#can you identify the stranger things sticker

[screentones-webcomicresources]

Preparing for Conventions

What events are best to go to?

Whether it’s a huge celebrity-studded multi-day weekend or a small gathering at a local library, in-person events are an exciting way to reach all kinds of comic fans that may not be in any of your circles online. There’s opportunities to be had at almost every type of event, but a few things that might narrow your focus:

Events that don’t cost more than you think you can make. Convention costs can add up extremely quickly. You can expect to pay at least $100/day for an artist table at mid-sized or large conventions. If you’re just starting out, prioritize conventions that are close enough to your home (or friends/family who will host you) that you won’t have to pay for a hotel or spend a lot in transportation costs.  Splitting the table with another artist is another option!

Events that other artists in your area/genre recommend. A great way to learn about events in your area is to attend one and ask others what conventions they like in the area. Some regular artists even maintain online groups to discuss application deadlines and share experiences.  Depending on the genre of your art or comic, you might also find adjacent things like horror shows, anime shows, or zine fests worth exploring too!

Events that you can actually get into. Conventions can be very competitive to get into, and have very small application windows months in advance. Once you’ve identified which conventions are in your area, follow their Twitter, mailing lists or websites to catch their sign up deadlines. Juried shows may also ask for a link to your portfolio, author bio or store to get an idea of who you are and what you’d be selling, so be sure to put something together and be ready!

What kinds of products should I prepare?

Our Masterlist of Printers is a great place to start for recommendations about places to make your products and inspiration! But to cut down on costs and keep yourself flexible while you figure things out, it’s a good idea to focus on:

Products that suit a specific style and taste.  Do you make big intricate illustrations that would look good as 11x17 printed art? Are you good with quippy one-liners that would make fun stickers? Is there a popular fandom that you like that has a similar genre to your other work?  Popular products are prints, stickers, charms, pins, and comics. But don’t be afraid to handcraft figures or something else.

Products that work together. Be deliberate about the vibe you’re setting, whether that’s a genre (horror, humor, superheroes, etc.), an age range (all ages, adult), a specific type of product (mostly t-shirts, mostly prints, accessories), a theme (eg, all things coffee!).  There’s a lot of approaches to making a cohesive product line and organizing your table to keep like things together, but having cute plushies AND saucy pinups AND anime figurines AND coffee mugs can be confusing to customers who are trying to figure out what your table is all about.

Products with low price points that won’t be too expensive to make. Products priced $15 or lower are generally an easy buy for new customers, and offering a range of small inexpensive things is great for folks who are on a budget but still want to support you. When you’re just starting, look for things that don’t require a high amount of money to produce for you or can print in low quantities with a printer.  Printed-at-home or handcrafted things are also possibilities for a more zine-style table presence and can save you a little money.

Products with a low minimum order quantity. Try not to order more than 10 or so copies of any one thing (especially anything that a stranger wouldn’t recognize like OC) until you’re confident it will sell. You can always order more after the show if you run out.  If you DO have leftover stock (and 99% of the time you will), you definitely can sell it at a future convention, a crowdfunding campaign, include it as Patreon rewards, or list it in an online store. But being stuck with a closet full of 500 postcard prints that you can’t sell is not a fun time, even if you DID get a bulk discount.

Products that have a general appeal. Even if you have a massive social media following, 99% of your customers will have never heard of your comic or your original characters. Comic enthusiasts will often be open to giving a new story from a local artist a chance if you chat them up a little and tell them about it. But also having general interest products (animals, fanart, nerd humor, mythology) on the table that don’t require as much explanation to enjoy is a very good idea.

What do I need other than merch?

A good convention setup looks clean, organized, and easy to engage with.  Once you’re accepted, look carefully at the details of the convention and what’s included with your space.  Many conventions will give you a table and chair, but you’ll probably also need:

Backdrop - Backdrops display your best art and help people see it from across a crowded room, and partition your space if you’re very close to other tables.  A photo backdrop stand with a bunch of 11x17/A3 prints taped together that you’re selling, a wire cube grid construction you can set on your table and stick smaller merch pieces to, or a professionally-printed banner with your name, URL/social handle, and your best art and are all solid options for this.

