catscatscatscatscats

cats

Magical girl number 2!! Gonna have a sit down today to do the third one and work out their magic powers I feel this one needs an army of cats 🐈 🎀🎀. Gonna have these badass ladies as prints at dokomi and desucon as well as some new stickers/badges I’m working on since the wood pins won’t arrive in time :( . . . . #mahou #mahoushojo #anime #animegirl #oc #magicalgirl #まほうしょうじょ #nekomimi #dokomi #print #magicalgirlprint #mahouneko https://www.instagram.com/p/ByNS-kBgM54/?igshid=xn4mqhcbbx98

Hi! Even tho I'm from Finland aslo, I'm just gonna ask in english so others can benefit from it too! A few people already asked you how you got started and what tips you could give them for making a career like yours. I'm also interested in what manyfactorers are you currently using for your pins, stickers, posters etc, what would you recommend? Where did you study here in Finland? What expos did you go first? Thank you for your help!

Hello! This is going to be a long answer ‘cause I feel like rambling and also since I wouldn’t want to credit all my art education on university alone.

I’ve been drawing things basically my whole life, on third grade in elementary (or a comprehensive school as it is called here) I applied for a class that specified in art (here in Oulu) where we had double the art classes compared to others and our class teacher had a degree in art education I think. Our teacher was amazing btw, so encouraging and overall lovely person. After sixth grade I was also automatically placed on an art specified class for the second half of comprehensive school. Again our art teacher was amazingly encouraging and since I still loved drawing and making art she recommended an upper secondary school in Helsinki, where I applied and got in. I moved to Helsinki at the age of 16 and studied in Helsingin Kuvataidelukio for three years and after that applied for a number of places. My interest at that time was to study art education, but I also applied for graphic design studies in Muotsikka in Lahti. Muotsikka’s entrance exam was the first I attended and the head teacher told me during the interview that I was doing really well with the assignments and after the four day exam the ones that got in were immediately told so, aaand I got in. Then I went to another entrance exam for art education but in the middle of the exam realised that it was not for me and decided to go study graphic design in Lahti. I studied for five years there (had so many amazing teachers there and learned so much) and got my degree. Don’t know if I can recommend going to Muotsikka now though since LAMK took over and fired many of the best teachers and introduced bad changes + the whole moving from city center to the new campus thing… Ehhhh, I have many fond memories of Muotsikka and little (read none) from LAMK.

The first expo I attended was in Helsinki Comic Festival in year 2009 then Animecon in Turku in summer 2010. The positive response to the things I was selling at Animecon was really encouraging and after that I applied to many conventions both big and small. The artist alley community was fairly small in the day and there were no portfolio applications. Now most of Finnish cons have introduced portfolio applications which is great imo since there so many artists who want to showcase their works. For example in 2017 Tracon had 160 applicants for artist alley and only 44 got a table. My fave events with artist alleys in Finland at the moment are Tracon, Tampere Kuplii and Desucon.

When studying in Muotsikka I made most of my products by hand. I printed books and zines at school and bound my art books by hand. I also screenprinted apparel by hand for a long time. When still living in Lahti I started using Markprint for my paper merch. Would wholeheartedly recommend their services. I also tried using Multiprint (now Grano), but their quality and customer service at the time was not as good. I have my enamel pins made at Pinpops, they are based in Helsinki and the quality of their pins is amazing, I have had some mishaps with them, mostly with colours and one misprint but would recommend anyway. For my sweaters I used the services of Paitamylly, will probably print all my apparel there from now on. I’m using a place called Erweko here in Oulu for all my printed goods. I have a perfect contact person there and they make the best quality products. I’m so happy to be able to work with them, they send me paper samples to my home and are really efficient and I’m really happy how my new art book came out since they printed it.

Hope these help