Naka Kon 2013 – First show of the year, official debut as the Artisan Rogue
So as some of you have probably realized, I utilize a branding element called “the Artisan Rogue” which is not so much a persona as it is a creative outlet and bit of iconography that I developed to use as a forward push for all my art endeavors. This convention marked the first time I used this tag as my professional name. I know it confused a few people that had bought my work prior, but overall, I felt it was a necessary change.
My booth decor and setup is now about 70% complete. There will be a whole other art display aspect to it that will clamp to the table, which is a work in progress at the moment. Otherwise, I think my table was unmistakeable and fairly easy to spot for people. That being said, I want to work out a better system for both my comics and my art displaying, as it looks like a section of explosive and confusing color all in one. The biggest problem was people not seeing my business cards as they seemed to go all “Zartan” and blended in too well. Who’d have thought black on black would do that? The tablet display helped immensely for getting my media work and displays of drawing out for people to see. BUT one problem is finding an app on Android that will flawlessly allow for a video to loop effectively over the duration of a show.
And of course, I like doing these shows because of the cosplayers that show up. To be honest, some of the characters I don’t even know, and I did not get half as many photos of the literally thousands of cosplayers that did show up. But here are a few that I thought were really pretty awesome.
Anything pirate based is cool with me, but it helps that it was not just another Jack Sparrow running around. I admire Depp’s performance, but WAY too many guys are playing pirates all the time, and most are just too derivative of the Sparrow character. I thought this take on a female pirate was nicely done (and led into a future illustration idea for a series of work that I will showcase later.)
For the life of me, I do not know the Decepticon Transformer that the second girl was cosplaying, but I liked the fact that ANYONE was showing some Decepticon reference in the place!
These ladies were really super nice and a big thank you for picking up my comics. One of the things that I do like about conventions is that, not unlike my Civil War reenactments, it’s nice to get to talk to people that have similar interests or even attend events that one participates in. Granted at a Reenactment, I am moving around a lot more than at a comic show where I am usually relegated to my booth, but I try to chat it up when I can. To a lot of the people at the end of Saturday’s vendor hours, I apologize if I did not have a chance to say hello or answer any questions. I literally was losing my voice from talking my fool head off. But those of you with my business card, please take the time to e-mail me any questions or comments that you had. I can’t get better at this without feedback from you all.
John, Craig, Keith, and the guys from the Konsui Fighter Team: Shayne, Logan, and Sean (soooo looking forward to that game coming out! and working with you guys in the future) [ Konsui Fighter for Android ] it was a blast getting to meet and talk shop on projects with all of you.
Captain Zapp Brannigan was my favorite character represented at the show this year. The guy doing it had the catch phrases, the mannerisms and even to a good degree the diction of the voice pretty well down. As a devout Futurama geek, there can never be enough Brannigan at any convention. Ever. I feel that there is just not enough love of velour in this world. Something that Zapp I am sure is trying to solve, to cure, and to make available at every local lovenasium… Mmmmm…. Velour….
And although not wearing velour,… Kasumi from Dead or Alive was done extremely well. There are a lot of times that when the little details are left off of costumes, something goes off in my brain and screams that it is not done as well as it could have been done. In the case of Kasumi and Helena Douglas (From Dead or Alive 2 shown below next to Zelda) there was a wonderful attention to detail in all parts of both costumes and even onto the hair and makeup.
Zelda is one character that I have seen at a every larger convention I have done. RARELY do I ever see any that push the outfit to the level of attention that this young lady did. The weathering and patinas that were on the armour and adornment pieces were superbly done, and had a weight and heft look to them that really stood out and showed incredible attention to detail, and attention to crafting a good look for the character represented.
Now these two angel cosplays (don’t know the character names on these two fellows, but if anyone knows, feel free to e-mail me and let me know — mario (at) mariomora (dot) net) were pretty cool overall and from a distance were pretty damn cool looking. What it did make me want to do was work on a cosplay for next year of the Angel of Death from Hellboy 2.
The weather was utterly insane for the weekend as a whole, as Friday during setup and on through the night, it was a balmy sunny 80 degrees. Then it got all crazy the next day with a cold front which many of the cosplayers did not seem prepared for, but it did not stop a myriad of games to be played out on the grassy area between the convention hall and the hotel. Kickball (I think) and a rousing game of Red Rover were the call of the adventurous and athletic amongst the con-goers, even way after the sun set.
Now the next two cosplays were cool to me for two completely different reasons. Yes, I am more of a dieselpunker at heart, but this “SteamPunk Druid” was totally playing along as a character while the piano was being played in the background (see the clip below for what I am talking about); and because for many years I was really into Werewolves (not the crap kind in the Twilight movies), but more the ones from the World of Darkness, I really dug this furrie’s cosplay.
I know you can’t tell it from the first image, but those two girls were incredibly tall and pulled off the whole school girl anime look without looking skeevy which is always a preferred thing in my mind.
These last cosplays I just liked overall. “Homestuck” seems to be all the rage and like any guy in his 30′s I’m freaking now officially clueless as to why there are chicks with blue skin and horns that at first sight I thought were something out of Warcraft, but lo and behold, I was WRONG. They are evidently trolls from the MS interactive adventure of Homestuck, I think. I don’t care, they were hot blue chicks with horns, that someone said were actually trolls, and IDONTCAREIWANTTOKNOWWHAT Homestuck is NOW!!!!
