Christmas stuff already in stores makes me forget it’s October, seriously, it’s too early, I’m just getting confused >v<
Alright, last month’s got so many things to unpack. I’m getting hungry now so I’ll just jump right in…
Technically, these were finished in August but I haven’t spoken about them and I wanted to give them their proper place…
For the first time, I prepared something for the Eurofurence ArtShow – a place were many many high quality and unique crafts are auctioned and sold to the highest bidder… and well, I wanted to try it out to see how the process goes. Basically, working on them was not much different than my other marker pieces, just some extra steps in the planning: you see, I found those lovely frames in a second-hand store and I based my composition around the measurements of the frame. At first, it was planned to just put the sheets of paper in frame but I think I made a cutting mistake and a bit of the back was visible, so I decided to cut them out with a border in mind and glue them on my brown drawing paper and it turned out to fit very nicely! <^)v^)>
I am very happy how they turned out and thus I learned the first lesson of art-show-making. Basically my strategy was just to get my expenses in, so I put the starting bid on 10€ each and wanted to give 70% to charity… because yes, my goal was not to make money, just the experience. And I was very fine if no bids would come in because I’d really like to keep it… and just as I put them up for sale and heard a first bid came in, I felt the regret xP I wanted to keep them! My BBs! How could I give them awaaaay?!
Being the first physical-non-commissioned artworks felt like that. They were kinda a first of something and therefore special to me but it is part of the game and eventually, I felt glad that they could make someone else happy with their presence. And I was even gladder (<v<) when I found out that the guy who won them at the auction is a great supporter and really loves my fruit souvie stickers ^)v(^ With his help, they sold for 40€ each and raised a whooping 56€ for the charity and I got plenty of funds to buy new frames 😀 So I wanna keep this going and do more for next year’s ArtShow!
Because, and that’s the main takeaway from Eurofurence for me… I won’t be doing another Dealer’s Den next year. Yeh I decided it was really time for a timeout. I’ve been dealing at conventions starting with Furvester in 2023 and had 6 booths since then and it just got too exhausting. Even though last year was much more stressful with things before and after setup of my booth but this year I felt more than last year how time just slipped through my fingers. While it was quality time, no doubt! Dealing at Furry Cons is a ton of fun and it completely spoiled me to go to other conventions for that… but I also couldn’t attend the panels I wanted… NOT A SINLE ONE! Which felt so bad because I was already hanging out with Nomax – the Guest of Honor in our group but could not attend a single of his panels despite them being a big part of my WANTS-list… all because I had to do commissions out of DD-hours TvT But I guess it’s hard lessons like this that spark changes necessary for me. I took it as a lesson not to put work over quality time with friends… even if it means to compensate for the expenses a convention brings with itself. While it is basically a free con with a little bit of meeting friends and new folks, I have to question if that is the only way to do that. Which brings me back to the Art Show: which could just be a relatively worthwhile way to prepone my workload and have more time during the convention. Combined with a little bit of Artist-Alleying and it should be just as worthwhile. The only complication I see is that it is quite risk-based. I cannot guarantee what or even if an Art-Show piece can get enough income to justify the amount of hours I put into crafting a bigger art piece or get a place at the Artist Alley for that matter. Still, just with this year, I’d like to take the risk and at least while it seems to be in the last year of my bachelor’s study – I can afford doing so. Because what 2027 will be like for me, I cannot safely assume so far.
Speaking of which, after this semester, my Bachelor’s project will be the final thing I’ll need to complete my time at university and I am heavily debating and brainstorming what project it is going to be. So far all ideas have some minor and major significant bottlenecks I have to be very wary of, partly because I’m reaching high with my aspirations but want so to make it a special finish to my years at University. So far my project ideas have been of animation projects of varying complexity, a traditional short comic and producing a wearable head of my sona. All of which demand research or other forms of preproduction to make it a feasable option, which I will have to look into in the following months as it seems. Oh but before I’ll hop in to that, let’s first quickly tackle TFI…
As I mentioned in previous reflections, I have done yet again the graphical designs of various merch items of Tropical Furry Islands, which entails: The Sponsor Shirt, Normal and Sponsor Lanyards, the Badge and a cutsy sticker :3 What could have been added was a Button design for Staff members but the time was not enough this year to tackle that as well. And heck, what can I say, it’s been so great working for the team again 😀 I love the shirt (I’m wearing it right now!)
