. Please stop talking about physics, color, and women, since you do not understand any of them!

No one who set up as a professional there did well, or, from what I heard, even broke even. Most of the dealers were in the hole by over $1000, and their tables were $300 a piece. Almost all of the artists left on Saturday night. At least I can take some small consolation from the fact that it took a convention that no one attended for me to bomb.

( having nothing else to do, I sketched a little at my table )

MangaNext had better perform, and I need to figure out why no one buys stuff from my website. Stupid money issues. At this point I could even really use the $70 dantedevilmcry has owed me for two years. -_-

What is it with livejournal that's making it so easy for me to become a lurker lately? I used to post so frequently... Lately all of my time has been taken up in work and housework. Not that I'm complaining... I'm actually kind of enjoying both. My only real gripe of late is that my weight loss seems to have stalled. I've been within the same three pound space for at least two months. It's pretty discouraging after six months of steady loss.

After Otakon was over, I think both nimgrim and I passed out for about two days. It was quite an adventure. We recovered, however, quickly enough to make my first visit to Wildwood. It was two and a half days of pure and utter fun. I got terribly sunburned and walked until I had tremendous blisters on both feet, but it was worth it a thousand times over. My first time actually swimming in the ocean... We'd better go back next year! Among the highlights of that was the copious amount of time we spent at one of the casino/arcades. alphadeus won the jackpot in quarter poker, so together with everything ladyofthesea, nimgrim, and I won, we came away with a whole lot of absolutely useless but great junk.

The next con is approaching fast - T-Mode. I don't know much about it, and it seems to be pretty new. In fact, I only heard about it through someone I was sitting next to at Otakon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed - I'm always nervous heading into an untested convention where I have no idea about its potential.

I haven't been doing many new, finished pieces lately. Some commissions clogged up a great deal of time, and for now I'm focusing on chibis.


( Fourteen more that made their debut at Otakon - including Transformers, Azumanga Daiogh, and Alucard, Alucard, and Ash. )
I'll have another sixteen appearing at T-Mode, and this time they'll be on stickers and buttons!

Yesterday started out as a victim of a strange sleep schedule brought on by trying to keep up with Lost and Supreme Commander. nimgrim and I decided to reset by taking a day on only four hours' sleep. He went off to get his work for the next few days while I cleaned the disaster area that was the living room and kitchen. I ran out of steam about half an hour before Mark returned, checked up on deviantart and 4chan, and doodled a bit in photoshop. He came back as out of it as I was and we decided we were too tired to go do the decent grocery shopping we said we would. Pizzas were ordered, a shower was had, and I woke up enough to go get them. Out to the parking lot I went, pulled the van out of the parking spot, tried to turn, and... clinkclinkclinkcrankCRACK. The sound came from in front of me, underneath me... I instantly put my foot on the brake and put the van into park. Then I took my foot off and... drifting downhill. Yes, in park. I felt a moment of panic before I put my foot back on the brake long enough to figure out what to do. Thankfully, the parking brake was enough to hold the van in place for the moment it took me to run back to the apartment and get Mark. We coasted the van downhill in neutral to the lower parking spots. The parking brake and wheels turned toward the curb are keeping it there right now.

Long story short, we currently have absolutely no vehicle available. If you could help at all, whether by buying prints or originals or anything else from my website, or even

, I would appreciate it beyond words.

I will have a more pleasant post here soon, I swear.

http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_213191448.html
To everyone I know who lives up in the Twin Cities, I hope you're okay. That... that's just insane. Interstate bridges don't just collapse.

This is, of course, last minute, but does anyone need a room for Otakon? I'm looking for one person preferably, two at most. We have a room for four booked at Radisson at Cross Keys, and have only three people staying for Thursday/Friday/Saturday nights. While it's not immediately adjacent to the convention center, it does have free shuttle service. I'd definitely feel better if it was someone from my friends list, rather than a random person from the Otakon message boards.

Even though AnimeNext was hectic and last minute, I had a lot of funand met a lot of great people. I'm really looking forward to Otakon, though it seems like it's coming up way, way too quickly. I wanted to have at least one full new painting ready, but I'm thinking it'llend up being just more chibis. I've added a few new cons to my list - MangaNext in October (Secaucus, NJ) and AnimeUSA in November (Crystal City/Arlington, VA). AnimeUSA might be a bit of a stretch, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Also, this morning I updated my prints marketplace ( http://www.ghostfire.net/market/ ), so those are once again available with all of my new work!

Sleepy Link - Redux got a daily deviation on DeviantArt today. It's the first time I've been featured.