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Hey everybody! I'm back from Conifur 2003, and MAN did I have a good time! This year, I actually had a budget to spend (not like not having a budget has stopped me before), and I think I did really well with my art-gathering hobby! Also got some good photos - check 'em out! Here's how the con went:
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Friday morning started off like most any other morning. I got up, turned off the alarm, jumped in the shower and took care of some stuff. And then I went and packed my car after getting calls from both DarterWolf and BlueJackal, confirming that I was coming to pick them up. Got all my stuff ready to go and headed on out to Seattle to pick up Darter from the UW campus, then down to Auburn to get BJ. The trip down was very smooth - we stopped along the way to get lunch, and we had absolutely no trouble finding the hotel.
Once at the Sheraton, check-in went smoothly and we dumped our stuff in our room. The room, of course, wasn't much to write home about, but like any decent hotel, it was comfy and had enough space for everyone. But it was nothing compared to actually roaming the Con! So we went back down and headed straight for the Registration line.
I don't think I've ever had Registration (Pre-Reg in my case) go any more smoothly. I was in and out of there in just a few minutes, whereas I've had to wait in line for over an hour in the past at bigger cons like AnthroCon. I looked over the schedule and then headed into the Dealer's Den to see who all was there.
Within minutes, I had dropped off my sketchbooks with Diana Stein, Kacey Maltzman and Smudge, who each did AWESOME sketches of some of my characters! I also got early orders in for Con Badge art from Michele Light and Max Blackrabbit, and I was VERY pleased with both of those pics. Scans of all of these pictures will be going in my Furry Characters section. (Stein and Smudge both drew pictures of July, my butterfly-winged tigress character, and Maltzman drew a beautiful picture of my bat-sisters, Shakti and Shisa.)
I went over and said Hi to Jethric, who was selling Fur Visions and Fornax magazines and some of Shannon Stuart's prints (she sadly couldn't make it this year). I also picked up a nice print from Steve Martin and a few skunk prints from another artist whose name escapes me at the moment. Said hello to Dark Natasha, Chad Krueger, Frisky, Monika Livingstone, Bushycat, Terrie Smith and Nynaeve, who showed me a photo of his girlfriend MiaFillene. (I'm still trying to get him to drag her up to one of these Cons so I can meet her, but in all honesty, I have my doubts that this woman exists.)
I also took a stroll through the Art Show and very quickly placed bids on a few BEAUTIFUL pieces. Two by Dark Natasha: "Bat In Glass" and "Earth Bound" (featuring a VERY well drawn skunk girl lying in an almost ready-to-pounce position). And one by Teresa Mather: Fear No More, which showed two Japanese foxes in a traditional Japanese setting, one revealing his identity to the other. Exquisitely drawn and painted. Absolutely wonderful piece of art. I also put a few pieces in the Mature Audiences section on my watch list, but didn't place bids on immediately.
The Dealer's Den closed around 6, and by that time I had already committed a little over $100 to the sketches and con badges. I walked around for a little while, joining Jethric for dinner at Subway and then heading back to check out the Gaming Room. Jurann had setup two TVs with XBOXes and had an 8-player game of Halo going. We setup DDR in there at one point, but that ended up being a massive failure this year because the pads weren't working. We were also supposed to have a Super Smash Brothers Melee tournament, but nobody had the game or a memory card with the levels and characters unlocked, so it ended up just not happening. Ah well.
At 9:00, we had Furry Pictionary, featuring the artistic talents of Jim Groat, GrrrWolf, Bushycat and "Maxine" BlackRabbit (Max was on the "girl's team" and had fake breasts on. This seems to be a running joke with him. :) Hilarity ensued - we had all sorts of fun clues to guess at, some of which were incredibly easy, and some were hard enough that the artists had to literally spell the words out for us. I snapped a lot of photos of this event - used up over half my MemoryStick on it. But it was worth it - the event was very fun indeed.
After Pictionary, I went to an Artist Jam where I caught up with Katt, Bearfoot, and a number of furs I either hadn't met before or simply didn't remember. I got a sketch and just hung out with everyone for a little while - even took a quick crack at some sketching myself. I'm told I did pretty well - especially with drawing eyes. But I have a LONG ways to go if I'm going to take up art as a hobby - I've been saying for a long time that I don't have much in the way of drawing talent. (More on that later.)
A bit later, I headed to another room party, being held by Tasho and a bunch of his friends. BlueJackal and I took up some of the other furs on a little drinking challenge - I decided to go ahead and get myself drunk again, though in a more responsible way and NOT because I was depressed. We took Rainbow Shots - six tall shotglasses with a 1-to-1 mix of vodka and different flavors of Kool Aid. It was my first experience with vodka, and I can't say I cared for the bitter aftertaste... but after only a few minutes, they had the desired effect of making me a bit loopy. A bit later, I went for a few more of those things and tried a couple of other items as well - a little Peach Schnapps and some Sour Apple. By the time this was over, I was pretty drunk, but still plenty coherent and having a great time. I eventually went to hang out with Odious and Tarin for a while, and then finally went to bed at something like 4am.
