I was very dubious about letting go of my £15 entry fee, as TB2015 had been somewhat of a disappointment for me, it had felt like a gathering of fan art work which I could have easily spent an evening on Etsy buying instead of attending the convention.
As I handed over my entry fee and handed over my arm to be given the band that would allow me anywhere around the event, I admit it, I thought i might be blowing my money up the wall.
Gladly for me I was proven wrong, this year the event organisers had achieved a higher level of people applying to the festival which meant that they could tailor the festival to what they wanted. I was impressed at the breadth of skills that were there this year and I ended up spending ALOT.
My favourite purchase of the day was a screenprint 1/14 of Fantastic Mr Fox by 
It's a gorgeous screen print with multiple colours, I was astounded at the technical competence
but when I spoke to the artist he told me about how he makes the work and sends it to a team called **** who do all of the screenprinting for them. This was really good for me to find out because that might help in the future (as I am really not gifted in any way with screenprinting).
Another really great purchase was 2 copies of S! magazine. This is an international collaborative who create works around a theme, I brought one about Japan and Cats. (INSERT PHOTOS). I liked the idea of having it in a book rather than a zine because it allowed the artists to experiment with their medium more knowing it had been printed on solid 200GSM paper.
There were a few other bits and bobs I picked up but Thoughtbubble this year for me was far more about talking and meeting with professionals. Some were students as well such as EVACHII (find photos) who stuck to fan art for conventions because its a good seller, others were Sad Ghost Club who me and Ellie complimented and talked to them about their work (which I will pop in another blog post after this). Another artist I met was Jontofski, his advice to me was to carry a sketchbook at all times, he is primarily a watercolour artist but if he doesn't have time to watercolour the scene, he will rough it out, take photos and then take it back to the studio to later watercolour it.
Another professional I spoke to was AJ, he was there with a comic of his own and spotted me staring at it (Im not very bold to go over and start talking) so he came over to talk to me instead (so I slowly edged closer to his stand). AJ was perhaps the best part of thoughtbubble, in the fact that his story gave me a lot of confidence that things will work out. He never attended college, instead starting lower down in the nickelodeon techy department working on his art at the same time and learning the ins and out of the studio before progressing upwards to become a freelance artist for them for 13 years. Although it was freelance he was paid most of the time to stay on there, which was interesting because I wasn't sure how that kind of thing worked. He then made the jump to disney interactive to work in their creative department whilst spending time working on his own comic book with friends. It was refreshing to meet someone who didn't do so well in an academic atmosphere but still found a way of getting into the sector he wanted to work in.
Overall I really enjoyed thoughtbubble this year and hope that next year stays to same calibre. I will be applying to thoughtbubble for next year and hopefully will be exhibiting there.
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