Midwest Furfest 2009 – Con Report

November 22nd 2009 in Conventions

The popular thing to do after going to a convention seems to be to make a “Con Report.” So, even though this is my first con, I didn’t do much, and I’m not much of a “big name” in this fandom, here are some thoughts and tons of photographs nonetheless. I hope you enjoy!

As I said, MFF was my first con, but Rochelle and Andrea had gone to other conventions before, so they at least knew some things about getting thre early, what to prepare for registration, what to bring for the art table should we get one, etc. So, thanks to them, I packed up my bristol board sketch book and Micron inking pens in a simple tote bag, and we drove there at ridiculous o’clock AM (around 9:30).

When we pulled into the hotel, we didn’t see any signs or anything and weren’t sure we had the right place…until we swung in front of the lobby and saw a group of people…wearing tails…standing outside having a chat and smoking. We started screaming and giggling like school girls at the sight of that, excited yet apprehensive about what lay ahead. We found a parking spot, gathered our things and walked towards the hotel. Seeing the tails was one thing, but we knew we were really in furry territory after seeing this:

So we walk in and take a quick grasp of our surroundings. It’s pretty sparse, but a surprising amount of people walking around. We see where the Dealer’s Room is and a few other important locales, passing by people in tails, ears, wings and full fursuits along the way. We finally find where registration is, but realize we’ve arrived too early. So, we hang tight and doodle in our sketchbooks while we wait for someone to show up for us. I spotted this guy catching a nap while waiting for the action to start as well.

A lot of people started piling in and getting in line, so we did too. We noticed very early on that not only were we probably a few of the only people not wearing anything furry (except my shirt, arguably), but we were among the very few girls there. Hmm…

While we waited, more people in costume popped in to entertain us. I’ve seen these guys on Youtube and the like before, but didn’t learn their names until now. Jaggers and Littlebluewolfie were wandering around, offering high fives and the like to other earlybirds. I jumped out of line and asked them for a picture, so they obliged.

We got our badges, and I registered under the name Zelaphas, as per my striped hyena character. I’ve always had something of an “identity crisis” (lol) in terms of my involvement in the anthro fandom. I’ve been Erdraug, Evilinnocence, Industrialwolf, more or less Charles, Danale and now Zelaphas. But I think Zelaphas is a good character to use for events like these, or even for my involvement in the art scene. She doesn’t have to be “me”, but she can represent me, my art, and my…furriness? *shudders* Danale will always be something of a nickname for me, in real life and online.

Anyways, Rochelle and Andrea more or less bolted to the Artist’s Alley and got a corner table all to themselves. I decided not to register since, really, my intention was mostly to be a customer and an observer. In a perfect world I would have planned more carefully to make more art to sell, have samples and business cards ready, etc. I’ve been feeling kinda lackluster about my drawing hobby lately, so even though I knew I’d feel sad not to sell anything while my friends did, I mostly wanted to enjoy the works of other artists and gawk at the costumes.

So while Andrea and Rochelle set up drawing, I found my way back to the dealer’s room and checked out everything that was for sale there. I had no idea how much art, comics, literature, plushies, costumes and other junk the furry fandom churns out! It was pretty cool! There was a big emphasis on industrial and steampunk items there. I probably would have bought some goggles if I felt them worth the expense. The craftsmanship in these things is amazing, so I don’t blame them for the price tags. Just not something I want to spend my cash on right now.

Several of the “big name” artists like Arphalia, Hibbary, Ursula Vernon and others were there (or had tables/merch set up) so I said hi and browsed their works. I found Skulldog, whom I’ve done a commission for not to long ago, and had a brief conversation with her. She was extremely friendly and told me about her con experiences. My family brought me up to have an interest in the business aspect of things, so I asked her how she typically does in sales at conventions like these. She told me that attending conventions and selling art was her job. I was very impressed! I imagine there are rough patches, but overall, to travel around, doing what you love and earning the praise and money of fans for it–that’s gotta be pretty sweet. I made my rounds through the Dealer’s Den again before coming back to buy some prints from her. They’re very good quality, so I’m anxious to frame them and hang them up somewhere.

I also got goaded into some spot selling plushies. The guy running it said, “any species, you name it, we have it! What species are YOU!?” Now, I don’t really subscribe to any otherkin or even real furry beliefs, but I just played along and said I was a hyena. His assistant ran past me and pulled out this big hyena plushie, which was extremely detailed and very well done, even with bendable arms. Of course, it had a price tag of about $60, so I was prepared to leave until I chanced upon an adorable little llama on one of the lower shelves. It had the softest, little curly hair and the perfect pose, and it was only about $8 so I caved.

Back at the artist’s alley, Andrea had already racked up a pretty penny in commission slots, but Rochelle hadn’t had such luck yet. It was still fairly early, though. The con now was much more crowded, and a lot more people started coming through. Including those in suit, who stopped by our table to say hi and look at our work.

“Flux,” definitely one of the best costumes at the con. Really glad he stopped by our table for some pictures and costuming fun!

So since I felt I had seen enough of the Dealer’s Den and not much else was going on, I decided to sit down and offer some moral support to my artistic friends…and try my hand at drawing some things myself. I cut out some old inks of mine and set them out with a lame price tag, and then doodled for a bit. Sure enough, after a while both Rochelle and I were getting hits from a number of people. One of whom was Venaul, something of a newbie to the fandom, who, like me, was enjoying his first con. He commissioned Rochelle and myself for what became our first official collaboration commission, and it came out awesome. He may or may not be able to link the final product, but I at least caught a blurry picture of how my portion (the ink) came out. You can see him in the background to the left.

