Swords To Plowshares

Hi Y'all,

So if it's not obvious by the title, I'll be at Gen Con next week (maybe this week depending on when this reaches you.) It's sort of like my yearly pilgrimage at this point. I think I sort of make new product with this show in mind. Like yeah, Anime Expo is great and all, but I'm not guaranteed there every year like I am with Gen Con so it's sort of further in the back of my mind until like a month before when I inevitably begin to scramble to get my stuff together haha.

I'll have my tabletop tarot deck for the first time at Gen Con since it was last year when I started the project. I'm bringing a limited number, but based on how well it's done thus far I think I'll be safe with less tarot decks and more playmats. Speaking of! I'll have a few new fully original designs coming to the booth! One of which being the cover image for this news. This is mainly in preparation for Illuxcon since I want to do a booth with mainly original pieces. I know I can't help myself to want to bring fan works to shows since they make for great conversation starters, but I've been haunted by the comments of a passerby from my last Illuxcon saying that I looked like I didn't belong there, and now it's my mission to get back at that dude haha. What "getting back" looks like, I don't know, all I know is that I want to look as professional as possible to land some contract work.

Speaking of contract work, I had my sort of final but not final portfolio review in my mentorship. (We have one more class, but the visiting AD showed up the week prior.) It went about as I expected, though the silences were deafening to say the least. Needless to say I think that's currently a dead end for me, but I wouldn't say the whole of the mentorship was worthless or a waste of time since it gave me some strong portfolio pieces and altered my brain in a way that I think has made my approach to illustration much stronger than it was previously. That being said, I am so effin tired haha. It was a struggle to balance cons and the workload, which was entirely my fault since I always ended up doing two pieces each assignment since my thumbnails were "so good" that neither mentor had a strong sense of what direction to point me in and each picked a different piece every time haha.

Well all that said, I'll be at Gen Con! My booth number is 467! I'll be in the back close to the concessions near the artist and author area. Stop by and say hi if you're in the area!

See y'all in the next one,

Maeca