BronyCon 2016 - Artists · 3:21am Jul 11th, 2016
Goodness gracious, a few days can feel tremendously long when filled with new things.
I am presently sitting in the lobby of my hotel enjoying the free WiFi. I have a (thankfully direct) flight back to Oregon leaving at noon tomorrow, so I’ll need to figure out when I need to go out to catch the train to get to the airport to get on the plane to fly back to Oregon.
But hopefully I’ll be home by 5pmish tomorrow Pacific Time, which would be totally awesome, though I have to admit I hate travelling by air – sitting next to Charlemane the whole way over helped, but I still felt sick during the entire descent. And my nose ran like a spigot. Freaking air pressure.
BUT THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT
This post would end up a billion words long if I didn’t break it up by subject matter. So, first off: artists!
I spent hours wandering the vendor hall on Friday and only got a third of the way done. The second day I spent several more hours wandering and still didn’t get finished. It took me until day 3 to finally finish up visiting all of Artist’s Alley.
But I got a heck of a lot of commissions which will be scanned/uploaded when I get home.
And some of them may end up as cover art.
I got commissions from Slifer, Sugary Violet (who came all the way from Europe!), Goat Train, Late Customer, The Ecchi Queen, Misty Dash, and GlacierClear.
GlacierClear is someone I’ve known for years, incidentally, and it was amusing ambushing her there, as she didn’t realize I was into ponies (despite having drawn a picture of my pony FATE RPG character, Doctor Snow, years ago). I first met her back in the days when we were both fans of Bittersweet Candy Bowl. I had to drop back by on day 3 to chat with her more.
Misty Dash was cool; I hung out with him for a while hearing about all the ins and outs of being an integral but kind of grim part of the British government. I never would have thought that someone who draws such cute things would have to deal with such grim stuff. It was a blast chatting with him.
Sugary Violet and Goat Train were both friendly; I chatted with them for a while about stuff, and it was neat. I liked what I got from them, and Sugary Violet ended up accidentally inking my pencil sketch.
Not that I minded, of course. 
The Ecchi Queen drew me my one and only color commission. I had never even heard of her before, as the art she normally draws (and displayed out on her table) wasn’t the sort of thing I was ordinarily interested in. But I saw her drawing an adorable commission of a gatorpony and I loved it so decided I needed to get something from her. Apparently she’s using her money to pay off student loans, a mantra I heard all too often at the convention – I am glad I do not have student debt.
And of course I had to get a commission from Late Customer. Because RariJack.
Speaking of RariJack, I ran into so many RariJack shippers at the con. In the artist area, beyond Late Customer, AquaticSun also had some RariJack up, and it was cool chatting with him again – we talked about RariJack up at Everfree Northwest, and he apparently read almost all my RariJack afterwards, which was totally awesome of him. Clearly, I need to make sure I produce more, so I have more I can tell him to read. :rainbowcool:
But it was cool catching up with him and chatting a bit about what he was up to, which is, apparently, also college.
I also ran into White Diamonds. Yes, the White Diamonds, of RariJack Daily fame. Apparently it was her first BronyCon ever as a vendor, and it seemed like everyone wanted to talk to her – and with good reason, she was really nice and friendly and has great art.
So much great RariJack art.
And it was all over her booth.
For those of you who remember, Apple Shampoo used some of her art as a cover:
Well, she read my RariJack stuff too. And she really enjoyed that story.
So we pretty much geeked out over RariJack at each other.
And she hint hinted that I need to write more of it. And to update Ice Cream Sale and Shotgun Wedding.
I really can’t say no. Especially considering I don’t want to. 
She was also super nice and gave me a print of one of my favorite bits of RariJack Daily:
(Alas, she didn't have an Apple Shampoo print. Though apparently White Diamonds does own a bottle of apple-scented Rarity shampoo 
).
It was really neat meeting her and I spent quite a while hanging around her booth chatting. She was also doing some commission work, and I saw her drawing someone’s adorable donkey OC.
Whoever got that done had better upload the finished version to Derpibooru.
I also managed to briefly chat with Rurik and Cloud Hop, though sadly I didn’t end up getting too much time to chat with them. They were cool, though, and if you want nice wooden MLP coasters (or other coasters, for that matter) or high quality wooden pens, he has some nice stuff. I bought some coasters from him at Everfree Northwest and they’re quite classy.
He also mentioned that I looked a lot better than I had at Everfree Northwest. Probably because I wasn’t half-dead recovering from illness.
It was his turn this time.
If you get sick, it is his fault.
Or Bradel’s.
I chatted to a bunch of other artists as well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really take notes (and I should have), but there were a ton of friendly people there who I spent a while chatting with while trying to avoid standing in the way of their booth and costing them sales. I have forgotten the name of the nice lady who was selling Twilight’s Secret Shipfic folder expansion sets, but she was very enthusiastic and quite nice.
I ran into a ton of other cool people – a guy who made chainmail stuff, a tag team with quite the barker for dragging in passers-by (including myself) – too many to remember or list.
It is amazing to what extent the vendor hall itself is an attraction to Bronycon. Now I finally understand those silly crafts markets I hated visiting with my parents.
Vendor halls are frequently one of the big attractions in general. You can get the coolest stuff in them.
Goat is a cool dude