The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
[Question] Advertising your art
Bucketman
Call meSkraggRegistered User regular
Call meSkraggRegistered User regular
Hello everyone, long time...art viewer, first time posting in this part of the forum.
My girlfriend has recently started trying to sell her art, she gets a lot of compliments on it and gets tons of requests but up until now has never charged. I'm trying to convince her that conventions could be a great moneymaker for her in the long run, but she wanted to start with etsy. The store is www.etsy.com/shop/PaintingsbyBowChest
Really I'm just trying to help and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
My girlfriend has recently started trying to sell her art, she gets a lot of compliments on it and gets tons of requests but up until now has never charged. I'm trying to convince her that conventions could be a great moneymaker for her in the long run, but she wanted to start with etsy. The store is www.etsy.com/shop/PaintingsbyBowChest
Really I'm just trying to help and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Bucketman on
0
Posts
Art in general is tough market, so I suggest making sure you both have reasonable expectations money making. Cons can be great, but travel, printing, and set up can be expensive and you may have a bad weekend and not make anything back.
Honestly though, your wife has to decide how seriously she wants to take it and what level of commitment she wants to have to competing and producing work that will sell. There is some advice rolling around on tumblr for con prep and stuff like that. This is all going to be about how she wants to treat it, and it would be hard to give good advice to her without knowing her specific thoughts and fears.
Personally, I suggest encouraging her to find a community of peers (like the AC, but there are others) and start looking into making artist friends who she seek critique and guidance from.
I classify conventions (at least, the ones that I attend/vend at the most) into two very broad categories: Anime cons and comic cons. A third category would be video game expos, which are not as plentiful but still exist.
There is a certain amount of crossover between all of these geeky cons, but I do find that my stuff does vastly better at anime cons and video game expos, than it does at comic cons. For reference, I primarily make jewelry and crafts. One of my main mediums is polymer clay, which I use to make charms, and a lot of my work is based on video game/anime work -- super mushrooms, pokeballs, dragon balls, etc. But I also do chainmail, bead work, and have a pretty large selection of stuff from other pop culture references like Star Wars, Breaking Bad, Dr Who, Mad Max, etc.
The average age of the crowd at anime cons is typically younger than at other events. Teenagers to early twenties. They are very high energy and excited and older teens are often left on their own in groups to do as they please. If they have spending cash, they like to buy something as soon as they see it.
The average age of the crowd at comic cons is typically mixed/families -- an adult or pair of adults along with a couple of children of various ages, sometimes very young ranging up to older teenagers. The adults are typically much more reserved about spending money or letting their kids spend their money. I get a lot more window shoppers at these events.
Print artists are overly abundant at any kind of event you go to. Probably around 60-75% of any artist alley will be nothing but prints, and possibly even more than that percentage will have at least some prints mixed with other work. At some events, I am one of the very few (out of hundreds) of booths that has 0 prints for sale.
People like a variety of price points. If you are selling nothing but prints, you will likely lose out on sales, as some people will walk up with nothing about $1 or $5 and like a design you have to offer but not be able to afford a full-sized print of it. Buttons, book marks, and badges are all things I see sold pretty often at print booths for lower price points to give people a variety of options.
If you haven't already, start thinking about and working on a booth design. In artist alleys, most of the time you are given a 6ft table and that's it. If the convention is generous, it might be an 8ft table. Most artists will build their displays vertically in order to fit everything they can onto such a small space. I use wire storage cubes (available on Amazon or any local department store like Target or Bed, Bath & Beyond) for my particular setup, but a lot of print artists make their own displays out of PVC piping. Make sure it is not too tall; some conventions have a height limit. Also you need to make sure it is secure so it doesn't collapse during the show. I have seen that happen and injuries can and have occurred. Next time you go to a con, just take some wide pics from the entrance of the artist alley, or ask a print artist if they would mind if you take pics of their setup. (Please always ask first! Some artists don't like people photographing their booth.)
Some conventions are juried, meaning she will have to apply and get past a panel of judges in order to get in. She will need some kind of online portfolio that is easy to navigate. Something like Deviant Art is free and pretty easy to set up for this purpose.
Bigger/more popular shows will also sell out literally minutes after the artist alley tables go on sale, and they can go on sale months, up to half a year before the show itself. So if she is even remotely thinking about doing this, it could take months or more actually start getting into it.
I could go on...but that'll give you some ideas to start. Feel free to hit me up for questions. This is my perspective from vending in Texas, I have never vended outside the state before so things may be different where you're located.
I'm afraid I know next to nothing about etsy since I don't have an etsy store, but I do sell on consignment in a few shops locally. Do you have any comic/pop culture shops in your area that might be interested in selling her work? That's another angle you could look at. Most places will charge a 30-50% consignment fee, so she will have to raise her prices (or eat the cost of the consignment fee) but a lot of people expect to pay more for stuff in a retail type setting.
Also, do you ever get any flak from companies for making things from their games or shows? I could probably make a killing with vinyl emblems and such, but I'm worried about copyright law.
As far as using copyrighted material, first I will say IANAL. But, in my experience and the experiences I have seen and heard from other artists, most big name companies don't mind (and sometimes even encourage) fan art as long as you don't use any images directly from their products to make money. For instance, you can make fanart of pokemon, even specific pokemon like Pikachu, as long as you are not tracing a direct image of Pikachu that Nintendo published, or using the official Pokemon logo on your artwork or to promote your artwork while selling it. What kind of vinyl emblems are you talking about? I know a lot of conventions clamp down on the perler bead pixel artists who do stuff like this, because it skirts the line too finely and they don't want to attract any unwanted attention:
http://miuki-salvarus.deviantart.com/art/Perler-Bead-Art-Super-Mario1-125066200
Note that I don't know that person or have any connection to them at all, I'm just using their stuff as an example of what is likely not going to be allowed, at least at a bigger con that has stricter rules. The bigger the con, the stricter the rules about what they allow for fanart is going to be since they are likely going to have representatives from places like Funimation or game development studios visiting, both possibly vending in their dealer's room or just to scope out the artist alley to for this very reason. At smaller cons you might be able to get away with it.
I have been attending A-Kon for many years, though, and it's in the top 10 largest anime cons in the U.S., and they still have plenty of fanart, both 2d (prints) and 3d (stuff like plushies, polymer clay charms, etc.)
Edit to add: To actually answer your question, I have never been given grief, by attendees, convention staff, copyright holders, or anyone else, about making fanart of somebody else's property.
If you want to sell at a convention, make sure your primary merchandise has a low price point. A lot of customers walking the race track that will stop at your booth are impulse buyers, and not interested in things much over 5~ dollars. It has to be something really special if you want to move it at a higher price point.