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BJ and Darter tried to get me up for breakfast this morning, but I was too tired and a little hung over from last night, so I just slept for a couple more hours. I finally got up around noon and headed down to the Dealer's Den. By now, Smudge had finished her picture of July in my sketchbook - watercolors and all! - and MBR had my con badge ready for me! I was able to put the art in my official con-badge so that my ID sticker overlapped it just right, such that people would be asking me later if it was covering any "naughty bits". This sparked a few jokes, but all in good fun, of course.
I fished out a few more sketches from people in the Artist Alley, said hello to a few more artists (including Brian O'Connell) in the Dealer's Den, and I went to check my bids in the Art Show. Someone took Fear No More to $200 very quickly and sent that piece to auction. Damn. But in the good news, nobody had challenged my bids on the Dark Natasha pieces yet. Knowing I'd lost the Teresa Mather piece, I went ahead and put bids down on the mature items. Kacey Maltzman's Current was a real eye-opener - it shows a green-blue fur-girl (not sure what species), dressed in cyber-gear (bare-chested), with a very long, slinky tail that has an electrical plug at the end of it. The thing that caught everyone's eye, though, was the use of color - this pic has some of the most vibrant greens and blues in it that I've ever seen - especially for colored pencil and marker. Amazing shading work - I really wish I could post a copy of it online for you all to see.
I also bid on a skunk girl (fully clothed, but the artist, CrystalFyre, was piggybacking off someone else) and a piece by JRK entitled Mermaids Dance (a really nice anime-style piece with a pretty dolphin in it). I came back several times throughout the day to check up on these bids. But now, the Charity Auction!
I ended up bidding on a bunch of pieces in the Charity Auction that were being sold as a whole lot. Apparently Teebo (sp?) had donated something like six boxes worth of his art collection to Conifur, so they were selling these in bulk lots of around a dozen pictures each. The lot I got included three pieces by Susan Van Camp, and an old favorite original by Jim Groat ("Oops!", showing a surprised fur holding a rifle that has just fired at the corner of the picture. Jim actually shot this picture with a shotgun, leaving a bunch of holes in the corner. Very cute.) It also had a beautiful piece by Margaret Carspecken, which I almost immediately sold to one of the ConOps people for $25. I bought the lot for $130, so this got me back a little of my money.
I tried to sell a few of the pieces I didn't want to keep out of the big lot I'd just gotten, but what ended up happening was that I traded one piece I had, by Teresa Mather, for another one also by her from a set that someone else had gotten. The piece I got in the trade was a BEAUTIFUL skunk-girl in an elegant red dress. Similar to a piece I'd picked up a while ago by Heather Bruton, so while I loved the pic, I wasn't deeply attached to it. In the meantime, I ran into Jennifer Anderson, who REALLY wanted that piece but couldn't afford to buy it off of me at the time. She offered to do me a commission in trade for it, so we worked out a few details and exchanged info, and we agreed that a full-color commission would be fair trade. Awesome! I should hopefully be getting that in a month or so.
Just as I was closing that out, Legend got my attention and said that he and some other furs were going to dinner, so I agreed to join them. But just as we were getting ready to go, we heard sirens and smelled smoke. The hotel! It was on FIRE! Meep! Turns out it was a minor kitchen fire - nothing serious, but it was enough to evacuate part of the Con for a few minutes. Everything ended up being okay - the fire was already mostly out by the time the fire department got there. But it was still a particularly dramatic moment for the Con.
From there, we headed out to dinner. Legend, Kayla, Doc McDowell and MiniSkunk, and a few other furs who ended up going to a Mexican restaurant instead. We had some good food and refreshment and just chatted for a while, then headed back to the hotel. I headed up to the room to relax for a bit, then came back down for another run through the bids and the Ice Cream Social, where I kibitzed with Fox Cutter and some other friends.
After the social, it was time for the Art Show to close down. They closed the adult section first, so I went there to guard my bids. Right before the end of the auction, some lady came and placed the 4th bid on Current, outbidding me by just one dollar to send it to auction. Blah, foo on you, silly woman! But the other two pieces there went unchallenged! Yay! Once that was closed, I guarded my bids on Dark Natasha's pieces. I fully expected both Earth Bound and Bat In Glass to go to auction, but they didn't! I ended up getting both of them for $50 apiece. (Lemme tell ya, anyone familiar with Dark Natasha's works knows that's a real bargain.)
