Yesterday I went to the Asbury Park Comic Book Expo with Jason and Dave to represent the Kubert School and hopefully make some money selling prints and doing sketches. I dropped $56 making 20 glossy prints at $2.60 each (+tax), and sold them for $10. Head sketches were $10 and character sketches $20. So with breaking even as my lowest hope, all I’d need to do is a couple sketches and a print and I’d pretty much be there.

I made 4 prints each of:

Didn’t quite break even.

The expo was in a big enclosed hallway that went inline with an enormous boardwalk along the NJ shore. It was really small and basically just kind of cobbled together by a couple guys (who were pretty cool btw). Honestly, calling it a convention is like when people call the Kubert School a college. It is, but if you’re used to what most people think of (ie, campuses, dormitories, professors, flexible class schedules, the classical ‘college experience’) you might be in for a disappointment. Even despite all that though, there’s no way I can fault the organizers for the failure to reach even my lowest goal. Going by what would have made the most proportionally significant difference, that is, the smallest change with the greatest effect, I fully blame the weather. It was overcast and exactly the temperature one expects of February, and there is no doubt in my mind that if it had been even just a little bit nicer the place would have been packed and we would have been selling and sketching all day. But by an accident of chaos (damn butterflies!) it was cold and as a result the place was virtually empty all day.

Given those circumstances though, I made out pretty well. Right off the bat someone commissioned a head sketch of his baby, and I had loads of fun with it. His kid was adorable, and he paid me $5 extra. A little bit later a guy with a Flash t-shirt, Flash hat, and who works at 6 Flags as The Flash, asked me to draw him as…. (you guessed it) The Flash. I was pretty happy with it, and he seemed thrilled. I managed to get a picture this time:

The pose is kind of… obvious, but I mean, what else can you do with The Flash?

I also sold a print of the guy punching the bear to the coolest little kid. He was walking by our tables and when he saw it he just froze and stared at it. Eventually his dad caught up with him and the kid, still staring at it, asked if he could have it. His dad laughed a bit and bought it for him. Towards the end of the day I also sold a print of THWACK to Josh, one of the organizers, discounted to $8. So in total I made back $53, a net loss of only $3. Again, under the circumstances, not so bad, and out of the three of us I came the closest.

Plus, now I have birthday and holiday gifts sorted out. :P