TFF 2018 was a blast. Seriously, I can only remember a couple of conventions I have enjoyed on the same level, and they both had specific aspects to them that made them great, as opposed to an overall good experience at TFF, hanging out with friends every night, having raunchy good times, and doing splendidly at sales.

In particular, dracontiar has proven once again to be the best person to room with for me artistically speaking. It's inspiring to see someone I consider a much more established and skilled artist deal with their personal demons and overcome them, and uplifting to get to help. Also she is super easy to get along with and a very good friend :3

Not that her table monkey and malga aren't good people too, and malga is a very good friend going through some challenging times as well. But she needs to be more aggressive about getting bed space if she wants to actually sleep at a convention some time!

TFF 2018 was our most successful con ever by net and our second best by gross! We are taking the lessons learned there and applying them going forward which means two things: fan art and personal projects (for me, Mao has a different focus). I think in the future our fan art will be exclusively uploaded to Mao's Menagerie as I am viewing it as commissions for her, and beyond that I think I'm going to be using my human name on those pieces. Not that I'm embarrassed to be filthy perverts but it's a business smart decision.

I also finally started ~officially~ doing con sketches and did one a day. I think they turned out reasonably well, though the desire to hit CTRL+Z was IMMENSE and as pointed out by a lot of people, they were more than sketches (forever an issue for me).

We hung out with a lot of people this weekend! I can't even list them all but off the top of my head it was great meeting and hanging with affywolf and finally hanging out with treblevandoren in person. Of course it was great to see azal, Ramses696 and rumstag (and anyone else I'm forgetting). The party with all our telegram friends was a blast too! There are even more people we DIDN'T get to hang out with or even see! I didn't so much as catch a glimpse of whines or fades and didn't get to say hi to seamen or a bunch of people I normally chat with, didn't get to hang out with toradoshi and kiyoantifox and I literally blew off silvyshadow when he was trying to tell me a story because I was running around crazy!

As promised my commissions are finally closing. I did not do a single piece of personal art (beyond a couple sketches) in 2017 and that's frankly very much not cool. I'm going to do a few pieces of fan art for each con and start working on my comic (FINALLY - overthinking these things is BAD and it's been like two years since I started plotting it). I will still finish out current commissions within 90 days but I will probably take a week in that to make some new stuff for Haven Con.

Finally, I want to thank the staff of TFF for their efforts. Moving hotels is an unavoidable aspect of growth and the furry fandom is for some reason terrified of growth and success, but I attend cons so large that they could contain every furry convention in the world with room left over and STILL feel the presence of the community at those events, so that fear is just utter bullshit - unless, of course, you are ashamed to be a furry. Unfortunately about 50 people are being very vocal in their opposition to the convention moving to the new hotel, and most of them didn't even attend. I think the staff hears that and I think it's bad for their morale - frankly anyone who works in a customer facing role knows that for every complaint there are ten delighted individuals who don't say a word - but it doesn't help unless we voice our feelings. The con grew, quite a bit, and sales were up for almost every vendor I chatted with. That means TFF is doing JUST FINE, and as I noted already, it was one of the best cons I've ever attended and I am excited for next year.