anyc 2026 in a pic dump
I’ve basically been busy because of con prep (so haven’t blogged), but I am back from ANYC!! I have San Japan during labor day weekend so most of my free time will be a mix of prep work and relaxing rotting lol.
I can’t remember if I mentioned this, but my brother came with me to be my table helper.
I did hit my sales goal (not stretch goals - if you needed more context my day job is sales for a small business so I have pretty realistic expectations/goals for sales.) - which is my assessment on if flying to a convention out of state financially makes sense. There are other things I love about vending at a bigger convention too (meeting other artists, etc).
I had some people that told me they loved the shirt they got from my my previous time vending!!!
Anyways… pics…
Mirroring a similar pic from 2 years ago where my sister and I took pics with our artist badges to send to the family group chat.
The morning: airport coffee and I was working on some art for a deadline on the flight over. I'm not sure if someone snooped on my screen, LOL. We got lucky and no one was in the middle seat!
Post setup coffee (went to a fun aesthetic place my brother found) and we got some korean comfort food for dinner:
Next morning we got bagels and walked around the high line since artist alley hours started at 1pm.
I really liked this storefront - took a pic to use a drawing insp possibly?!
We stopped by Whole Foods to pick up snacks - my sister is a designer on their graphics team and her back to school campaign was on display again.
Here's my table setup! I've been liking my upgrade to the photostand setup + having more royal blue. My brother has a 3D printer and was able to print a bunch of new display stands for me for my sticker/stickersheets/zines, YAY.
Some other treats: another bagel (egg bagel is so yellow!)... dalgona coffee boba... I bought these cute covers for my nuis lol.
We had pizza but I forgot to take a pic.
Next night we had dim sum, YUMMY. So glad my brother could help finish everything and we tried a good amount of stuff. Also had some fancy drinks when I met up with some artist friends.
Final day: I got to make a free marker pen at the OLO booth - picked 2 browns as I felt that was very practical for my pen case setup. I also realized my nuis fit in the case with their little capes on, LOL.
Oshikatsu activities!!
We finished off with a Salmon Chirashi bowl (happy with rice!!)
I'm a bit too lazy to go into details, but I had so many fun interactions. It's always reassuring that my niche things sell so well, because 1) I love to make them!! And feel a lot of passion!! 2) I'm not a particularly popular artist. I'm confident in my style/catalog but I also like having that business sense to know when indulgent things financially make sense...
I could have stocked more of my best sellers - I didn't anticipate Thursday/Friday foot traffic to be so busy! I got a lot of people telling me that I was the only table they saw with (blank) fandom which was nice. A lot of my customers were also around my age, lol, since we reminisced about a lot of Old Fandom stuff.
Improvements for next time would probably be leaning even more into my niches, stocking a little bit more, and re-evaluating the money spent on travel/accommodations (though tbh I always want to be comfortable now).
My sticker sheets were the most popular thing! I'm glad since that's a type of product that also showcases drawing/art, rather than designed merch. My least popular item was probably the zines, but every single person who bought one was super memorable.
Anyways, I'm preparing for San Japan.