The more recent work I have been doing is where I’ve taken my marker and ink work and put it on wood panels. For the longest time, I worked pretty much on bristol board. After a while, I got tired of there really being no texture or real grain to the paper and I was wanting a change. So, I had experimented with working on non gessoed panels. I was actually pretty astounded by how well my style was able to adapt to the wood, albeit, I had to make my linework more profound and defined. I didn’t have many problems with color bleed, and if anything, as my works have progressed, it gave me license to be more “painterly” in my overall approach.
Now, price point wise, my 5×5 inch ones run $40, a little more for the 5x7s and $30 for a 4×4 panel of art. Considering I know artists that charge around $150 per 5×5 square and manage to sell those on a regular basis, I think as far as pricing goes, that’s more than fair for a one of a kind work of illustration, ready to be hung on a wall, never to be reproduced as a print.
One of the things, and this was something I discuss in depth with a lot of people that do art shows is that we have to combat a lot of factors, and in my older years, I have become a bit more sardonic in my responses if someone says something derisive about my work and how much something costs that I am selling.
I hear comments like, “well it’s a convention, so of course he’s jacking up the price“, or “$30 is a LOT for something that small“, which with that one, I managed to reply, “I imagine that is what your husband said about that ring he got you too, I mean it’s a rock, something mined out of the earth by african children. Mine is one of a kind, and made in the US by an adult.”
Was that rude to say. Yes, but only in response to an ignorant comment. When you create something, as I’ve said many times before, you can play it safe and give people the same old shit, over and over again, or you can say screw it, and stick to your guns and put things out there that YOU believe in. Rarely will I do works that are derivative of known or copywritten characters, unless they are one off creations that I don’t make art reproductions of, or someone has asked me to do a sketch off, or like in the case of my sketchboxes, each one is unique and offered generously as a reward for patronage to the FanCon shows when you buy from the vendors.
But plenty of people out there, some who were at this show, and will be at plenty of others, cater to the idea that as long as you make a dollar on something, even if it’s not your idea, then it’s okay. We’ve already got Rob Liefeld out there (whom I’ve heard is a nice enough guy, but I cannot stand his work or art ethics…), so when I see unoriginal ideas flood the art market, and misaligned pricing for things, it truly does hurt EVERYONE that is involved in the game of art.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a rant about fan art. There is a place for that out there, and admittedly, my one off creations are very much fan art. BUT, when you can do something new and innovative that keeps the efforts fresh and allows for growth in art, THEN I think it works. That goes for illustration, fabrics, leatherworkers, larp weapon makers, or whatever you want to make.
Now sometimes a commission comes from out of the blue that makes me have a reason to try a different angle with something, and that came in the form of this 5×7 commission from Rachel of a narwhal. I was virtually raised on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, so it’s rare when I can’t picture an animal off the bat by name alone, but this one did give me pause for about 30 seconds while I wikipedia’d it to make sure I was thinking of the animal I was thinking of. I had been wanting to do a subset of my illustrations that focused on more kid friendly animals, with some cultural art elements introduced into them. I managed to work some Kanagawa waves (thank you Cheryl Trent! I dd not know the name for the waves, I really need to delve into the terminology more…) in the background.
Attendance at the show from what I heard was well over the 6,ooo mark, and Beth and her crew did the best they could with what they had on hand as staff and security. Always professional and consistently listening to feedback about the show, I’m lucky to have this be one of the closer shows I do annually.
On that note, I will end the overview of NakaKon with a bit of footage of a small chance happening that occurred in the hotel area. [If anyone happens to know the guy at the piano or the Steampunk Druid, please let me know so I can add their names to the site.] I appreciated the fact that as one of the con attendees played the piano, another fellow (the SteamPunk Druid from earlier) did a sort of Phantom of the Opera thing from the stairwell overview. It was late on Saturday night, and thankfully I had my camera to catch just a bit of this…
FanCon 37 – Some of the best promotional work I’ve done yet…
Just a small entry on my last collection of sketchboxes I have done for Craig Klotz’s FanCon show. There have been well over a hundred and thirty of these now done, (from my last count) and each time, I keep pushing myself to do better and better ones and I was superbly happy with how these latest ones turned out.
Coming up next on the show schedules…
Planet Comicon, and Spectrum Fantastic Art Live are on the radar for my next appearances, with more shows to follow through the year as time allows and pending approval/acceptance. Thank you to all that came out to NakaKon and were ever so nice and took the time to chat it up and be friendly. I made a lot of new contacts and can’t wait to see where some of these new endeavors will go. Also, to all of you that picked up my comic Pagan Zoetrope, I was serious, let me know what you think, good or bad, I can’t get better without all of your readership and support. For that, I am very VERY grateful! Nothing makes me happier than to talk about a comic that is very near and dear to my heart, that is more a labour of love than anything I expect to ever become super popular. But I am consistently surprised by the kind words and input I get, and very much take into consideration those critiques I do get.
So, until next time, take care and get out to some conventions! Or shows! Just support your local artists dammit! 
- Mario, the Artisan Rogue