Where to get them: Google “photo backdrop” or look for photography supply stores. Google “wire cube grids” or look around hardware stores or Walmart/Target.  For banners, you can find printers that can make retractable banners or vinyl banners to hang from a photo backdrop.

8-foot Tablecloth - Many conventions assign you a very weathered 6-foot table, so always plan on having something to cover it (optionally for multi-day shows, a second to cover your setup for security purposes when you leave your table.)

Where to get them: Fabric stores, bedsheets, party stores.

Displays - Flat items on a table are invisible to anyone who isn’t directly in front of you, so look for a way to make your stuff stand up and be seen! Easel stands to highlight featured books or art, cork boards and pins you can prop up, boxes or porfolio books to flip through, wire/wooden racks to hold lots of books are all great ideas to consider, depending on your products.

Where to get them: For heavy-duty stuff, you’ll probably want to Google around order displays online. Art supply stores will often have easels and portfolios. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money yet, dollar stores can be a gold mine of quick solutions too!

Price Signage - Having clear pricing on your table helps people decide what to buy without having to ask you about every product. Print your own signs at home, bring colorful post-its, or some stiff paper, markers, and tape. You can also use a white board or chalk board to make a “menu” style price list.

Where to get them: Office supply stores, Target/Walmart.

The ability to take money from people - A secure place that’s accessible to you to keep money for making change. Cashbox theft can unfortunately be an issue sometimes, so wearable pouches or discreet envelopes that don’t immediately look like money are better in this context. If you have a cellphone or tablet, you can also get an app where you can list your products and connect an attachment to swipe or tap credit cards for a small fee.  (Note wi-fi and power are not dependable in many venues, so be sure to have a charger and a good data plan for your phone)

Where to get them:  For cash, go to your bank in person and ask for $50-$100 in 1s and 5s. For credit card payments, Square, Paypal, and SumUp all have apps that you can put on a phone or tablet and have attachments to swipe or tap credit cards.

Business cards - Customers will often want to follow you on social media, read your comic, or shop online after the show, so be sure to have lots of business cards! Use your most memorable art so they’ll be able to remember where they got it from! If you’re looking to offer commissions or talk to agents/comic professionals, you might also include your email address, but otherwise leave it off.

Where to get them: Many printers offer business cards for cheap. In a pinch, you can also print your own at home or have one sign with your info and ask people to take a picture.

What to Expect

Lots of talking! You don’t have to have a carnival sideshow “step right up” persona, but be ready to give a friendly hello to folks who look interested in your work, and confidently answer questions about all of your products when asked. If you have a comic, practice a quick elevator pitch to explain it.

Not many breaks! While you can technically step away from your table whenever you want (if you’re alone, you can usually ask a neighboring table to watch your stuff for you), every hour you spend away from your table getting food or going to see cool panels are sales opportunities missed.  Keep snacks and water at your table to minimize your time away, look for slow traffic times to step away and explore a bit, or bring a friend who can watch your table and sell things for you if you need longer breaks to recharge. 

People who have never read a comic on the internet! For those of us who live and breathe our webcomics, this can come as a shock, but many people are still only readers of printed comics and will want to buy your physical book rather than read it free on the internet or buy a digital copy. Even if it’s just a small chapter book, having a print version is a great idea to get readers!

Fun and profit! This can also be surprising if you only have experience with online stores, but people come to convention floors with very open wallets. Things that don’t sell at all online can do gangbusters at conventions when presented right! Experiment with your setup to highlight your favorite things, take careful records of what attracts peoples’ attention and what sells, and keep notes for the next day and next convention, and have fun learning about this new market!

