FanCon 2017: The Best SA Comic Con Yet

The title of the blog post is pretty much a summary. FanCon 2017 was absolutely wonderful! The people from Readers Den are absolute heroes. We would never have gotten this far as a local comics industry if it wasn’t for you guys. So from the bottom of our hearts… THANK YOU!

 

Artist Alley FanCon 2017

Artist Alley during setup vs. at the end of Day 3. Click to enlarge!

From a vendors’ perspective certainly one of the best upgrades from previous years was the venue – CTICC is a premium venue with ample parking, loads of clean, easily accessible toilets, very effective aircon, a great view (even if it included the SARS building) and lots of space for customers and cosplayers alike to move around without hindering each other. I know aircon might sound like a silly thing to rave about, but honestly, if you’ve ever done an expo while overheating, you will never take it for granted again. I’m pretty sure the cosplayers and fursuiters were also very grateful.

 

Cottonstar at FanCon 2017

Us behind our booth. Aw yeah

Also. We have the best friends ever. Ky and Eagle came from afar to join in the FanCon festivities, and brought us a pirate chest filled with cool stuff, including a tube of Deep Heat, two containters of Berocca, a large bottle of hand sanitiser and a pack of anti germ wipes, which I feel is probably the main reason that we didn’t get con crud this year. We cleaned our hands obsessively and avoided touching our faces. THANK YOU FRANDS!

 

FanCon 2017 care package

Our chest full of amazing loot <3

EZ Studios and Kyrelimit at FanCon 2017

Our heroes Eagle and Ky wearing some of our official tees!

Sales wise, we did okay. We covered our costs and turned a small amount of profit. Trinetta Sky’s reception was really good, and we sold just under half of the stock we had printed. We still have a bunch of shirts and patches left over. I’ll be putting them on my personal Etsy store soon, as managing the Cottonstar Etsy and my own on separate accounts is frustrating. There have been hangups with indiecomics.co.za so we’ll be sticking to Etsy for now.

The crowd was great this year, too. People were (mostly) nice, enthusiastic and interested. We even had some new fans who came by and said how they just found us just recently and how they really like the comic, which is always a great feeling. We also had some people who have never heard of us before also buy sets of comics, which was also pretty darn great. Overall it stayed consistently busy. We were worried that Monday was going to be very dead, but it ended up having a steady flow of people. This is possibly thanks to the fact that there were still panel discussions and performances happening, as well as the advanced cosplay competition.

 

Artist alley day 3 at FanCon 2017

View of a part of the artist alley on day 3

Of course another highlight of the expo was meeting John Layman (Chew) and Eric Powell (The Goon) and having books signed by them. We also gifted them each a copy of Trinetta sky. They were really friendly and we were very happy to have met them! Eeee! 😀

 

John Layman and Eric Powell at FanCon 2017

Meeting John Layman and Eric Powell! EEE

There were really cool stage performances and panels too, most of which we missed because we didn’t want to leave our booth. I did get to see a belly dancing performance at least. The cosplay was also incredible! Everyone brought their A-game and it was just so cool. There were also three really good partial fursuits, which is a first for SA (or is that furst… heh heh). Even though there are quite a few furries here, they never seem to have good quality fursuits beyond just gloves and tails and ears. We couldn’t get pics of nearly enough of the cosplays, but here are a few of our favourites:

 

Ain’t no fam like a batfam! Family cosplay by our friends Nick & Bruna and their adorable kid Michaela. And my buddy Donavan cosplaying a character I don’t know…

 

Undyne and Alphys cosplay at FanCon 2017

Our friend Ruth cosplaying an excellent Undyne, with Alphys joining in!

 

Ciri cosplay at FanCon 2017

This Ciri was really incredible! Cosplay by nic_pickles

 

Fursuits at FanCon 2017

Eylon and Umuntu the fursuiters, as well as a Stay Puft lady whose name I didn’t catch!

 

Gandalf the Sexy and Galadriel cosplay at FanCon 2017

Gandalf the Sexy (nymphurycosplay) was amazing, I asked for a photo and the next thing I know this leg pops out!

 

Lamar the Headcrab cosplay at FanCon 2017

Lamar the headcrab was made from a repurposed bicycle helmet.

 

Road Hog cosplay at FanCon 2017

Road Hog by kizurazgubai!

 

Doctor Who cosplay at FanCon 2017

This Doctor Who group cosplay made my day, especially the Dalek and River!

The only downside to the show was the catering – or rather lack thereof. The food was not great, folks. Neither was the coffee. However, having exhibited at CTICC before, I was aware that this would be the case. The CTICC doesn’t easily allow outside catering. They basically force shows to use their own catering, which as you can imagine is maximum profit for minimum effort/portion food. This I do not hold against the FanCon organisers because I know how difficult it is to get around the CTICC catering rules. However next time I will make sure we don’t keep forgetting to pack snacks… >_>

For more photos and videos of the event, you can keep an eye on the FanCon facebook page.

In the meantime, here are three videos to tide you over:

To everyone who came around to buy things, to chat, and to meet us: Thank you! We had a fantastic time!

Until next we meet!

<3

Danelle & Ben


Cottonstar on Patreon

What's on your mind?