Written with late night melancholic thoughts mode – disclaimer it might get kinda corny and wordy all over the place, but just wanna get it out here, heheh. I will try to clean it up later with proper links to people and stuff.
After some years of not attending conventions, I finally get to open booth again at CF 16! It’s been a long while. My last boothing experience was at… 2019? I did an online one at Comivuro, but it doesn’t feel to give the same excitement, of course.
I came to CF 15 as visitor last time – I got to meet some online friends and see some of them boothing, though the crowd on Saturday made it near impossible to properly have a chat together 🙁 A part of me was feeling a bit of missing out the boothing experience when seeing all the artist booths, honestly.
I miss the fun of meeting fellow fans of stuff you like, getting live feedback reactions of people seeing the stuff you make, seeing people using or sharing pics of the merchandise you make, it gives joy to me. It was damn tiring of course, but it was fun and something to look forward to between mundane days at work.
Long story short, my friends talked with me with boothing idea and got me back again in the ride lol. So I thought to myself, why not try again while there are those to accompany you and while you can afford to do so? With such thoughts, I am back at CF again. It was quite difficult to squeeze in time and frustrating to go back to the mess of dealing with printshops and misprint shenanigans, but yeah, we managed to make through it.
My main boothmates this time are Nekogitan and Jordoge, it’s been great working together to booth with them! Spiritually, CharonCreates and Kirara (Neko Fingerprint) were with us though they can’t attend the event physically, and also given us their virtual support to organize things. Umebocchi was with us on the second day. Canaveil and Ecliptick were very helpful to us on those days – also thankful for Torakami for the boba tea party boost even from afar, and InverseSprinkler for being the chad helping out things on Sunday. Many thanks! I’m truly grateful for the opportunity and support.
This is our booth pic from day 1! Day 2 was mostly similar but some of the items are sold out – here you can see Kokoba chilling above the booth and also as a plushie, that blue blob fella.
This is my first time boothing to sell original stuff. The me years ago will never expect me making a bunch of Kokoba and my own OC merchandise, and to even have people ordering them, it feels surreal to me. I often tell myself like I should only do fanmerch stuff that has higher chances to be bought, and who will want to get my OC stuff since I don’t even make comics or such, but since I tried out streaming I get to have more courage to step out of my comfort zone and embrace making original character content.
Thank you for all the support and those who decided to bring my OC stuff home. It means a lot to me. I often tell my chat that just hearing people remembering the blue blob’s name as ‘Kokoba’ makes me happy, and when someone shows me a drawing of it makes me so happy – like, thank you for taking your time to draw my character! Time is a precious thing to spend. I’m like “you made it, my chonky boi son, people remember ya” lololol.
I made some Nijisanji ex-ID gacha for the character pins, and it was fun I get to talk to fellow Niji ex-ID fans (and to see those gacha temptation victims lolol jkjk). I also get to clear out some old stock sitting at my home for so long, thankfully.
Whenever I finish decorating my booth and taking a picture, I can’t help but to have a flashback to my first convention in 2015 with my Ladder Bros friends like this picture. One table space, small decorations, and a lot of ‘yolo’ moments. I’m quite a sappy person when it comes to these kind of stuff, don’t mind me.
I’m glad I gave it a shot. I could remember back then I was so close to cancelling because I got so anxious, haha. I learned a lot of things in the process, met a bunch of lovely people too.
To be frankly honest, I was prepared to retire from making merchandise since my circle was discontinued around 2019. I didn’t want to booth up with people I don’t really know, since teaming up with your friends you can trust and making memories together is an important part of the experience for me personally (also I feel too awkward to team up and approach new people lololol).
Also work and life responsibility stuff caught on to me keeping me busy, I didn’t have the time and energy to deal with merchandise production stuff or shipping things. I also often felt guilty for spending time or cost for ‘fun’ or if it’s not ‘productive’ enough. My fellow artist friends got busy and moved their priorities, doing fanmerch and drawing is no longer a priority or something they have time or enjoy doing. It’s understandable, of course. Things come and go.
I was working hard to come into acceptance that it was a fun past time – it was fun and good while it lasted, and that’s okay that things pass. At least I can still stream and draw commissions and fanart where I can still meet fellow people who enjoy my work, that’s what I keep telling to myself – but given the chance again, I do want to take it to try again. So yeah, I didn’t really expect to be back, though who knows for how long. I try to enjoy the moment when I can.
When packing my merch, I was curious to see how many stuff I’ve made so far. I tried to keep one copy of every merch I made, though some of them I forgot to. So here’s a pic of most of them! I’m pretty happy with a bunch of them, and honestly I forgot how much stuff I made, especially at my Haikyuu simping era :p (I blame you, Oikawa Tooru!) My braincells simply direct myself on the characters I wanna draw, and what merchandise I would like to have at least for myself, haha.
My personal favorites were the custom cut bookmarks (as much as a pain of them to prepare, even the printshop complained to me haha, you can see the Haikyuu, Kuroko no Basuke and Osomatsu ones), the lanyards, Tokyo Ghoul keychains (my very first, this is for you, Hideyoshi Nagachika), Haikyuu prism bookmark, Haikyuu travel keychain standees, and the Pokemon card wallets.
There are many more merchandise types I want to try to make, and ideas I want to explore. Production is quite costly and time consuming too, so it’s partly a dream – but again, who knows if I get the chance to explore more of that someday, it’s a wish all right. Sometimes it’s a dilemma going on in my head between ‘is it worth it? should I be doing this these days?’ and ‘it’s something I enjoy, let’s give it a try?’ kind of feeling to sort out. Hopefully I can figure out the balance for this over time.
Here are the loot pics from this year! Thanks for the good stuff, freebies, gifts and trades! I’ll try to compile and update the post with the artist names as soon as I can. Also for those I meet, my apologies if I was pretty awkward or look tired in meetups during CF ;_; I’m glad to get to talk with fellow artist and streamer people there, and to those who came over to my booth to get my stuff.
I do hope I can attend another booth again next time! It reminds me how fun things can be. My back pain and exhaustion came to me next days though lololol so I need some time to recover… I’ll be opening another batch of order for Post-Comifuro and joining an online convention called Mercon, after that most likely I will pause merchandise selling and it will depend if I can join another event or not, let’s see how it goes!
I feel my writing went all over the place, but I hope I managed to get my points across, mostly I was reflecting to myself. For those who made it reading this far and do not think I’m being weird, you have my thanks and hope you’re having a nice day, haha.
