Emerald City Comic Con 2019 (Patreon)

Hello friends and patrons! How's it going, did you have a nice weekend?

This weekend, from Thursday through Sunday, I had the joy of attending this year's EMERALD CITY COMIC CON, and I want to tell you all about it!

ECCC is Seattle's central annual comics and entertainment convention, held every March in downtown Seattle. It's a convention for comics mainly, but also everything related to nerd and pop culture, including books, games, science, movies, podcasts, television, and art! Many big cities have comic conventions, with the most well known being San Diego's Comic Con International (CCI) and New York Comic Con (NYCC.) 

Artist Alley, a whole floor where artists sell prints, stickers, original art, etc. directly to customers. This was early on the first day, before it got crazy busy.

I swept through Artist Alley probably a dozen times. I made a point to say hello to artists I had met before or followed online. I brought a set of cat stickers with my username on them to give for free to those artists or anyone I bought something from. Everyone was very excited about them, and I highly recommend this to other artists! Stickers are a lot more memorable than business cards.

The central escalators on Sunday. The Convention center is ENORMOUS. 

The main show floor on Sunday, one of the busiest days.

A panel called "Be Gentle with Yourself: Self-Care and Creativity"

ECCC had hours of panels on all different kinds of nerdy and artistic topics. A few that Zach and I went to: "Decolonizing Dungeons and Dragons", "Podcasting Workshop", and "Your Magic Door to Making RPGs."

A beautiful Ariel cosplayer and an amazed little girl.

ECCC is such an active and overstimulating convention, that one of my favorite things to do as a break is sit down and watch the cosplayers walk by. 

A kid cosplaying as Beedle, a character from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild! (One of my favorite characters in one of my favorite games.)

Star Wars droids built by R2 Northwest: the Pacific Northwest R2 builders club. 

Totoro cosplayers in Artist Alley! They really stopped foot traffic.

Premium RPG supplies by Elderwood Academy. 

Since we weren't tabling, Zach and I got to really explore some of the larger vendors. There were tons of vintage comic book retailers, table top game stores, nerdy t-shirt makers, comic book publishers like Dark Horse and Oni, and lots of RPG supply stores like Elderwood Academy, Level Up Dice, and Wyrmwood.

 If you didn't know there was a market for premium Dungeons and Dragons gaming supplies, like $100 semi-precious stone dice sets, then you do now.

A special effects booth! And Zach!

Noelle Stevenson being interviewed on the Live Stage.

We almost accidentally got to see a couple of amazing interviews. We saw a talk with Noelle Stevenson, an artist who at the ripe age of 27 has published multiple award winning graphic novel series and wrote, produced, and directed a Netflix original animated reboot of a popular 80s tv show. And we caught the end of an interview with the absolutely delightful Gwendolyn Christie.

Waiting to watch the live stream of Critical Role along with a hundred other fans.

Critical Role. I'm not sure if I've talked much about this before, but Critical Role is one of my and Zach's favorite 'shows'. Critical Role is a weekly show live streamed on Twitch, described at the beginning of every episode as "a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons." (They're a very big deal, their Kickstarter to turn their show into an animated short raised $1 Million in one hour, and has since raised $7.6 Million.)

So every Thursday at 7 pm for the last year, Zach and I have sat down (along with fans around the world) to watch a live stream of a group of professional voice actors play D&D for 4+ hours. It's our version of sports, of a favorite game show, or weekly tv show. 

And the entire cast came to ECCC this year!!

Happy to be watching our favorite show with other fans!

The Main Stage at ECCC, where all of the biggest stars had their panels.

The Seattle Critters (Critical Role fans call themselves "Critters") put together a live viewing party at ECCC, where we sat and watched the weekly live stream a long with a hundred or two other fans! Zach and I are the only fans in our friend group, so it's always just the two of us watching. It made us feel really connected to the rest of the community to watch the show in a group like this.

Critical Role cosplayers at the Critter Meet Up in Capitol Hill!

On Saturday after the convention we headed to a local bar for a Critter Meet Up, where we met some very nice fans and awesome cosplayers. Again, such a lovely sense of community.

Most of the people at the Critters Meet Up! Photo from the SeattleCritters twitter.

We had been excited for months to see our favorite performers in person at their Main Stage panel. We woke up early on Saturday, dressed up a little extra, and hopped on the bus, ready to wait in line for a while to get in. On the way there, we saw on twitter that the Critical Role Main Stage panel was AT CAPACITY, completely full!

I was very very sad. I cried a little on the bus.

But! We knew that they had another, shorter appearance later on that day at a much smaller stage with much much much fewer seats. So because we missed the first show, at 10:30 am Zach and I went to the second stage (which was almost empty that early,) and sat in the front row. And waited until the Critical Role show, four hours later, at 2:45.

Which meant we were in the front row to see our favorite performers!

An excellent trade off, I think. And we also were able to listen to a lot of other interesting interviews while we waited, including the amazing Noelle Stevenson interview I mentioned earlier.

Of course I also bought a few things from the artists this year. This is my 'con haul' of the awesome art goods I bought from other artists this year.

1. Black& White Shirt and Fox Enamel Pin from Heikala.

2. Astrology/Cat sticker from April Teevan.

3. Skull sticker from Becky Cloonan. 

4. Arthur Believe in Yourself sticker from Minnie Phan.

5. Cat Barista sticker from Francesca Buchko 

6. Go Veg zine by Jam.

7. Avocado Duckling print by Sabtastic.

8. Handmade House pin by Jenn Ely 

9. Rose Skull pin by Isadora Zeferino.

10. Pixel Chicken pin from Stardew Valley, one of my favorite video games. A gift from Tori!

Last year I celebrated the start of my new career by attending my first convention, ECCC 2018. In fact I wrote about my experience in my second post on Patreon, which you can find here! What I noticed as I attended this con for the second time was how much I had grown and learned in the last year.

 When I visited last year I felt totally out of my element, under prepared, and intimidated. Last year I nervously introduced myself to a couple artists I admired, and told them about my intentions to create a career like theirs. This year I said hello again to the same artists, but who are now my peers, and some, my friends! Instead of feeling nervous, this year I felt inspired, energized, and confident. Most of all, I was disappointed that I wasn't tabling! 

There's always next year! Here's hoping I get in.

Thanks for reading my memories from this year's amazing ECCC! I am feeling so refreshed and inspired and ready to continue pursuing this path. I want to make so much art, and I want to sell it to people, and meet people, and make people happy like these artists made me.

Let me know in the comments if you've ever been to a convention that you really loved, or if this article helped you learn a little more about convention attendance if you've never been! I'd love to hear from you.

xoxo

Ragon