#conventions #comic conventions #marketing

[doorplays]

Door Reviews: TOEM (2021)

There were a bunch of recommendations given to me by a friend, and I have been slowly playing some of them. This is one such recommendation: TOEM. I was fascinated by it because it markets itself as a Photo Adventure, and I liked taking photos in games like No Man’s Sky (2016). It also looks very cute! So I proceeded to finish the base game, and now I am ready to give my Thoughts. Let’s get to it!

What’s it about?

You control a small little photographer charged by their Nana to take a picture of the phenomenon called Toem. Nana describes it as a beautiful thing that you should experience for yourself. So you endeavor to do so by taking the bus, inching through the countryside by filling your bus pass with stickers from strangers in need. You take pictures to help people, to catalogue little creatures, and to just look at cool things! It is very cozy.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

The art style is very cute! The whole world is filled with cutesy little creatures and nice little people. The settings vary, from a forest park looking place to a mountain, and all are depicted in a nice way. Another thing to note is that the game is depicted in black and white. Personally, I would have preferred it to be in color, but I enjoyed the style nonetheless.

The music is very soothing. There were times when I’d just sit there and listen to the tunes with the in-game music player. Very nice and cozy!

The game itself revolves around completing quests via taking pictures with your camera. The camera itself can zoom in and has a way to identify notable objects. You can take pictures of specific creatures and the camera itself would log them in your album, as if you were a wildlife photographer. There are also times you are rewarded for taking pictures of interesting sights. As you play more you get some other features to your camera, like having filters. Mostly though, you point and shoot your camera at various sights.

The gameplay is cute! A lot of this game is pretty cute. I kinda feel strange at having nothing else to say about this game other than it being cute and cozy. But there we are.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

The story is that you are charged by your nana to see the phenomenon called the Toem. It is treated as a very special thing, so you go forth and try and take a picture of it. While you do so, you go around and help people with your trusty camera!

Each location has its own quaint little feel. The forest has a wilderness park feel to it. The town has a suburbian vibe. The mountains feel like a ski resort. There are a lot of interesting characters within those towns as well, most with their own quests you need to do.

The quests themselves range from the simple to the quirky. You are charged with tailing a suspicious character, told of cryptids that you can try and take pictures of, inspiring a fashion show to go on, and other various quests. You explore this little whimsical world that has its own thing going for it, helping various people on the way.

There’s not an overarching story, but it’s just little moments of cute whimsy interspersed between exploring the various places. The whole game reminds me of A Short Hike (2019), wherein you had to go to the top of a mountain, and encounter various people along the way. TOEM feels like a somewhat bigger version of that.

Overall, I found the story cute and whimsical and cozy.

VERDICT

I like the feeling that this cozy game gave me. A little peace after a long work day. But here right now, writing this review, I find myself wanting something deeper. Something more substantial. It feels personally conflicting, because I nonetheless enjoyed my time with it, especially the music. But I guess I want games with more depth. I like cozy, but I would love the cozy to also be deep, if that makes sense? I dunno.

Anyway, I still recommend this game. It is a nice experience, cute and chill, good to play after a long day. As much as I want deep games, sometimes you just want to cozy up in bed after a long day, and this is something cozy to play for those times.

Thanks for reading this review!

Door Rates TOEM: 3.5/5!

#door reviews #toem

[sunshineysprinkles]

do u have any advice 4 making friends in a new place (while ur not in school) and how to make sure u don't surround yourself with negativity like u had in the past ??

