Photo credit: Juan Arzola (@ancientbuho)
In preparing for the convention this Saturday, an unexpected thing I realized is it gave me the perfect excuse to update a few artworks I’ve been meaning to eventually do, but haven’t had the opportunity to get around to before now.
You might have seen the above artwork of Arquel here and there. I’ve posted a crop of it before, and I use it as a profile photo for some of my socials. I quite like this painting of him, but it’s been unfinished for a while. Other projects have arrested my time. While still not entirely finished, entirely because of this convention, I refined it to the point where I was comfortable printing it for a contact card. Especially since these are small by definition (for scale, look to the pen in the background in the above photo).
Here are the 3 artworks I chose for these contact cards! I’m sorry for the photo quality – unlike the gorgeous photo at the top of this post, which was taken by my skilled photographer friend (thanks again, Juan!), the rest of these photos were taken with phones by me or my partner, haha. (With permission, I also slightly edited Juan’s photo to a closer crop and adjusted the contrast, since in the photo the card is backlit/in shadow.) But, this one here was taken in more neutral lighting (the photo at the top of this post was during a time of glorious sunlight), and is more color-accurate to how Arquel printed (the blues!). The side with Arquel (with contact info) is on the front for all cards, while the backs have 2 variations showing either Duskbirds or The Harbinger’s Path. These cards are for the convention this Saturday. I decided to print these because originally, I thought I would only have 1 Duskbirds Comics zine to show. I was thinking of ways to have my table look potentially less sparse, haha.
My first and easiest thought I had were contact cards (or “business cards” – though it feels funny calling them that since these are intended for art conventions). Business cards are easy to print, and I’m always very happy with the quality from the printer I use for them (it’s Moo!). I haven’t printed their square business cards before, and was a bit curious about them. This seemed like the perfect opportunity, because aside from contact info, I was interested in the backs potentially being good mini-art samples I could show. Especially for the side with The Harbinger’s Path cover on it, since Harbinger’s print version will be finished for May’s convention, and not this April one.
I was prepared for the colors to be potentially off, but I’ve been learning about CMYK color profiles before this (which I hadn’t done for past business cards), and I think learning more about file settings was worth it – I’m a bit shocked by how much I love how these printed. They are very close to what I see when I work on the artworks on my monitor. The colors are so much more vibrant than I was expecting for CMYK.
Additionally, the photos taken in the sun in this post are from a recent stationary show a friend organized us all to attend. It was a very wholesome event, filled to the brim with crowds gathering round table after table of stationary treasures! I walked into the show fully intending only to browse, and ended up walking out with these two delightful pen holders. An exceedingly cheerful blue shrimp, and a pair of hungry hatchling chicks. Each are eager to hold up a pen (or business card, in the case of the shrimp).
This ended up being fortuitous, because while I was mostly settled on my table’s setup, I was still deliberating over how to display the contact cards. I originally wanted some type of fun container to hold them in. If I didn’t find one, I was going to just have them in a stack on the table. My plan now is to have the little shrimp holding one card, and then a stack of cards beside it for people to take.
There’s a slightly funny story behind these pen holders. I saw the shrimp when I did my first pass around the venue, near the end. It jumped out at me, because it was the only blue shrimp left on the table. I tried my card out on him a few times, and thought the colors matched Arquel very well. I deliberated a bit, but wasn’t set on whether to buy him or not. My partner then found me and highly encouraged me to buy him, which was the tipping point I needed, haha. We then met up with the rest of our group (this was an exceedingly crowded venue, and we peeled off and met up again a few times to explore), and after we did a second pass, I wasn’t planning to stop by this table again because it was a bit out of the way.
Then, I hear my partner come up behind us and tell me, “The pen holder table has birds now!” I laughed and thought he was joking, because when I browsed the table earlier, their pen holders were overwhelmingly sea creature-themed (shrimp, crab, cuttlefish, nautilus). But he confirmed they really did have one! I’m fond of birds, and he told me this knowing full well I would be very tempted. I made my way over, and just look at them! I’ve never seen such funny pen holders. Our friends followed after us, and then started saying how it’s on-theme for Duskbirds, how well it will match being beside the table next to the zines. It didn’t take long to convince me, haha.
In addition to these contact cards, luckily my printer for The Harbinger’s Path was running a general sale last month. I was able to place an order of postcards at a very reasonable rate, which gave me the dual benefit of having another item to show for the con, and providing an early print test for how The Harbinger’s Path will look in print. I’ll show photos of the postcards sometime next week or so – I want to show them through the print book email updates first!
For now, I’m bringing these postcards to this weekend’s con to try and let hopefully more people learn about the webcomic! And, as detailed in the previous post, I ended up splitting Duskbirds Comics zines into 2 volumes, because they worked better this way thematically.
This makes my convention “stock” for this Saturday Duskbirds Comics Vol. 1 & 2, The Harbinger’s Path giveaway postcards, and these little contact cards. While this would be sparse for an artist alley table, this Saturday’s convention isn’t an artist alley. My impression of PLCAF is more of a small, books-focused indie comics con. This also fits the theme for Manga Ichiba at Fanime later this May, as they specifically did not want us to set up artist alley tables. This is part of the reason I decided to apply to both PLCAF and Manga Ichiba – I don’t really have interest in setting up artist alley tables both because they are so daunting, and also because I have never been able to become excited about making merch (only personal preference – I admire those who are able to be passionate about it!).
But books? Now, books I am excited to make. Very excited indeed!
April 3, 2026: Added a few more anecdotes from the stationary show.
