We're back from Space City Comic Con!

"Back" as in back to our home, as SCCC was held in the same city as us. I'm doing this today, two days after the convention, because while I'm still wiped out from this weekend's event, tomorrow I have to get back to work making plush for Comicpalooza in two weeks.

There's been a lot of controversy and talk about Space City Comic Con. Earlier this year, it was the Houston Convention Bureau's suit against the convention organizer, George Comits, for infringing on the HCB's trademark of "Space City" for trade shows and conventions. This past weekend, it was rumoured that several of the headlining guests from the FX show "Sons of Anarchy" had their appearance fee checks bounce. Since I don't have any firsthand knowledge of either of these two events, I'm not really going to talk about them. All I know is that I had a pretty miserable experience at this show and that TIM+BEN Dolls won't be showing up to it again, as vendors or attendees, next year (although it already looks as if there won't be a next year).

The weeks leading up to the event, Space City Comic Con released an app to help guide attendees. Filled with icons that promised to give you info on what panels were going on, what celebrities would be signing and when, and what vendors would be where, you could tap on any to reveal ... nothing. My biggest concern for the app was the fact that they did not update the vendors past the letter 'A'. Pre-con advertising is pretty important to build hype and excitement for fans of artists attending the con. I'd think that my booth fee kind of entitled me to being at least on a list on a website/app, but it turns out that the money I'd spent would be worth much less than that.

The day of, we arrived to set up. We don't often have the luxury of setting up the day before the convention, as Aaron works during the week and I am still faithfully holding out for the self-driving car, so that our future car-robot overlords will take my loyalty into account when they start treating humans as crash test dummies for androids. I was worried, most of the other convention's we've been to required us to bring proof of purchase for our booth to receive our passes, but I hadn't gotten any info on such a requirement for SCCC. It turns out you could pretty much just walk onto the loading dock and say you were with TIM+BEN's table and have passes handed to you. Well, if you were willing to wait 45 minutes on the noisy, hot, outdoor loading dock. Oh, and they might have run out of actual vendors' passes when you get to the one man checking vendors in, so you'll get handed a pair of weird silver 3 Day Passes instead. Mine was actually broken, so I had Aaron go exchange it. He came back with a Convention Guest's pass, which afforded me many opportunities to sneak into places I wasn't supposed to be.

We walked over to the booth to find that it was a) nothing like the vendor packet said it would be; no dividers, table length was incorrect, trash can not included, colors were incorrect and b) right next to another stuffed toy vendor. I think that handmade stuffed toys are an uncommon enough commodity to space them out, but since I sell basically only original designs and most other plushie artists sell primarily fan art, there's little overlap in our customer base. Unprofessional details overlooked by the con, but not something I can't deal with.

Con was slow on Friday, lots of rain and people still being at work contributed to that. Our friend, author Ian Everett came to hang out with us at our booth! He's in the middle of writing his new novel, so we greatly appreciated him taking the time to hang out with us for the day. We did very well on Saturday; I was jazzed because this is our first booth where we brought only dolls and it's made me confident about the new doll designs I had available. Our friend Jude Vivona of the Caalo Xan audio drama stopped by to say hello, his booth was only a few aisles over. A man with an Ogler from the Caalo Xan booth stopped by for some repairs to his plush. If you're not aware, last year I made a series of large Ogler dolls for them. Sunday was slow-ish. A lot of children and families came for this last day. Not so many sales and we left an hour early because I started feeling ill. My cousin stopped by to see me -I haven't seen her in about 10 years, but she's been a big supporter of TIM+BEN since I started around 6 years ago and I was very pleased to see her and meet her new family. We got recognized from several people who have bought from us before! Fans! What a world.

The con was ok on a vendor's level. Not well-run, but sales were pretty good. I was so annoyed with so many aspects that we won't be coming back. I really like clear communication and feeling like the event I'm vending at actually knows how to run itself, so Space City Comic Con isn't for me.

