Kai's Garage Kits

(a first-time con exhibitor’s thoughts)

Welp, the first Wonder Festival US is officially over and I have a lot to say about it. It wasn’t a perfect event and I have been exhausted pretty much since the first day, but I am absolutely delighted that I went and I think it’s amazing that there’s a Wonder Festival in the US now.

More than anything else, I loved being able to talk with other garage kit makers and painters, discuss the hobby, and just connect with people face-to-face. Now that I think about it, I don’t know if I’ve ever met another GK enthusiast in real life before! All my interactions in this hobby have been online. It was a treat to finally meet some of the Japanese creators whose work I’ve followed, including Yoshi and Pecopoco (creator of the Gadget Ghost series of GKs – see their kits here!). I actually have a couple of Gadget Ghosts, although admittedly I haven’t actually built them yet… but that’s just the story of any model builder’s life, isn’t it? Too much in the backlog, not enough time to build it all. I also recognized several of the kits painted by western artists, having seen them posted online before, but again, never in-person!

Like I mentioned, this was my first time exhibiting any of my kits in public. In fact, I had never tabled at a con at all before, and from start to finish my thoughts were constantly returning to things like, “am I doing this right? Should I really even be here?” Being surrounded by such highly talented painters and sculptors made me feel rather amateurish, I cannot deny. I’m grateful that the other folks around me were highly supportive, and I was able to fall into the rhythm of the show pretty quickly. My biggest concerns as a solo exhibitor were that I wouldn’t get a chance to hit the restroom, get food, and see the show, and all these fears were allayed by the help of my neighbors; I was always able to have someone watch my table when necessary. It’s really great to see what a supportive community convention artists are.

I’m just now realizing how few pictures I actually took of the event. I wish I’d taken more, but I guess I was too occupied with running the booth to really think about it. Oh well! I was working on preparing for Wonder Festival right up until I left to catch the plane, and for the first couple of days I kept running into things that I intended to do but ran out of time for or just plain forgot. I’m glad that I thought to bring sharpies and some extra sheets of paper and sign holders, because I ended up using all of them. I hand-wrote my price sheet after arriving at the venue, as well as another sign indicating the freebies at my table. I had intended to get some business cards printed for the show, but I didn’t get it done in time and ended up getting them printed at the convention center’s FedEx store after the con had already opened!

Speaking of (almost) running out of time for things, I finished the paint prototype of Yume-chan just a couple of days before Wonder Festival. It was a mad rush, but she ended up being my best seller. Here she is!

Moving on to my booth setup, there are a million and one things I wish I could have changed in retrospect. To be honest, I really didn’t put much thought into my display before the event; I was way too busy just getting the kits made! When I stop to consider it, though, my booth layout was busy and not particularly well thought-out, and it was a little hard to get a read on it from a distance. Also, I would have liked to have proper risers for my figures, rather than the boxes that I ended up putting them on. I’d like to print out some better-looking signs next time, and maybe reduce the number of them. I had three letter-sized signs posted at my table, and I think they ended up dominating it a little too much. In the future, I’d like to make sure that peoples’ attention is drawn right to the figures rather than anything else on the table.

I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do for my future booth setups, and I think I’d like to lean into a sort-of punky Seattle-y aesthetic. I really feel like this fits the vibes of garage kits; they’re very non-corporate, individual expressions by independent sculptors, and much like zines and underground punk shows, they’re very much driven by passion rather than profit. Maybe a grungy-alleys-of-Pioneer-Square sort of look… I’ll have to think about it more!

So what did work well about my setup? The biggest success of the show for me was (unsurprisingly) the free handouts. I had a box full of rejected cast resin parts with major flaws and bubbles that I was handing out, and those drew a lot of people over. Most of them disappeared on the first day, and they were all gone by the end. My doll (a Mini Dollfie Dream, which I did the face-up on) also drew a lot of visitors and a couple of people asking to buy her. Sorry folks! She wasn’t for sale, just for show. I liked connecting with all the BJD fans, though.

You might have noticed a couple of new figures set up at my table. Their names are Carmen and Jose, named after the main characters from the opera Carmen. You may have seen early sculpts of them in previous posts, but in the week before WonFes I pulled out all the stops to make those two happen. I finished painting them the literal day before I left! There are things I’m happy with and things I’m not, but I’ll give these two a dedicated post at some point, so all I’m going to say here is that it was an absolutely exhausting effort and I definitely SHOULD give myself more than a week to do this sort of thing. But I did it!

There were a couple of things I would love to see the organizers update before the next Wonder Festival US rolls around. Given how niche the garage kit hobby is, it would have been nice to have a little bit more of an educational component to the show. Unsurprisingly, most of the folks walking by had absolutely no idea what we were selling. Another complaint that I heard echoed a lot was the chaotic and difficult approval process for licensed kits. I didn’t try to get a license this year, so I can’t comment too much on this myself, but these limited-time licenses for independent sculptors are a core part of Wonder Festival and it’s a shame that we couldn’t have seen more of them. Next year I intend to go for a licensed IP, so hopefully the process gets ironed out by then. I have a couple of ideas for sculpts featuring licensed characters. I’d like to do the Scarlet sisters from Touhou, and I also have an idea for a figure of Ota-Chan from OtakuVs. I’ll get there when I get there, though!

I didn’t get to see a whole lot of Momocon outside of Wonder Festival, being stuck at my booth for most of its duration. Even after the vendor hall closed, I was too tired most nights to do anything except get dinner and then crash in my room. The thing I most regret missing is the garage kit panel hosted by several of the artists who came from Japan. I wanted to attend it, but I went back to my room beforehand and accidentally fell asleep until it was over. I’m still kicking myself over it! That was followed by another fan panel about garage kits. I did manage to make it to that one, at least… but the presenter never showed up! So yeah, not a great time for me in terms of panel attendance. At least I got into a couple. One of my favorites was the midnight panel for 2kawaii4comfort which, if you aren’t aware, is a short (but soon-to-be-continued!) fan series about the anime con-going experience. You can find the series on YouTube, and I’d highly recommend checking it out if you’re at all into con culture. The panel itself was run by one of the creators and it was engaging, energetic, and contained some very exciting announcements that I can’t spoil here!

I’m sure I could say more about Wonder Festival, but that’s everything that sticks out in my mind for now. I’d like to start doing artist alleys at more cons, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how a cringey garage kit otaku like myself could introduce the concept of garage kits to wider audiences. I’ve also been mulling over some ideas for prepainted figures, which I suspect would be a lot easier to sell. I’m trying to come up with some sculpts that could be cast in just one or two pieces, with reusable paint masks to further cut down on production effort. I’ll be testing out some ideas pretty soon, so expect to see those posted at some point!

Ahh, I want to go to the Japanese Wonder Festival so bad… maybe some day…