GLOR10US RO@D retrospective

03 Sep, 2024

happy 10th anniversary, sideM! this year, i hosted the GLOR10US RO@D sideM fanbook with izzy. it's a couple months late, but here's the usual project report. the zine and bonus page are both available to view for free on my itch.io.

intent

i've been a sideM fan since 2016 and izzy even longer. our friend ham mentioned wanting a sideM zine, so we decided to host one to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the series we loved. ¹

because it was such a special occasion, we wanted to make sure everyone could participate. this is one reason for the unique format, but in general, i'm uncomfortable with the rejection system which is typical in most zines.

of course, i understand why it's necessary for most physical zines, but from a moderation POV, i don't like having to judge if someone's artwork is 'good enough' to go into something as casual as a fanart book. it can be fun to analyze someone's artwork and note their strong points and what they have to improve on, but actually emailing someone to say "sorry, our zine has too many people already" is way too stressful for me.

seeing people get sad over rejection makes me sad. and it's one thing to be sad over IRL rejection or even sad over original artwork rejection, but rejection over fanart, when it's supposed to something that makes you happy?

i'm the first to say that drawing fanart can be pretty upsetting to me over the years, so i'd rather avoid making people feel more upset if i can help it. there might be times in the future where i have to use a portfolio-application method again, but for the 10th anniversary, i wanted everyone to at least be able to participate in memorializing their artwork even if i couldn't provide free copies for everyone.

format

to make sure everyone could participate, we included a idol-only option, which allowed artists who didn't have time to draw backgrounds or multiple characters to join in. this also had the benefit of reducing page count, which made the book much lighter and cheaper to produce– which was vital given that it would be P4P for artists due to the number of participants.

based on the original twitter poll interest check, we were expecting 130+ participants, so we had options for cross-unit and cross-branch lined up... but we didn't get nearly as many sign-ups LOL. never trust twitter polls! i feel bad that my warnings of "we might not be able to accept everyone if there are too many people!" might have scared some artists away.

TBH i also think a lot of potentially interested artists just did not read the format information correctly and assumed a commitment of a full page was required.

process

everything went so well! i said this a lot of times to the artists during the creation period, but i've never run or participated in a zine that went this smoothly and on-schedule before. i'm not bragging about myself; i was the biggest cause of any delays in production. i'm just so amazed by how quick and well everyone followed the deadlines so that we were able to produce the zine physically before izzy and i went to japan for 9th. with nearly 90 people!

i'm used to participating in zines where everyone is so constantly busy with other fanprojects and IRL art work that they have to be bugged for months to get any shit done! again, i'm the biggest problem here, so i really want to thank everyone for making this such a stress-free experience.

additionally, the environment of the zine server was so nice and supportive.

i've been closed off from others and largely unwilling to make new friends due to shit that happened years ago, so i'm really unconfident with my artwork and generally shy and awkward. it's still hard to get close to others because i don't like sharing the specifics of my mental issues, but i had a lot of fun talking in a zine server for once.

production

production was smooth as well, with the only issues again stemming from myself. the main thing to note is that if you're running a zine or opening a temporary online store, don't bother making a new paypal account just for that. because paypal will put your account on hold over the dozens of sudden new payments. luckily the production and shipping cost was low enough that i could pay for it out of pocket until our money got returned.

we used mixam for printing. i've used the australian branch for my own shinsoku dojinshi before, and they're generally the cheapest choice with the most upfront printing options in the US. since they have a lot of printers over the country, they're pretty hit-or-miss, but i was pleasantly surprised by how good and quick the service was. i think it took approximately three weeks from ordering to shipping out with an order quantity of around 105. however, i know that it can take a lot longer if you're ordering a low amount of copies.

thanks

i literally have nothing bad to say about this zine so we're at the thanks section already.

of course, the biggest thanks goes to izzy who hosted the zine with me! i'm really grateful that she's been one of my closest friends for nearly a decade now and i'm so happy we could work together to make this project come to life even after so long. i was lucky enough to finally meet her IRL in japan for sideM 9th this year and she was just as funny and kind and cute and stylish and passionate as she is online! it was so so fun to hang out with her and our other friends and i can't wait to go back next year.

i'm a very prideful person so i often try to do everything all by myself but having someone else to rely on and talk to just made the experience so much more enjoyable and i truly appreciate her for dealing with my weird quirks and personality. she also took on a lot of the stuff i thought i'd be able to handle myself, like drawing/coloring all of the adorable chibis on the cover and filling in a missing page– not to mention shipping out all the zines too! i'm gushing so much, but i'm just so happy to have been able to work on this project with the biggest sideM fan i know and my very beloved friend.

