From Pajamas to Production (Patreon)

My role in BABSCon for the past two years has been as their Director of Publications, overseeing five departments: Conbook, Con Store, Design, Merchandise, and Vendors; and I serve as the Marketing Lead as well. It has been a slow growth of leadership and directors over the past few years, with a larger turnover about three years ago followed by an adjustment of department hierarchy to keep the Con Chairs from being inundated with tasks. Our team leaders and directors are made of enthusiastic, committed people, as you often find in volunteer positions and passion projects, and I am so happy to have gotten to know a whole host of talented people throughout my time working for the convention.

I could go on and on about the work that goes on behind the scenes. But let's begin with some art :)

First rough sketch of Golden Gates's slumber party outfit, to play with some color and to pass off the design through our Sponsor Relations team to share with their plushmaker. The very highest-tier Sponsors receive a uniquely crafted Goldie plushie that is themed each year with different outfits. Last year, she had an iconic purple tuxedo and hat to mimic Willy Wonka for our "Sweet Tooth" theme, and I was hoping to see her in some variety of flannel this year. (She ended up in a leopard-skin onesie instead, ah well!)

With my involvement in Design & Merchandise, I’d been given priority as far as theming goes. 2023 had been “Memory Lane”; 2024 “Sweet Tooth”; and 2025 became our “Slumber Party”. I follow the “EME” of theme: Events, Merchandise, and Environment. People need stuff to do, stuff to buy, and the right vibes to do it in. Maybe that’d be a fun blog post on its own.

The first sketched image released to the public as a teaser for our theme. This was only released on Instagram, I believe. The sketch was not meant to be finished, and I don't know where the highest quality file of this piece is located, so this is the only version of it I have available.

The first piece of full promotional artwork that we used for Golden Gates. This piece was drawn up very quickly, in between larger con obligations and before I had my Design Team hired to make more fleshed-out pieces of artwork. This piece ended up on a lot of items such as fliers and website headers for our social media.

The "Comf" design! This was a very simple art piece used in multiple marketing pieces, such as Conbook ads and social media pushes. It's just the head that I drag-n-dropped onto different cozy materials -- note the way her hair cuts off on the left side here ;) It began as another very quick marketing assignment before I had my Design Team onboarded.

My Mystery Skulls work!! I'll be extracting the sketch and process files for the big poster so I can share it properly in its own post. I would say that these were a ton of fun to work on, but honestly I was so sleep-deprived at this point that I was just desperate to finish the home stretch of convention work. These assignments had popped up last minute, after I had completed the Design Team's priorities, and so I had sat myself down to do them within 2 days. That's why I only drew this ghost pony's top half rather than a full body...but let's just say that it was a "stylistic choice" ;p

More to come, along with sketches and WIPs of these pieces!