Note: This is a cross-post from the Wordpress version of this blog. I’d like this domain (awsketch.com) to be the home base in the future.
Upcoming events
Zine Shine, July 9-21, 2024
I’m participating in Zine Shine, which is an in-person and online event. My Tadaai logs zine will be available for purchase at the Issues Magazine Shop, and online, during that time.
Shibari Zine Kickstarter – funded!
The Shibari zine kickstarter production is underway.
I applied to Zine Shine mainly because I had 10 copies of the Tadaai Logs leftover. I wanted to avoid having so many extra copies of my zines (I really don’t like making more copies than what is required), but because of a mishap with the print shop, I have extra copies. The print shop had made some really bad prints, but had made efforts to correct it after I refused to accept the printed books. I apologized to the print shop owner for making trouble, and he seemed to understand where I was coming from. I eventually made the prints at Staples at a higher price to meet the Canzine deadline, but now I have 10 copies. I did make a speed run of the Anime North artist alley to take a look at the pricing of people’s zines, and well…let’s just say that the pricing of zines at a zine festival is drastically different from the ones at Anime North. Which is understandable, but also the scale of difference is huge. This is kind of how I feel about seeing when there are zine workshops that are $100+; I understand the organizer needs money too, but the other part of me is thinking about how zines are being perceived as something that is outside the domain of the every person. I appreciate free local events, but hosting space is hard to come by in the city and competition is high.
So…about this blog. I finally migrated over the mailing list from the first iteration of this blog to here…but. But maybe you have noticed that I’ve stopped uploading art directly if possible. I’m going to keep this blog for new announcement purposes for the time being, but I’ve fired up Astro and finally built out the domain I have been holding onto for a while. I previously used it to host files, but I’ve mostly filled in the pages I want for it, and it will serve as the future home for blog posts and art I want to share with people. I have a lot of strong feelings about the direction that the tech industry has taken, especially in the area of treating the concept of a free and open web, as envisioned by people like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and twisting it into a resource that can vacuumed up, destroying the originals in the process. Maybe I’m blowing this out of proportion, but this has seriously been bothering me for the last year.
Here’s the domain: awsketch.com.
It doesn’t have email subscription, and so far only the blog pages support RSS. I didn’t want to have to migrate again since I’ve only had this blog for exactly a year, but I’ve gotten to a point where I can acknowledge that art will continue to be a hobby for me (as you can probably tell since I’ve kept an art blog for 13+ years already), and being “found” directly by a search engine isn’t in my interests at the moment. I’m not even sure if I’ll apply to fandom zines unless under very specific conditions. The compilation zines are extremely expensive to buy and import, and I basically can’t really even see the fruits of my labor. I made a washi tape design for a planner project I took part in, and I couldn’t even get a decent photo of the final product. Overall, those zines are nice to look at, but I think I need to go find some other more…book-like zines, and forget about the merch for now.
Zine event applications: I was wait-listed for a local event, but I actually realized a few days before the emails were to go out that the organizers had commented on social media that they were looking for original zines (so not fanzines/fanart). I’ve made my peace about this kind of thing a while ago, since I understand what kind of vibe these events are going for (which is good). The upside of these zine festivals is that they are free, and I can still go and look at zines. This is unlike trying to get into something like Anime North, where you to need a pass to even go in. I don’t think I’ll apply to any more events unless I feel extremely compelled to.
I don’t plan on bending myself into any kind of shape to get in, though, I do want to draw more originals for myself. On the good side: competition for local zine festivals is good because that means there are lots of local zinesters. Zine festivals with people that make zines specifically are great. It’s kind of how some people think of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival as a con, when it’s more of a book festival. Very different. Anyways, I’m rambling. I still like fanzines and fancomics, and understand that because of the intersection of where it is, it might not be a good fit for a lot of places and I shouldn’t feel bad about it. Also some of the things I draw might not be acceptable in an artist alley as opposed to a zine festival.
I went to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival! It was fun. I met some cool people, including other fujin/fujoshi/fudanshi. I traded doujinshi with saicoink, which is something I probably would not have imagined was possible as few years ago. I’m happy I was able to trade, maybe one day I’ll have a chance to print on nicer paper because my books are pretty…low-end. Very “I stapled this after it came from the photocopier” level. Maybe I’ll try to make nicer covers and printing eventually. I also was able to give zines to people!! It was nice to also meet other Tadashi & Ainosuke fans, and I was able to buy the books I wanted from Yam Fam and give them some zines I made.
Shirahama Kamome-sensei, the artist of Witch Hat Atelier was also at the event. I wasn’t able to go to the live drawing despite being really early, mostly because I got freaked out by people rushing from the front door. They had picked a very small room to hold the live drawing in for privacy reasons. I was able to go to the Q&A, and was cool. I wasn’t able to win the signing lottery, but also, it solved the problem of me not having my Witch Hat books with me since they were only allowing for Kodansha books to be signed. Shirahama-sensei is really cool, and I just felt like I had a lot of feelings after hearing her talk about her work. Mostly just that comics are really great and hard. Did you know she does all the inking with a dip pen? But she’s very fast. I’d recommend her manga to read, and especially Witch Hat Atelier. I’m a pretty big fan of Olruggio and Qifrey, haha. Also she mentioned Moto Hagio as one of her inspirations.
I was told by my friend recently that I should have more confidence about my art stuff, but it’s hard. I just want to go back into my hole and draw some more. But hey! I at least applied to some stuff this year! Might take a break after this one, though.
I was going to write more, but I did say I wasn’t going to try to feed the AI machine too much here, so I’ll leave it at that. Even the playlist is short this time, even though I did listen to a lot of new music.
Until next time.