On a personal note, Aaron got our home an autograph from Doug Jones, a very talented actor and professional sweetheart that we both admire. So, at least one good thing came out of Space City Comic Con for us.

Stay Fanatic,
Megh

Working on Cranium

What misadventures could a zombie cat possibly get into?

QuietFanatics go to Comicpalooza!

Good evening, Fanatics.

I have some exciting news for you. Want to guess it?

Well, you wouldn't have to if you had read this post's title.

Yes, it is true! Quiet Fanatics will have it's very own booth at Houston's Comicpalooza this coming May. This will be the largest (and second) convention that we will have had a booth at, and we are tickled pink about it. 

Originally, we purchased the booth for TimandBen but decided that QuietFanatics would be a much better vendor for this con. Why? Well, as you know, TimandBen's sells voodoo dolls and monster dolls, so it wouldn't be quite appropriate for a comic convention. Or any month besides October, really. Secondly, we here at QF headquarters have been working on props and crytozoological displays that we would really like to show off, along with a few prints. Our Houston fans can still expect to see a few of our more popular voodoo dolls and monster plushes at Comicpalooza, but they can also look forward to items such as Cthulhu themed statuettes, plushes based on a few of my favorite sci-fi stories, and some art prints (if I can figure out where to print the darn things).

So look forward to updates for that.

Stay Fanatic,
Megh

We're back from San Antonio's Zombie Con 2012! (Review)

And I hate San Antonio.

Ok. Maybe I don't HATE San Antonio, but I much prefer Houston over it. I just don't understand a city whose downtown and main tourist trap (The Riverwalk) is almost completely devoid of people on a Friday and Saturday night. Oh, also the one way streets gave us an exciting adventure on our way to find the hotel because they aren't clearly marked at all.

But you want to hear about Zombie Con.

We did alright for our first convention. Sold out of our zombie kittens (definitely making those into a full time product), learned a lot of things about selling our dolls, and got real-time customer feedback (everyone who stopped at our booth liked the dolls, but thought they were a little too pricey).

And Aaron looked scary good in his costume.

We met a lot of fun characters, including a cute sock monkey dressed as a zombie and a ton of interesting vendors and artists that I was looking forward to seeing for months. Our booth was in between a really awesome special effects makeup team, who made prosthetic scabs, boils, and bites all through the convention, and a vendor who sold handmade horror themed jewelry and accessories. Directly behind us were some ladies transforming teddy bears into undead cuddly creations. A local anime and pop culture shop, Ooples, was across the aisle from us, and there were many San Antonio artists peddling the best of their gory and horror themed wares. A shop called OddbirdsBoutique offered industrial and steampunk light fixtures for the home and shop. There was an artist who had some amazing, cartoony prints of a zombie astronaut that I didn't get to buy because we were too busy manning the booth. :(  I would mention all of the vendors' names (because they were all pretty great), but I can't quite remember all of them.

Our booth. I wasn't aware that we were being photographed!

Let's talk about the actual event for a second, though. It wasn't the most organized convention. It was my first time going to any sort of event like it and I could see that. Now, I get that it was the Cuellar family's first convention ever. They had to plan it, get sponsors, reserve the event center, get vendors, artists, and bands to sign up, AND do publicity all by themselves. I applaud them for actually making it happen. Hopefully the next time they throw a convention, they will have all of the kinks worked out and have a really successful event. :) Some things that I feel could have been avoided really bother me though, like:

• No one knew that parking was going to be paid.

I mean, come on. That's one of the things that ought to be mentioned on your event's website. Aaron and I didn't have to pay because we were vendors, but we didn't even know about it until the day of, when we got to the event center to sign up. I think that made a lot of people upset, especially the ones that weren't very impressed with Zombie Con, because they essentially had to pay a minimum of $25 to find out that it was a start up convention.

People hated the price.



People REALLY thought it was overpriced.

• The booths weren't assigned/setup was a mess.