But especially that one was a real challenge because we didn’t work as previously in raster. We chose a different printing company for the shirts and this time they could only print in limited colours for the chosen printing method. Meaning I had a maximum of 6 colours to work with and the palette had to be chosen carefully. We decided to cheat a bit and made the primary colour the shirt color itself and thus saved one colour which would’ve been pricier. At first I struggled not under the restrictions but the motive itself. For the most part it was just the guy on the coconut pile on the island, but the composition was dull and too limited. I told myself and the team I’d find a better pick even though it was widely accepted but couldn’t really work much that time due to my animation film being on the finishing line of production. It clicked only when I added the cacadu – the conventions mascot – riding a barrel which was a reaction piece for the wolf and it complemented it so well that I had fun for the rest of the process… well almost all. You see, the printing company needed a vector file to work with and I really really don’t like to work with vectors 🙂 It was planned someone else from the team to use my previous work and rebuild it with vectors but sadly due to health-related issues, he had to step down from the project for this year. It was almost a dealbreaker for us that the shirts couldn’t be produced in time but luckily there’s a programm called inkscape, which has a formidable vectorizing tool and happens to be free even! With that I managed to finish the vector file in time even though it got sloppy and if you look real close you can see some bleeding in the design.
Still, I was so stoked to reutrn to the convention, especially since my work-heavy EF. It was a great way to fully relax some and let the soreness leave my body. The only real bummer was that out housemate Schl4fy who I’ve only seen briefly at EF got sick and couldn’t make it to the convention. At the very leas we got very cool neighbours to compensate, though I cannot speak as if it’s anyway close TvT
All in all TFI was great again, though the service of TI (nothing to do with the convention) got a tad lackluster with how understaffed they have become. Still, I’d be happy to look forward to next year depending on how to even manage my time then…
Okay, so having two cons back to back, being gone for two weeks, returning home and already having to prepare for another moving + sorting and organizing my Merch stuff at home + having to dea with a light cold :c The rush didn’t make it any easier but I managed alright as I didn’t pack much, mainly the necessities. My new flat in Stuttgart feels nice. I am incredibly lucky that I found soemthing in walking distance to the Studio I have my internship at and the region around isn’t bad either… oh gosh I feel I make tons of spelling errors rn, I’m so hungwy.
Eh! Yes nice place! I like it a lot and my landlord, he really likes what I did to the room here. It was basically the same layout for many years and I was the first to change it up to my liking (and I felt that when moving the furniture around… so much dust…
The first week of my internship was slow but not bad. Basically there’s almost nobody at the studio at this time and thus not much work to be done. My main field of work is working in blender; creating and adjusting assets for an animatic for a feature-length animation film which is quite exciting given the scale of it… for li’l ol’ me. I definitely needed some gettings used to blender after so long but I’m getting back in and the times when I get to dress-up a set with my ideas are a lot of fun! I just wish I had some 2D tasks too but hopefully soon. The big nice thing is that if no other tasks are needed to be done, I’m free to work on personal projects of mine. So far I started to work on a new island piece while I’m getting accustomed to my workplace still. Who knows what other things I’ll be working on soon?
Oh and a last thing! Living in a new city without knowing anyone around really made me wanna reach out to more furs so I downloaded barq to connect and go on events and I am very happy how easy it is to find peopel that way. Already am in two more servers, looking forward to events and meeting peeps…
Alrighty then, I AM HUNGR and I best take care of that now.
I’ll be back for another Reflection at the start of November and see how this one turned out… happy October!
~Souvillaine