You're right. I love carousels too but have only drawn a couple. I recall Heather Bruton will bust out a gorgeous one every so often :)

Three words: “Furries, Pole Dancing.”

LOL

Have seen it. Confurence used to have an erotic cabaret. To this day I will smile when hearing "Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand..."

There's a really fun one from @thedeadlands.com psychopomp.com/product/skel... But yes, seems like a great opportunity to do any number of things within whatever theme you want.

They don't take off because they're nailed to the carousel, duh.

Not an obstacle in Mary Poppins!

THINGS THAT FINALLY CAUGHT ON AFTER I GOT OUT OF THE BUSINESS: Saints, either animal or anime

Good to hear that they're making a comeback.

OVERALL WINNER: Catalog/menu to show people what you’ve got available - brilliant idea, don’t know why none of us thought of it OVERALL LOSER: My self-esteem about past table displays

Oh! POSTSCRIPT: Rotating table displays still don’t work. We have trained the fans too well Not To Touch Stuff.

Oooh this is super fascinating! I hadn’t thought about the menus before, I’ve seen busier booths use them but hadn’t thought about them for things like “here’s small stuff you might not see easily on the table”

At the end of the day, I think table displays are like vice-presidents—bad ones can definitely hurt you but good ones can’t save you if your art isn’t what people are in to.

Thank you for this run down. I don't do many shows these days and it's nice to know what is general vs just the few local shows I do 💚

This has been a good scene report of table displays. I'm sorry that catering specifically to wombat content isn't profitable, people need to increase your networth so you can support the market.

We sell soft touchable things like plush, so the No Touchy can be an issue! Best we've found is the pitch "Pick them up, hug them, grow emotionally attached!" in a joking way. When we had a spinning display we just sat and slowly spun it by hand, It was cool, used to be a watch display from kmart

If this was a problem I wanted to address I'd consider adding slow-rotation motors. Then I'd want to make sure stopping the rotation by someone holding it in place to closely examine, or choose, one of the things wouldn't damage the mechanism. It'd almost certainly be more trouble than it's worth.

It's low speed, low torque (depending on the bearings in the rotating thingy) - just gotta find something that slips. Two mediocre pulleys, a lack of tension and a looong O-Ring? Keep a full box of them at hand (one will break at most, but you mostly pay for shipping&handling anyways).

Sounds reasonable! I'd consider just using an old turntable mechanism and adjusting the speed to slooow: that might not be an optimal solution but I have some of those here now so no shopping required. Also, I'm never going to need to actually solve this problem :).

Ohhh you could use a sewing machine petal and actually control the spin yourself. So when you are just there you have your toe on the pedal but when someone wants to look at something you can take your foot off. Cute sales techq where you "scroll" to something else that might interest the shopper!

That's a neat idea! I hadn't thought of that yet. Maybe just an on/off switch on the back so you could turn it off if you notice someone trying to look at one thing in particular.

Oof this is so true. I haven't tabled in a long time, but looking at today's displays, I'm like, "Holy heck there's no way I could compete!"

I used to see people with binders of their print designs, but always thought it provided an extra barrier of people having to tell you what they wanted, so I was wary of it. I always did a bin with prints already in bags w/backing boards a la fine art fairs

In Ye Olden Days, it worked. Now…well, the ballgame is very very different.

Yeah, I've been out since Covid hit and everything got cancelled.

One of the vendors at worldcon had a lovely booth and a laminated book/menu. The book was great, because instead of having to sort through bins of prints, she could just go straight to what you wanted. She also had really nice metal bookmarks of her art.

They aren’t on her Etsy page, and when I asked about it, she said they don’t show well online but everyone loves them in person.

A catalog is SUCH a great idea, yes

Do you do any art for fun these days, or do you just not feel it anymore? Your art was a huge influence on me, back in the early Elfwood days (IIRC our Club 23 eras coincided), but after that I stopped creating for a decade. Only got back into it during the pandemic, missed it more than I realised.

I very rarely feel it. I do so much creative stuff with writing and I burned out so hard as a children’s illustrator that I basically just don’t feel the need.

That's fair. I burned out by getting a day job, part time with the intent of doing art on the side. But then it turned into a full time position and a reliable paycheque for 20 years, while completely frying any creative juices I had until all that was left each evening was stress and exhaustion.

Ayyyy, another Elfwood survivor!

Do you ever consider putting your old stuff up on society6 or redbubble or something, for us oldtimers?

You can get it at topatoco.com !

!!!! Off to go find my favorites...

I first came across you with the Patron Saint of Unwanted Hugs. Sent it to a friend, who pointed to your website, where I discovered Digger, two thirds complete. Some time later Terry Pratchett died, so I transferred my fandom, such as it is, to you.

I bought several of your animal saint prints! they hang above my computer where i can go "oooh" at them on a daily basis.

coming through York city centre yesterday they had both a carousel AND a gallopers! Both with their own organs!

They took off in furry circles about 15-18 years ago actually, then petered out already! Time for a come-back! :D

Dammit, I was going to AC then, too!

Baron Engel and TurbineDivinity did TONS back then and inspired other artists to do them as adoptable batches for a'while; the last gasp of sorts was actually only about 7 years ago (just checked) when RickGriffin and Michelle Light did a few that kinda 'capstoned' them as a common thing somehow.

I learned my ABCs from a photo collection of a historic carousel photos taken and assembled by my father. Why are people sleeping on these?!

Don’t know about art, but if you like carousel animals, there’s Sharon Lee’s Archer’s Beach series beginning with Carousel Tides. Magic in the contemporary world in an amusement park in coastal Maine. Carousel animals that are not what they seem.

The 80s ?

Uhm ... I hate to say this *pushes up glasses* but carousel animals can't fly.

Then how do you explain this? www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXCq...

I was rather hoping the delusional psychosis of Merry Poppins would be brought up, but we all know how a poorly swept chimney can lead to such flagrant hallucinations.

Too close to clowns.

Well they should be properly bolted down to prevent them from taking off...

I dunno, fancy impaled animals are kinda eerie.