hellohello my beloved! i definitely have some thoughts about this stuff, so i will get right into it (':

making friends after school can be like. surprisingly difficult in my experience, but i think the most important thing is putting yourself out there! you might not be able to whisper in classes or hangout in after school clubs like before, but there's usually at least some local socializing things going on in any given area! check out events that interest you, look into community clubs, chill at local places (libraries, malls, etc.). i, personally, can be awfully shy with new people and find it difficult to initiate a conversation with a stranger, but there's bound to be at least one person at one of these places who is looking for a happy chat. if not, you might just have to bite the bullet and leave your comfort zone to start the conversation yourself; maybe give a compliment or point out something obvious and immediate that you can relate to them over (stickers on their water bottle of something you watch or a book in their hand that you've been thinking about reading, ykyk)

there's also always the internet and apps, but if you're someone who chooses to meet people that way, pls pls pls PLS be safe and cautious about it

tldr; get out of the house, go to things, socialize !!!

as for avoiding surrounding yourself with negativity, i think self awareness is a big part of it. you can't always catch yourself doing it in the moment, but reflecting on what's brought you down when you're feeling bad can be a lot of help! once you identify the things that are causing you trouble, it gets easier to said trouble. just the fact that you recognize that you had issues doing that before makes me think you'll have a much better time realizing it if it does happen again

i hope you found something helpful in this !! and i also hope that you're having a super day (': take care of yourself and be safe pls!!! <33

#ask #asks #anon #anons #anon ask #anon asks #advice #i havent answered an advice ask in a long time so i hope this prpves useful 😌 my words are rusty #<33

[almost-a-class-act]

Welcome to "Joining the One Bean/No Spleen Club - A Compendium of Jokes About Donating my Kidney and How They Whiffed It", a blog post about my journey to donate my kidney and how they, well, whiffed it.

Here are some facts about me. On December 11th, 2021, I donated my kidney to a stranger. Two weeks later, on December 25th, I had to have emergency surgery to remove my spleen; they'd winged it during the original surgery and it slowly bled for two weeks until it ruptured. If you're thinking, wow, that sounds like something I’d be in my feelings about, you would be both right and wrong. I did have some feelings about it, for about ten minutes, and in true millennial fashion I am now out here hosting a spleen joke-a-thon because the spleen is a stupid and hilarious organ. Who needs it!

My first surgery was a Gwyneth Paltrow-style “conscious uncoupling” of my kidney from my other organs, an amicable separation (for the kids!). My second surgery was like your ex throwing all your shit on the lawn and lighting it on fire.

Here’s the thing. There’s a whole process that you go through to donate your kidney, and then there’s a whole process that’s supposed to happen afterwards. I’m on a couple of kidney donor support groups on social media, and though the specifics are different, everyone is more or less on the same linear train journey. I was on the train up until two weeks after my kidney donation, and then I was jettisoned from the train over a canyon via a cannon or something and now I’m here in this strange place where yes, I’m a kidney donor, but that feels like a footnote to what came after.

What happened to me is pretty rare, so now there are just not as many people that can identify with me. People on my support group ask questions about recovery and I can’t help because my recovery felt like it was going pretty good until my spleen exploded isn’t exactly helpful. In turn, I can’t ask questions about how soon this weird pulling pressure in my second incision is going to go away because most people on that group, unlike me, don’t look like they’ve gone ten rounds with Leatherface.

Let’s circle back. In the fall of 2020, I saw a Facebook post by a friend of mine from my ball team. Her friend’s daughter – let’s call her Anna – was six and had been born with a rare syndrome that meant a lot of things, but the primary issue at present was that her kidneys were really letting the team down.

I had casually looked up kidney donation before. I gave blood and plasma regularly, and I’m in the bone marrow donor database. I have the little sticker on the back of my driver’s license that says please harvest my organs in the event they are splattered all over the road after this car accident or whatever (I assume something shorter but I will not go and check). So when I saw that this kiddo had the same blood type as me, it seemed like a sign from the universe.

There is an extremely daunting stack of initial paperwork. I once applied to work for CSIS (Canada’s CIA, inasmuch as we have one) and I think they asked fewer questions than this medical questionnaire. There was also some initial bloodwork to confirm my blood type. Pretty soon after that, they confirmed a donor for my potential recipient, so I figured I was off the hook.