He was extremely delighted with how it came out.

For the bulk of the rest of the day we sat glued to our spot in the Artist’s Alley. We’re very loud girls, cracking jokes, laughing our asses off and bringing in complete strangers to our conversations. It definitely lends well to the con setting. We had a number of interesting people come to our table. One of whom was the marshmallow peeps guy, Jell-O-Blue. He handed us a business card with his character info – just a marshmallow peep – and told us to have fun with it. He offered us our base price for our basic commission type and took off. Below is my interpretation of “anthropomorphic marshmallow peep” (kinda inspired by Sponge Bob, I must admit) as well as the other art and badges he collected.

The ACEO card with the peep in the top hat, monocle and martini glass is Rochelle’s. Nicely done!

This wolf man that came to our table was a laugh riot. He had a moveable jaw and carried around little plastic men to “nom” on. He was eyeing my new llama plushie with hunger…

After much texting back and forth, I finally bumped into Voodoowolf and her boyfriend Dearc. They’re awesome! They stopped by my table to say hi and chat for a bit. She helped me out with some lamination sheets (like I wrote above, I came very unprepared), and I gave her some of my inks to express my thanks, if nothing else. She told me she had a lot of success in the artist’s alley too, and even saw her art skill improve as she went along. Awesome!

A hound came by to give me a kiss on the cheek…

Much later in the evening, these two guys showed up asking for $1 badges. By this time we had a pretty full queue, and weren’t in the mood to do hard work for only a dollar. But these were excellent salesmen (erm…buysmen?), and convinced us to just do whatever medium and size we want and just have fun with it. And if we learned anything from the marshmallow peeps man, the “have fun with it” commissions are always the best.

His jacket pocket is bursting at the seems with all the $1 badges he bought. Seems to be the way to go!

After closing up shop, we decided to stick around for the dance. It kinda felt like being back in 8th grade. There was horrible alternative rock music playing, everyone was kinda standing around awkwardly, and there were chairs lined up along the wall where lonely people sat hoping the murry purry love of their life would show up and ask them to dance. By this point we were exhausted, and every bone in our body just ached, but we wanted to make the most of our one-day con experience, so we toughed it out.

These costumes were HORRIBLE. We dubbed the guy in the right “Roadkill in Pajamas”, which we later agreed would make a great name for a band.

During the fursuit parade, I noticed a rather infamous fursuit walk by, and couldn’t believe my eyes. This same costume appeared again at the dance. So instead of “Buyer Beware,” it’s “Buyer…ah forget about it, let’s boogie!”

Some time during the night, this cat/fox girl (guy?) saw us standing around and waved us over to dance. We couldn’t tell which of us its unfocused eyes were looking at, but Rochelle took the queue to go over. Andrea and I couldn’t stop laughing at what happened next…

There was also a very young girl with her parents there in full costume! I had mixed feelings about that one… But I give kudos to her parents for being open-minded, not to mention keeping an eye on her the whole night. She looked no different than the kid from Where the Wild Things Are.

This chick in chain mail…well I dunno what to say about her. Too much skin and too little dignity.

And we dubbed this guy the Orca Cat from Space (can’t see in this pic but he has a whale tail). We couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to be beyond that.

And this guy had the coolest hand paws…not sure why my camera went berzerk on the right, there.

We later bumped into Jaggers again – I loooooove his costume! I caught some video of him on the big screen dancing, but later when Rochelle, Andrea and I gave it a shot, we saw him waiting in line and waved him over for all four of us to do it. It was a blast!

Also, Venaul popped in again in the dance room, so I caught a quick vid of him as well.

One very notable thing that everyone who was there can thank us for (lol), is the dance circle! Rochelle, Andrea and I were busting out ridiculous dance moves until we caught the attention of some guy. He was rather flirty but not very good at including all three of us in the conversation, so we quickly waved over a green dog man to join our circle and spread things out. Later a few more people came in to show off their moves, and within minutes we had a huge circle going that encompassed half the room! One by one people both in costumes and without hopped in the center and showed off their stuff. Andrea showed off “the worm” a number of times. I cheered like a mad woman, but it was mostly to get other people excited and get more people to bust a move in the middle. It ended up being a blast.

After that, we left at around 12:30. I know that sounds kinda early, but that’s a 13+ hour day of drawing, mingling and dancing our asses off. We were beat. But it was definitely a blast, and I can’t wait to do it again.

I have some footage of the Fursuit parade (plus my commentary while watching!), but it’s too long for YouTube. So I’m trying to find another way to host it or cut it up. I’ll post an update once I get to that!

I’d just like to end this entry with a formal and emphatically appreciative THANK YOU to each and every single person who said hello, sold me something, bought artwork from me, complemented my skill, joined our dance circle, posed for a picture, told me I looked adorable, or was just there having a great time and being someone awesome to look at. Although I spent most of my time in the Artist’s Alley, I still met a lot of people and had a great time. You can definitely expect to see me at more Anthro Conventions to come!

Comments welcome, encouraged and appreciated! No registration necessary, just chat away!