Satisfied, I headed back out to the rotunda, where I found Jim Groat and asked him for one of his caricatures. He did one for me in about 20 minutes - it came out really nice! Another item I'll have scanned soon. After that, Kayla, Doc and I headed up to my room to hang out for a few minutes, and then they headed off to a room party and I went to attend the latter half of the Masquerade.
One tradition at Conifur is the Fursuit Challenge, headed up by Flinthoof. The idea is to see if they can make a fursuit from scratch in the day-and-a-half between when the Con starts and the Masquerade. They did it! And it was a NICE suit, too! It was a grey ferret, and the person in the suit was doing a marvelous job of acting like a ferret, while the announcer was giving a speech about ferrets. Very cute - I got some good photos of him. After that, the Masquerade was over (I unfortunately missed most of it), and all hell broke loose on the stage as the fursuiters started shredding up the plastic in a big appliance box they'd brought out for the ferret act. It was hilarious!
With the Masquerade over, I hung around for a little while longer - went to watch a little Invader Zim in the video room, then headed back to the Artist Jam in the same room it had been in the previous night. There, Sailor Anna did a nice sketch for me of Shakti and Shisa. I ended up not staying there for very long, though - it was getting too hot and stuffy for me. I headed down to Odi and Tarin's room and ended up hanging out with Tarin and Qba - we just chatted and snuggled for a little while before Nightcat and Jagger showed up, and eventually Odious came back and joined us as well. It was fun hanging out with them for a little while, but eventually it was time to go get some sleep - headed back to my room around 3am this time, and chatted with BJ and Darter for a bit before falling asleep.
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First thing we did this morning was get everything packed up and ready to go again. We got checked out well before the deadline of 12 Noon - I even had time to hang out in the Dealer's Den for a bit before the Art Auction started! Of course, the big thing for today was the auction, so I made sure I got a prime seat for that.
The auction went smoothly, and of course it's always a pleasure to watch the ever-illustrious Uncle Kage and Glen host it. They started off with the adult pieces, some of which were quite... erm, yiffy. A few of which sold for quite a bit of money! Toward the end of that, Current came up and I started bidding. It started at $86 (the one-up bid from last night), and I immediately bid $90 on it. Someone else bid $100 and I took it to $110. I got it. :) I now own a very colorful piece of fine art.
After that, they auctioned some of the remaining charity items, including the Furry Pictionary sketchpad and other sketchpads from previous Conifurs. Lots of funny stuff there, including a Zig Zag sketch by MBR. (Um... it was a zig-zag line drawn on the paper for a previous game of Pictionary.) And then, the general auction started. More Dark Natasha, more Teresa Mather, more Chad Krueger... and the very last piece, which was arguably the finest of the whole auction, was Fear No More. It started at $200, and I decided to place a bid on it against my better judgement. $250. Quickly got outbid to $300, by one of the guys keeping track of all the bids up on the stage. *glare* $325. Figuring I might have to put it on my credit card. *bing* $350. Kage comes over to me and goes "Ooo, he's weakening! Look at him, he's bumming money off the guy next to him!" I whimper a bit, let Kage get to "Going twice!", then finally say "$375!" ... he starts the count over, and after he gets to "Going once", the guy behind the table brings it to $400. I gave up at that point. I might not have gotten this oh-so-beautiful piece, but I at least made him work for it. ;)
Oh, I forgot to mention that right at the beginning of the general section, they auctioned off a really cute parody piece by Mike Cole: Samurai Jack Nicholson. An awesome mix of Samurai Jack and Jack Nicholson, with the greatest impression of Nicholson's famous expression, and one of his famous quotes. Very funny - I'm sure I can find a good place for it at work. Got that one for $25.
A bit later, I was able to pick up my art, and then the Con was pretty much over. I got to show off the art to a few people, and then I sat around in the rotunda for a while, watching people leave, watching some other people draw... I made another pass at drawing by trying to copy my badge art with a ball-point pen. It actually came out pretty decent! Maybe I do have some drawing talent after all... Threw around some paper airplanes and laughed at the stuff on the big sketch-pad board we had out. Fun! I ended my stay there by putting a plug for my website and PlanetFurry Radio on the sketchpad board.
Finally, it was time to go. BJ, Darter and I got the rest of our things and headed for the car, saying goodbye to people along the way, and then I dropped them off at their respective homes, went home to eat dinner and unpack, got myself online, broadcast on the stream a bit, processed all the photos, and set to work on writing up this con report!
All in all, this Conifur was a blast. It wasn't (or at least didn't feel) as crowded as it was last year. Much more relaxed, with a sense that I was able to do all the things I wanted to do and still have time to relax... yet it wasn't a boring con by any stretch of the imagination. I had a great time, and for a bunch of people (including BlueJackal and Odious), this was their first con! They REALLY had a blast. It was great to see that. And I am definitely looking forward to coming back next year.