Unfortunately, Anna took a turn and they had to give her a blood transfusion. After that, her antibodies no longer matched her donor’s, so they had to go on the hunt again. This time, I got the call for further testing, including bloodwork, an ECG, and urinalysis.

You will pee in so many jugs if you do this. I’m sure there are people out there who are very specifically into peeing in plastic receptacles and handing them to strangers, and power to them, as long as they are consenting strangers. I can confirm that this activity does not do it for me.

After I did some more bloodwork and some peeing into little cups, they considered that I was adequately practiced at peeing in a small container and so they gave me a bigger one. I believe it can hold about 3L of liquid, so it’s a fair size. You have to collect and pour your pee into this thing for a full 24 hours (for collection purposes I used an old margarine container and you could definitely believe it wasn't butter); then you are supposed to store it in the fridge when you’re not using it.

A real conversation starter around the water cooler, I bet.

Lucky for me, I was still living that pandemic work-from-home life and so the only person who had to open the fridge and look at my jug of pee stored next to the broccoli was me.

I got a call a little while after that telling me that my jug pee and my bloodwork didn’t match. Was it possible, they asked, that I had performed the pee jug test incorrectly?

“Performed it incorrectly?” I echoed. Please picture my face at this moment. If you are imagining these instructions and thinking, how did she fuck this up? You are exactly correct. It is not rocket science. I took the jug home and peed in it for 24 hours and brought it back. I have a university degree. Usually I can figure these things out.

Nothing for it. I would have to pee in the jug once more.

They made me redo the bloodwork, too, so I got on the old Google machine. It turns out that if you’re dehydrated when you get bloodwork done, it can really mess with your creatinine levels. When does everyone get fasting bloodwork done? First thing in the morning, after presumably not drinking water for at least eight hours. I did the pee jug test exactly the same way as I had done it the first time, but this time, I chugged a glass of water before the bloodwork.

Nailed it. That’s right, your girl can read basic instructions.

My next round of testing was in Toronto, about a four-hour drive from where I live. It included a CT scan, a renal scan, a chest x-ray and more bloodwork. By now it was May, and Anna had had both of her kidneys removed and gone on dialysis. Did you know you can’t drink chocolate milk on dialysis, even if it’s your all-time fave? I thought, What a goddamn travesty. Get a kidney in this child. (I’m making light but dialysis really sucks and you should make a donation to the kidney foundation if you can.)

My coordinator on the transplant team recommended that I reach out to Anna’s family, since I knew who they were but they didn’t know anything about me, beyond that there was a potential donor in phase two testing. I was a bit reticent at first – what if things didn’t work out? – but I did end up sending them an email. We didn’t interact very much until closer to the time of the surgery. Maybe we were all worried about jinxing it.

In July, I had to make another trip down to Toronto to meet with the nephrologist. When I say these people are thorough, man – we went over everything, all the way back to the first family history I filled out. This wasn’t the first or last time, either. Prior to this, I had also spoken on the phone with a social worker and my transplant coordinator about what the surgery entailed and how prepared I was for what was to come. Finally, I was cleared to go.

And then it was time to hurry up and wait.

I had asked if it was possible to donate in September. The process had been taking so long that I had a summer full of plans because I hadn’t had any idea of when I would be cleared, and I was starting a new job in August. The hospital told me that they were very backed up with surgeries anyway because of covid, so September was perfect.

I sent them an email in the back half of August just to follow up. It turned out that there were no September surgery dates, so we would be waiting until October.

The date was set for October 14th. I went back to Toronto a week before to complete some final pre-surgery testing, re-checking my ECG, bloodwork, and urine, and meeting with the surgeon and my transplant team coordinator. I found out that I would be donating my left kidney, because both of my kidneys were about equally great and the left one is easier to take out because of its location (if this were fiction, this would be the moment of foreshadowing where I hear a faint distant scream coming from the general direction of my spleen).

The next morning, there was more bad news. Anna was feeling under the weather and they were monitoring a potential issue that they were hoping would resolve before surgery. It would have to be postponed.

