Saturday, January 14, 2012

Amazing Arizona Comic Con PM






I've been reading a lot about app developers who run postmortems on the build and launch of their apps. This is extremely useful for creating a knowledge base for others to learn from.


I'm going to start my first convention postmortem with The Amazing Arizona Comic Con.

Arizona was very good but not over the top great for me. I did better than expected so I was happy with the show and will definitely be back.


Side Note: this show is strange because the artist alley people out number the retailers 2-1. I think people come to the show with x amount of money to spend and they end up spending in artist alley because there isn't as much traditional retail to spend it on.


 Prints: I had given up on creating prints a few years ago because I thought they had fallen so out of fashion that it didn't seem worth my time doing them. Boy was I wrong. Prints in general have been a boon for me over the last couple of years. The time to cost to price of prints is what makes them attractive. They are easy to make and very profitable. I had a new break out print (Uzimami) which is brand new. The standards keep selling. Pirate Queen, Zatanna. I feel like I did a better job of displaying my prints this time out and it really helped sell them. I clipped them to my banner and put them front and center on my table. I took a page out of the kids at the Anime shows and went for broke in displaying what I am selling.

Side Note: If you take the time to go to one of these shows you might as well go all out. I admit his was something I had to get my head around. I had done so many conventions that they had lost their charm for me. I always like meeting the people who follow my work but I wasn't taking the shows seriously. Over the last two years I've improved and revised what I'm taking to the shows to give the fans more of what they want and to make available products I think will be most profitable. It's definitely influenced my bottom line.



Original Art: Original art is a strange beast. It's not a casual buy for a few reasons. It's usually pretty expensive and it's an item someone has to really want. It's tough to calculate or prepare for what is going to sell. For example, I've sold a ton of sketches and prelims lately. It could be the fact that they are lower priced but in most cases the buyer purchases multiple prelims at a time. This tells me that they are more interested in collecting this type of art vs. getting something for cheap.

At this show there seemed to be a lot of interest in OG art from the series Deity. I toured a lot in this area during that era so it's no wonder the fans who know me are familiar and searching for that art. Unfortunately most of the key pieces from Deity are gone. That being said I sold a couple misc. pieces mostly pin up style art which helped push the show into the very good status. 


I was asked multiple times if I was planning to create an art book or do another sketchbook. I'm listening and I've been putting one together.





Comics: At least in this region I'm still playing to fans of my older work. Which is great because the longer you make comics the more you appreciate the fans and how much they support what you do. Since I don't do a monthly comic that can be easily found in a comic store it's no wonder that most fans are shocked that I have new comics to sell. My impression is that they think ECB is a little too off what they expect from me. ECB for the most part is an experimental piece. I've really enjoyed doing it but I understand it's a polarizing piece of work for my fan base. The ones that love it really love it. The ones that don't keep asking for a new Deity series. Those fans I push towards Me2. Digital comics are still not on the radar at comic shows. It's still very much a paper and print market so talking about digital comics to them is like talking about flying cars and jet packs. Sure it sounds cool but isn't that something that's going to happen in 10-20 years? Digital comics conceptually play better in the internet space but that has not stopped me from promoting what I honestly believe is on a daily basis becoming the present of comics.



Takeaways:

Get more organized with my original art. I sort of throw stuff into a portfolio and bring it with me.


More promo material.


Print a new sketch/art book.


Square for my I-Phone was huge. I ran credit cards sales for all three of us. Opens up the ceiling on the convention $.

Consider a display for my digital comics.

No comments:

Post a Comment