Ding Dong DCon: DesignerCon 2022 Bigger Than Ever

 by Jonathan Bilski

Ding Dong, it's DesignerCon! Ring it loud as we've missed this con. Collectibles of all sorts, plastic, plushie and poster filled not one, but two halls this year at the Anaheim Convention Center. DCon grew yet again from it's roots in Pasadena. Taking place the weekend before Thanksgiving, thousands showed up to grab some gifts...probably for themselves. TTDILA was back to cover it all.

Mondo, seemingly unaffected by its new masters of Funko stood tall out in front as you entered the main hall. Godzilla got a lot of love with various kaiju toys of him and his monster pals. Oddly, what was missing was Funko proper. Funko had been in the same convention center just earlier this year for WonderCon, but the only traces of them was in other booths selling their wares.

It didn't matter to Mondo with it's eye-catching kaiju squid booth. We should have taken a gif, because that eye looks around and changes to a hypnotizing swirly gaze. Under it's view was a fresh crop of irradiated monster toys.

Yeah, we know it's a Madballs, not a Toho monster

 

 There wasn't just monsters from Mondo, check out some new action figures and The Shining collectible.

Not far Mondo we caught up with an artist whose work we've only seen online Haz aka Hazen Becker. We asked him about his time a DCon. "So far, so good. This is my first DCon in a couple of years. To be honest, it's just awesome to back and be surrounded by this much creativity. It's so cool to see all the artists I follow in person."

We asked if this DCon was different than the others his been too. "Uh, it's bigger," he immediately replied.

And then he revealed more was coming from his own work, " I have a lot of stuff coming out soon on my Instagram...I've spent the last year working on stuff, just be on the lookout for it. If it is a product it'll be up on my etsy." Then we had a nice chat on all things Godzilla and upcoming Japanese films.

HAZ's Insta

Grab his stuff here HazSuperStore

Further down and in the back of the con was Goyangii aka Sarah Lee. She had some mighty fine cute
cat's starting fires art. 

Sarah told me of her work, "I'm showing off my illustrations, a lot of cats being silly and doing harmful violent things." Don't worry, they're really not.

What caught our eyes was, of course, the arson cat. Sarah told me "He was born from a day of extreme anger, in short, I was fired from my last job with a single slack message, and it kind of sent me over the edge. But, you know instead of committing actual arson, I just drew about it."

"This is my first DCon, it's more than I expected, huge venue. A lot of cool stuff. I'm enjoying the openness and ease of accessibility. No one bonking into each other, Sarah said.

Noticing her Christmas cards, "Merry Catmas!, y'know I repurposed a cat portrait I did for a friend to make that quick holiday illustration. Never fear to plagiarize your own work."

Goyangii's Insta

Goyangii's Site

much more after the jump

 

Sarah Lee was in more of the artist alley type section of DCon. Now, we think DCon could place smaller artists in a nicer area, maybe in the center so they're sort of encircled by bigger booths or something a little bit more uniformed by style or theme. 

Some might argue random booths are fun to look about, but really it just makes it hard to find stuff. 

We can say with all the space and room, walking through the con itself was nice. Too often cons are

cluttered with people, but DCon was easy to get through, even at its busiest on Saturday.

Parking kind of sucks still. Not sure why, but it seemed one of the main entrances to the Anaheim Convention Center parking lot was closed off. We got in the back way and it was a little ordeal. Not sure why, DCon was so adamant people to use the Toy Story lot. Maybe, they couldn't strike a deal for the lot there? Parking lots also hard to navigate out and no one to navigate you out once in.

As always, the Anaheim Convention Center is always inconvenient by being cashless, thus slowing down getting into the parking lots and buying food. Food that remains to suck. Bring food, leave and come back, never waste your money there.

In the back, but all around was a high collection of cute collectibles like Goyangii's stuff . Here's just a few. Here's some from Mookart. Love the Bearguettes.

 

Liking the shirts from Slumptown Supply Co.

A video game art show was there too, titled Out of Order. Small, but sweet it made us pine for one from Iam8bit or Gallery 1988.

 

In the back, a Kara Furu school festival was happening. You could play six carnival games to earn a little plushie. I like the idea, but the people running the booths all seemed like they wouldn't watch anime or know the anime trope they were in. It was one of the largest booth areas and little kids seemed to like it, but at the same time seemed like the people running it, weren't that into it.

Not that into it would have to be the NFT area, we're not into it here at TTDILA. We're glad it had it's own area.

Wonder why no one was manning the booth at the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

We didn't really get Hero Complex Gallery's eye thing. For $25 and up you could get the eyes of certain characters. Will stick with there great posters in full.

 

And, of course DCon could be a little horny.

Booths like Rarecandy, were a bit rate R and up.

justpaintwithalex is a nice place to end.

DCon grew once again. It's future shape elude us. What is known is it's switching to December next year in Anaheim. We can only hope NFT's are dead by then and DCon makes a nicer map for smaller artists to be checked out with even more collectibles to grab.

Oh, and we guess Sony Animation was there, but other that Spider-Verse, we couldn't think of a thing they made we really cared for. Though it was nice to have some speakers on stage who do animation. Not sue if Saturdays stage needed to be devoted to Sony, but whatever.

-We'll share even more photos of what was there in a gallery photo post.