Anime Crossroads Report

Another weekend, another convention.

This was the first year for Anime Crossroads, and I'd have to say overall it was pretty nice. It's hard for me to properly judge small conventions, since I have so little experience with them-- I'm much more accustomed to visiting conventions like GenCon, Anime Crossroads, and ComiCon, which are full of people and too many things to see. This convention was basically two rooms and two hallways, and I really only saw the two rooms-- the dealer's room and the artist alley.

Still, the AA was in a great location, there was pretty decent traffic, and the feel of the convention was very friendly. There were plenty of cosplayers-- unfortunately I missed out on capturing a video of 50+ people all doing the Caramelldansen at once, but there was a lot of creativity on display. Especially in the artist alley. I would say the majority of artists were offering craft-type products: cell phone charms, plushies, fleece hats, magnets, etc., although there were plenty of traditional artists there, too.

(There were a few questionable items, like the booth selling t-shirts. Yes they were clever, but isn't AA supposed to promote handmade items and not things which are manufactured or otherwise mass-produced?)

Anyway, we got there around noon on Friday and set up pretty quickly. Sales were a little slow to start off with, and Bekah and I spent much of our time working on coloring book pages. That really made the day go by quickly: it seemed that before I knew it I looked up and it was dark outside. I did manage to sell a few masks towards the end of the day. Saturday we came a bit earlier, around eleven. It was obvious right away that there were far more people there that day, and the AA was actually rather busy. Sales were brisk at first, but while I sold a few more things throughout the day (mostly prints, and I have never seen so many prints sold at a convention), things generally tapered off and we packed up at seven, mostly so we could go home and relax and play some Smash Bros. Brawl for a few hours. The day felt much longer than Friday had, and I was glad to just chill out, honestly.

Today we got there just after ten, and it was good that we got there early, as we both managed a few sales very soon after we set up... and then things went back to a crawl. And crawled. And crawled. Around two we gave up the ghost and left for the weekend.

So overall it was very nice; sales were generally successful, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the convention. Of course I didn't go to any of the panels and didn't see much of the evening activities; there was a sketch trade circle for the artists just as we were packing up on Friday, but by that point all I wanted was to go relax away from people for awhile. Besides, I'd promised the boy that we'd spend some time together. We did end up watching anime all evening, though, a strange series about yokai called Natsume Yojincho which was pretty entertaining.

I have quite a few sketches to upload (I filled almost twelve full pages in my newest sketchbook!) but I'll leave those for tomorrow, as there will be plenty of adjustments and resizing needed before I can put them up on the web.

All in all it was a fun, if slightly exhausting weekend, and a good con. I hope they run it again next year.