I made it to Dallas in the morning this time, immediately running into DAQ and Joe. It wasn't too long until Brian and Shon showed up, before the dealers' room opened even. Everything was set up almost exactly like the previous year, with sufficient aisle room to get around people stopping cosplayers to take photos. Other than catching up with my friends, taking pictures of people in costumes, and selling off things, I didn't have any mission here this year. I made a quick round of the dealers' room and didn't see anything I just had to have. This is something I've been experiencing the past few years, but even more so now, I think. I watch fansubbed anime with my grad school friends every weekend that we get online, and I have more stuff to read than I'm ever going to get around to. While there were many cool toys and gashapon about, it's just not worth grabbing them when I'm going to have to drag them around and have nowhere to put them. As like previous years, I've been putting off commissions because it's just not worth it for as slow as I draw, and as little fun as I have drawing other peoples' characters that require five paragraphs of background exposition. I ended up doing a picture to trade with old pal Jason Heavensrun when I wasn't selling things or running around getting photos with my new camera, which frustratingly wants to have a much higher exposure time than I can manage to hold it still. But that's what I get for not reading the instructions completely before using it. Since I was staying with the Happy Jackal crew, we went back to our super cheap, but comfortable hotel right after the dealers' room closed. Ordinarily, I would have liked to stick around and draw in the artist alley, but I was exhausted from only getting four hours of sleep the previous night.

We got to the dealers' room shortly before it opened and commenced to selling things. I made my way by the Radio Comix table to show Pat some of the stuff I'm starting to work on for my PhD for a studio up in Toronto. We had a good talk for two hours or so about the future of technology and art before I finally pried myself away to try to catch some friends for lunch, but I was too late. No big deal, we usually miss lunch at the con. I talked to the Sprinkle some about staying sane doing comics before getting back to my spot. Back at the table, we were noticing how phenomenally well the shirts were selling. This wasn't interesting just because of how much better the sales were than usual, but because of the numerous requests for small shirts, which we didn't have any of. The demographics of the con-goers is definitely changing before our eyes--fewer young children, but many more teenage to twenties girls. It would be interesting to know how many attendees there were this year, it didn't feel much more packed than last year, just different. I decided I need to have a shirt available for next year, so I sat down and started drawing at my usual slow pace. By the evening I had a cat girl design I think I'm happy with.

As usual, we planned on starting to pack up early to get out of Dallas long before the dealers' room closes, but as fate would have it, there was a crazy number of people buying things. It felt more like the first day of a con should feel than the last day. So we hung around until late clearing out stock, and I finally got a sketch out of DAQ in exchange for an old anime DVD I was getting rid of. I finished inking up my shirt design just as we started moving boxes to the car.

Jet Set Radiioooo!


Dead, but lovely.


One of no less than four Felicias I saw.


Alphonse is looking particularly diffuse today.


I don't remember Moogles looking like this...


I'm not even sure if she's dressed up as a specific character.


Prepare to be interviewed!