Do you ever feel like you just want to get something fucking over with? I sent an email to Anna’s family to let them know that I was so sorry that the surgery had been delayed and that I would be waiting by the phone for a new surgery date. However disappointed I was, I’m sure they were a thousand times more so.

The recovery for kidney donation is usually about six weeks and for obvious reasons you aren’t supposed to drink while you’re on painkillers, so you can see how I was worried that this could reach a point where it might encroach on my plans to drink every Christmas cocktail ever made. They ended up scheduling my surgery for December 11th, five days before my 33rd birthday. I ended up having a drunken game night with my friends the weekend before. The last shot ol’ Lefty ever had before going into retirement was Jameson whiskey.

I went down to Toronto the day before the surgery to get a covid swab, and to redo my ECG as it had been misfiled. Trust that there were jokes made about not doing the same thing with my kidney. (These jokes were made by me, and the nurses did not laugh – a theme you will see is recurring.)

Sidebar – they did my surgery in the grown-up hospital, and Anna’s surgery in the kid hospital across the street. I sincerely hope that someone had to wait at a stoplight carrying my kidney in a literal cooler while people around were like, look at this pretentious dickhole with his lunch in a cooler. Put it in a grocery bag like the rest of us, asshole.

I didn’t sleep very well the night before the surgery, but I never sleep for shit in hotels. It’s always too warm or too cold, you know? Notably, every hotel I’ve ever been in is five thousand light years better than the hospital, but hindsight is 20/20.

I had to show up for the surgery at 6:30 in the morning, even though the surgery itself didn’t start until after 8 sometime. My mom was kind of emotional about it – understandably; I am her coolest child, ask anyone – but I was barely even nervous. I can’t explain this other than to say that maybe it was because I knew my main job for the morning was to take a four-hour nap while someone else did all the actual work (my favourite kind of group project).

You feel really weird the first time you take your underwear off and put on the bizarre hospital clothes that don’t feel like they could possibly be tied up securely. (Then, after both of my surgeries, I showed my butt to probably everyone in those hospitals. It was too much of a pain in the ass to tie up the gown when I was also trying to get out of bed with a belly incision. Priorities, huh?) They gave me a dress as a big as a tent, little surgery booties, and these tie-up pants that I never saw again after they presumably took them off me for the surgery. Bye, weird pants. I hardly knew ye.

I laid in a hospital bed for a while, way too hot and wondering if I was sweating through my tent-dress. They confirm who you are about eight times so that they don’t accidentally take someone else’s kidney I guess, and the surgeon and anesthesiologist come down to see you. I asked the surgeon for a photo of my kidney, which he did end up providing. I haven’t framed it and hung it in my house yet as the ultimate conversation piece but it’s always nice to know that I could, you know?

I don’t remember much about actually going into surgery, beyond how weird it is to be laying down when a whole bunch of people are moving all around you. You really do just black out like in the movies once they get those drugs in you.

The next thing I knew, I was awake in a room with way too many lights on and my abs felt like I had done eight thousand crunches and then stabbed myself in the gut. You don’t realize what you use your abs for until they’re out of commission, but guess what? Your belly moves when you breathe! It hurt. Like a motherfucker. Someone was telling me to take deep breaths and I remember saying, “but breathing is what hurts”.

They managed to get my pain medication sorted out and as they were taking me down the hall to my room, someone asked me how I was feeling now, presumably to see if the painkillers were working. I said, “I feel like I had two kidneys and now I have one.”

Yes, still nailing it.

For the record, no one laughed except me. It made my belly hurt. Laughter: another thing you use your abs for.

This is getting very long so I will give you guys the rest tomorrow in part two. Get excited; I’m gonna use the word ‘smithereens’. Spoiler alert, it will be about my spleen.

Part two is here.

#kidney donation #kidney #spleen #personal #organ donation #surgery