i also want to thank black, whose name i used for clout to prove that we knew wtf we were doing (that ended up being unnecessary since literally no one from regular 'zine community' applied to the project). even though izzy was there i still complained to them nonstop. oops. big thanks to calamari-san and J, who i also bothered immensely for advice. ²

of course, thanks to the buyers who helped cover part of the costs for artists, and for anyone who downloaded the digital zine afterwards– just knowing that you've viewed our work makes me very happy.

finally, thank you again to all of the artists who participated. i said this earlier, but i'm really amazed at how smooth the entire process was compared to my previous experiences running or helping out with zines/projects that had far less people. nearly 90 people is a lot for a digital zine let alone a physical one and the whole thing just went so incredibly well that i can't believe it.

why do people make collaborative fanzines?

i've retroactively decided to make this the topic of my last three projects, which each explored a different 'collaboration' or 'zine' format to usual.

it's embarrassing to admit, but i'm someone who's really interested in fandom history and the topic of zine history is one that i'm especially invested in. ³ after all, you have to wonder how these books went from the only means of distributing amateur sci-fi fiction to being massive multi-merch projects that can reach $30k+ in revenue and involve official voice actors and such.

i couldn't say i really understood the appeal despite participating in such projects myself. my friends who had moderated their own said it was nice to see people all draw works of a specific topic they liked, but when i ran my own earlier in the year i just felt extremely guilty about making other people follow my standards (granted this was because the format was stupid). generally, i would rather run an exchange with more direct reward or a fanweek with less obligation to participate– and both event types have less limitation on format either way.

but i think i finally got it when i ran this zine. seeing everyone's PASSIOOON come together to form such a wonderful collection of artwork made me feel so happy. it's really exciting that so many artists' love can come together as one package, and it's even more exciting to be behind the process seeing everyone's hard work and making friends along the way.

i also forgot how exciting physical zines can be. seeing your artwork professionally printed and bound for the first time feels pretty special, so i'm glad that i could offer others that opportunity. ⁴

conclusion

with the exception of sideM santa, this will be the last fanproject i run or participate in this year. doing so much while working full-time has taken a bigger toll on me than i'd like to admit and participating in short-term projects generally isn't fulfilling for me. ⁵ for all i wrote about befriending others, i don't have the free time to use social media LOL but it was very nice to meet people. i'll be hibernating and focusing on my personal work from now on.

i guess i should write about sideM itself as well, but i'm sure you can tell how much i love M from the fact that genbu is somehow still my favorite character ever eight years later. or rather, if i started talking about how much i loved M, i would never be able to stop.

for all artists, buyers, and anyone who downloaded the zine, thank you so much for your support again. let's all enjoy sideM forever and ever.

appendix i. bonus page

this was like a sidequest i took on for myself which literally no one else asked for.

i hosted TGAA collab the previous year with the intent of making a hapjak collaboration-style site template that was easily modifiable and usable by others. i never shared the retrospective blog post anywhere publicly accessible, so it never was used by other people and for various reasons i became frustrated with myself for making it in such a troublesome way when it would only be used once.

the idol artwork from GLOR10US RO@D served as the perfect opportunity to use it again though, so i went and did that just to make my brain happy... and the code was fucking incomprehensible! there's absolutely no way it would be usable to anyone outside of myself and i don't want to deal with that pain in the ass again so i'm retiring the template.

anyway, the collab page also holds all of the comments from the artists who participated. i feel really happy reading everyone's thoughts about sideM.

appendix ii. mine

the cover was a collaboration with izzy. i drew the main trio and colored the leader chibis and some other chibis, but we both did a lot of clean-up work on each other's art LOL. i CTFU cuz i got touma's face right on the first try but we had to redraw shu and teru like 20 times.

it's our second time collaborating on a sideM fanbook cover after the 2018 SONG for RE@SON zine. the previous cover is still one of my favorite pieces, so i'm happy we were able to expand on this concept even more!

i also drew shinsoku ikkon's page artwork! TBH i was actually the only person who chose shinsoku as my first choice for the page art (none of the other units had this problem LMFAO) so i wanted to go extra hard for it. i tried using dynamic symmetry for the first time. i still feel like it's a kinda bullshit composition technique but it looks cool so maybe it worked?

#art #illustration #report #zine