Joining Artshine's Launchpad + Accelerator program.

 

I have been so busy lately!  Like you can't believe hence the very late updates on my blog.  The way am going, this might have to be a once a month thing for a while.

So what has been happening?  Well, I joined Artshine's Launchpad + Accelerator program around  mid-Feb. I mentioned it on this post.  I signed up with them as an artist so they represent  my work and give me opportunities and exposure to their contacts and clients and see if anyone is keen to licence my work. I also signed up with their business coaching program where I have coaching to help grow my business, work through what am lacking in my portfolio and anything else that concerns me.  So far I've been given the opportunity to submit for greeting cards, present a collection to American suppliers and am currently working on my folio for them to show at a convention in May. I have learnt many things so far like what am lacking in my collection as a fabric designer, how to make a look book, how to present to a client and resources to improve my illustration presentations.  I find Vinh Lam (my business coach) to be a great resource thus far and he's made a lot of suggestions on how to utilize my current work.  The saying "work smarter not harder" comes to mind but while I try and crack into this industry, I am doing both!

I am currently preparing a combination of really new work and revising old ones that I think I can turn into patterns and it's working out so far.  I've done a lot of illustrations series over the years and I now get a chance to breath life into some work that are close to 10 years old.  Not too shabby in the re-use department I think.

It has been over a month since I signed up with Artshine and I can safely say that I am enjoying the challenge so far and I find myself quite inspired to do more look books, create more collections and just see how far I can go with this.  It is scary as well.  It is an investment and am not 100% sure when and if it will pay off.  Right now, I am enjoying learning and pushing myself as an illustrator and creating a variety of cohesive collections.  It was more of a fly by the seat of my pants when I accidentally got licenced the first time and I am hoping that with some guidance I can upskill and jumpstart my licencing journey faster.

For other news, I am still working at Studio Moshi on a project am not allowed to say anything about. it's looking fantastic and it's a project that I am happy to say that I would be very proud to have my name in the credits once it comes out, just for the look of it.  I finished a freelance job on the side as well and I have another project in the works.  Luckily the deadline for that one is really flexible so I'll work on it again once I finish some real big deadlines for Artshine in late April.