Thought Bubble 2019 - Harrogate

This weekend (the 9th and 10th of November) I was extremely lucky. Two of my good friends were tabling at Thought Bubble and found that they had an extra bed in their hotel room, and so I tagged along! Here I will record what I've learnt through this wonderful experience, and what I plan for the future.

I don't have very many left now!

As an effort to be a little more memorable than the general public, I attempted to strike up a conversation with anyone I wanted to buy something from, and to also give them a sticker as a way of bringing myself to the forefront of their minds every time they see it.

I'd had the stickers themselves for almost two years now and thought that this was the perfect opportunity to use them.

I had the pleasure of meeting past students of Glyndwr university and their friends, and observing how they're progressing with their careers. It was also very handy to have social media as I could sneak away with images of their stalls without physically taking any photos.

(The photos above do not belong to me) It was very reassuring to see the range of stalls at the convention. Some people featured zines, badges, stickers and posters, while some other people also had bigger books thrown in. People who had banners with their ocs or artwork on really caught my eye, however, there were some very colourful table cloths and very many pride flags mixed in which also caught my eye. I found that people who had boards of prices were often asked how much things were, whereas individually labelled things worked better in the chaos of wandering crowds - but beware that the price tags move! Almost everyone had a business card that they slipped into purchases.

Planning for the future, I would like to have a range of items for sale. I'd like to primarily have zines or comics for my first table, I know that stickers are not hard to make or purchase and if I can set aside time to create stand-alone images in amongst my work at uni, I don't see why I can't be ready for a convention very soon.

Banners are something that I'd like to look into, I know that my style and quality of work is improving very fast at the moment, however, the striking nature of the banner would be worth the cost at the beginning, bringing people in towards me against others who may not have banners. A quick search found that a banner from helloprint.co.uk was £31 - so well within my grasp.

While there, I was also introduced to a couple of new publishing houses that I'd not heard of previously, ShortBox, and Avery Hill Publishing. I'm unsure as to whether they would benefit me if I approached them, it's something to look into in the future and also worth my time to watch them on social media.

I've also done some quick research into dates of conventions and events (Assuming they're all around the same time each year). Obviously, there's Thought Bubble which took place on the 9-10th of this month. MCM Manchester was in July, MCM Scotland in September, London - October, and Birmingham in November. There's a Zine festival in South London in August, Shake Bristol on December 8th and Wales Comiccon (Now in Telford, England??) also in December. I'm sure a more thorough search would produce even more events, but this is a good starting point.

The future looks exciting!

See you next time,

Mort.

The artists and stalls featured here (from left to right) are Tuisku, Caitlyn, Lea, Kip, Alex, George, Lucy, Rosie, and Eve