 When we got to the San Antonio Event Center to choose where our booth would be, no one knew where the booths would be. They were still trying to get a floor plan worked out the day before, and gave us a vague area of where they wanted the artist's booths. That is, when one of them finally spoke to us. Aaron and I went into the event center and stood by Mr. Cuellar, waiting patiently for 5 minutes as he spoke to the setup crew chief/event center director/whoever that guy was. Then we waited for 10 minutes awkwardly as he continued to speak to him, and the rest of the family talked amongst themselves, occasionally throwing glances over to where we were standing and waiting. Finally, the adult daughter Jessica, who is also the Facebook page manager, came up to us and took our names to set up a booth. Which they immediately moved to a different spot because they were still unsure of how to set up.

• The event center was way too large for a first time convention.

Half of the convention center was reserved for vendors and the other half was reserved for bands and events. I'm only guessing that the events were held on the other side of the convention because I couldn't see them from the booth, and they weren't announced in any way. Aaron kept having to go up to the information desk and ask about the costume contest, which they finally started at 9 p.m. Somehow, even though the bands playing were on the complete opposite of the room, I could barely talk to most of my customers over the sound of dubstep, screamo, and something called "Galactic Hardcore". When I took a chance to stretch my legs while Aaron watched our booth, I was surprised to see that they had already started a pinata bashing contest on the other side. The area surrounding the stage was almost completely empty. The bands were playing to an almost absent audience. It seemed like the con could have been done with half the space, one good band or DJ (I personally thought that the music was way too loud, intrusive, and distracting to be indoors, but that's just me and a bunch of people on Facebook), and a cleaner layout.

• The events that were not the band playing weren't organized.

On Zombie Con's website, they boasted a brain eating contest, intestinal tug of war, Zombie Chess, and a costume contest. I can't speak for the other events, mostly because I didn't even know when they were going on (which was a real disappointment), but the costume contest really let me down. They offered $1000 for 1st place, which got a lot of people interested in it. Not enough apparently, because when they announced the winner (who totally deserved it and didn't even know there was a cash prize) they decided to cut out the 2nd and 3rd cash prizes because not enough people signed up. I'm not so much upset that Aaron didn't win, but that they kept putting off the event until 9 p.m. (which is probably why they didn't get as many entrants), had the contest in front of the information desk instead of the stage (which caused massive crowding and had them form some sort of circle instead of an orderly line or SOMETHING, and didn't even get the band to stop playing while they judged.

But the thing that really bothers me?

• They are being really unprofessional now that the con is over.

I don't consider the ':P' emoticon to be softening at all.

The Zombie Con Facebook page has always seemed a little laid back to me. Instead of being professionally friendly, they were a bit too familiar and personal for my taste; but that's just my opinion, and I'm sure a lot of people benefited from them being so personable. But today, after people started posting reviews of Zombie Con, they started getting really insulting to people who didn't love the convention. Bad reviews ranged from polite to rather blunt, but any bad review from a convention attendee shouldn't be met with a response of, "Well, let's see you throw a better con."

Also, yes, a guy in a Gumby suit was running around. He was pretty rad.

Really? That's really how you are going to talk to a paying customer who took the time and paid the money to go to your event. Instead of taking their criticisms and learning from them, politely thanking them for their attendance and promising that the next event will be better, you'd rather act like a child and go on the defense and challenge them to do better than you? What if they could? How embarrassed would you be if they had taken your challenge and threw a better Zombie Con, with more attendees, had made more money, and were actually polite to people? They expressed dissatisfaction and you respond with the easiest answer to give a customer; "You didn't like it? Too bad, we have your money and your opinion doesn't matter anymore." Great to hear, Zombie Con. You just lost the customers that you told that to. And you've lost my respect too.

So, thank you Zombie Con. I appreciate you letting me sell my wares at your convention. I had an interesting time, even if I was extremely disappointed at the event. I learned a lot. The vendors were really great (and professional!), of your attendees were awesome to talk to and get to know, and the bands weren't bad. But I won't be returning to any more of your conventions in the future.

-Megh

P.S. I didn't take the picture of Aaron or our booth, photo credit goes to Otaku Space.

Cranium makes a friend.