Anime North 2015 con report

Another year gone by! I can't believe this was my 8th year tabling in the artist alley. I think this was probably the toughest and most intense con prep I've ever done. When I heard that I got a table, I wasn't able to work on anything because I was too busy with school. My program is a one year intensive, so the workload for the winter semester was ridiculous and I worked a good 2 months nearly 7 days out of 7 in the conservation lab. I had two plush commissions pending that I was only able to finish when I went back home to Montreal for a 2 week break at the end of April. I then had Ottawa ComicCon at the end of that "break", and had less than 10 days to prep for Anime North. During the last week, I pulled 60hours while juggling school. o__0 I was seriously sleep deprived, but I had a great time!

Alice posing with our table

I had serious luggage space issues this year. I'm usually doing con prep in Montreal where I'd drop off my merch with my buddy Ikeda who gives it to me at the con, but since I was away from home, I didn't have that option. Thankfully, Alice had some cube shelving so I was able to use hers for most of my display. I made this amazing foamcore shelving with interlocking pieces that was great for the top part of the display. I also decided to make a bunch of smaller things (a new mini-plush keychain pattern) so those took up less room.  Unfortunately, my 60 hours of work did not include photography hours, so I have no good photo documentation of the new stuff I made! All I got was from the con:

I'm obsessed with Haikyuu! I just had to make them. :D

I took on a few commissions! Yup, quite crazy.
I had to refund one since I ran out of time to make it unfortunately.

Even though I was seriously lacking sleep, I felt relatively good. It was very busy since we were right across from the bathrooms and there was a lot of traffic (but the space in front of us was very open which felt nice).  We had excellent table buddies. Michelle was at our left and helped us out a lot, and then we met another Alice friend to our right. I only left my table twice. One to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen in nearly 4 years, and second, to check out the comic market for ditto merch. I wanted to find buttons for my classmates because we have an inside joke with ditto, lol.

Cosplay

I was quite pleased with the popular series this year. I would have liked to see a bit more Psychopass, but there was a lot of Haikyuu, Yowapeda, and Legend of Korra to keep me happy.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun! It was pretty popular. :D

Awesome Kageyama cosplayer

I can never ignore a Kenshin cosplayer. 

Beautiful Korra cosplayer. She adopted my korrasami set.

More korrasami. They're so cute!

Great to see Kuvira. She was so in character.

The Mako was cute because at first, he didn't
think I wanted him in the photo! (prob cuz Mako
gets such a bad rep)

More Gekkan-shoujo! I made Alice run after them.

I died when I saw him. Simply perfect! 

Speaking of Midousuji, I wanted to make some Yowapeda mini plush keychains, but I ran out of time. I did however make Midou and Onoda. While I was finishing them up, two girls quickly reserved them and we fangirled quite hard about Yowapeda together. :)

I don't have a whole lot of wacky con stories this time around. I was simply kept very busy. Our hotel situation was kind of bonkers since we didn't get to check in until at least 11:30PM on friday, and then we got pizza that took 45mins to arrive. I was working on more merch, so I didn't sleep until 3am (and then work up at 6:30am). It was rinse and repeat for the saturday night too. However, at least I had a comrade: Mimiu had like 11 commissions and was working well into the night with me!

My only regret is not checking out the dealer's room. :/ Hopefully I'll be able to attend AN again next year! I used to feel that every year was my last, but I kind of want to run it up to 10 years in a row if I can. It's too early to tell though.