Working with Ami

My time working with Ami has been really fun and enjoyable mostly because it was just so casual and relaxed. If we got something wrong we could just laugh about it and fix it and if we pronounced something wrong we would just make a joke about it. We also got to have some music on and I got to choose sometimes. Often I would come in and Ami would be finishing her lunch as she is only half done with it.

It's not all fun and games though because it took a lot of work making the comic. We had sessions almost every week for about 1 and a half hours. There were sessions that had longer gaps in between and this was hard as I had to get my mind back on to the project. 

I had to learn to remember the Photoshop tools and how to use them. Eventually I got the hang of it and now can do most things easily by myself. Though Ami was doing the teaching I taught her some stuff about anime and manga too.

I asked her these questions as part of my research into her career.

Q1: When did you first start your Career?

In my final year of Uni we did a project called 1st destination which was all about designing and making up business cards and thinking about what kind of thing we wanted to do when we graduated. It was probably then that I first thought about starting my own business. In 2007, a year after graduating I officially registred MiaMai and started trading under that name.

Q2: What inspired you to make and design clothes and art?

I've always been arty. Originally I thought I wanted to do photograhy but naturally moved into Art and fashion. I liked that I could move between the two transferring my illustrations onto clothes and illustrating my designes. I was inspired to create my own designs and loved the idea of creating something that someone fell in love with or that just made them smile and feel good about themselves

Q3: Do you enjoy your work?

Yes I love what I do. I love that being the boss of my own company I can do exactly what I want to do. I understand that I am very fortunate to be able to make a living doing something that I love!

Q4: Were you encouraged to pursue what you love/loved?

Yes my family and friends were always very supportive of me following my creative dreams. I also received encouragement from Uni both from my tutors but also the enterprise unit. I entered a competition in my final year which was all about supporting young entrepreneurs. I actually won the design category so received some business mentoring too which really helped in the beginning.

Q5: What's your favourite part about your job?

I like making and creating so just the process of being creative is probably my favourite thing. I also like being able to see things through from initial design to the final photo shoot.

Q6: How many working hours do you work?

I work part time at a craft organisation called Making Space so I fit Mia Mai into the other days of the week. I don't have set hours. I just work when I want to/can do.

Q7: Who is your inspiration?

Ah good question. Art wise my favourite artist is Audrey Kawasaki, a Japanese artist who's work is just beautiful. I also really like the illustrations of Angelique Houtcamp - she's a Dutch tattoo artist who does very traditional but awesome artwork. Fashion wise I have always admired the late Alexander McQueen. I went to see the show Savage Beauty last year and it was a huge inspiration!

Q8: What's your favourite thing to make/draw?

At the moment I'm really enjoying making lingerie. I went on a professional master class last year and got utterly inspired. I still have more to learn but that's what I'm concentrating on at the moment.

Q9: What item sells the best?

Probably my prints because they are very reasonably cheap. People love paying £10 to have something they love on their wall and I'm able to produce them very cheaply so I still make a good profit.

Q10: Is there anything else career wise you’d like to achieve?

I'd love to get my lingerie to a stage where I could sell it in boutiques etc. I also really like the idea of trying my hand at tattooing (especially as its a huge inspiration of mine). I have bought a machine but not yet tried something out!

My Own Career Aspirations

Personally, I’d like to be an Anime and Manga illustrator. Creating and designing characters is something I already love doing and I do a lot of this in my spare time. Getting to the point where I will be able to do this as a job takes a lot of work so hopefully at the end of this all I can do the thing I love for a living. To start I have practiced drawing my own characters and am slowly growing better at it.

I have started trying to draw characters from animes and such. I started to learn how to colour in and edit my drawings digitally with Ami so now I do that too. I even made a dress with Ami which turned out amazingly and I am very proud of it.

I have been doing this silver arts award and I have already got my bronze arts award. I have also been building up a portfolio of my drawings and artwork so I one day can show it to maybe an arts college or some kind of arty job that I would like to do.

Hopefully getting this silver arts award on top of my bronze will go some way to helping my career path. 

Here are some of my drawings.

So you want to be an Illustrator?

Here are some other routes and Ideas to becoming an Illustrator

- Start to create your own style and techniques and get reviews on your drawings

- Start your own small business selling your art/characters to others

- Go to loads of arty workshops

- Try achieving a bronze/silver/gold arts award

- Make your own portfolio to show

- Go to loads of galleries and view all the different styles of art

- Spread and showcase your art via Social media

- Work with Illustrators to make a piece of art

-Try to get some work experience with artists

Career Pathways

As part of the challenge I have to think about possible career pathways. I've chosen Illustration as the overall job as that is the part I am most interested in. 

Being an Illustrator is a job and set of skills that could be applied to a large variety of industries. Here are a few of examples of the different industries and routes I think one could take with it.


You could be a fashion illustrator, drawing and creating outfits for models.
    

• You can Illustrate your own ideas and see if any fashion brands likes them.   
• You can Illustrate other people's ideas for them
• You could Illustrate jewelry
• You can Illustrate patterns out for materials
• You can Illustrate clothe magazine covers

 

You could be a comic/manga/book illustrator, using your imagination to draw pictures.

• You can Illustrate characters
• You can Illustrate  the scenes and background
• You can Illustrate  the props
• You can Illustrate the covers
• You can even Illustrate your own characters/backgrounds/props and covers and sell them to people

You can be an advertisement illustrator, creating colourful, eye catching ads.

• You can Illustrate the background
• You can Illustrate the object of which is being advertised
• You can Illustrate the font for the text
• You can Illustrate the animation
• You can Illustrate posters

You can be a business illustrator,  

• You can Illustrate the logo’s
• You can Illustrate the business website designs
• You can Illustrate the a short cartoon on the business and what they do
• You can Illustrate new business ideas

Bringing it all together

Back at Ami's today to start pulling the comic together to send to the printer. 

It's taken a really long time to get to this point with some big gaps in between sessions but after a lot of effort I'm very very close to finishing the comic. On reflection, I think if I were to do this again I would ensure that there were no big gaps in between sessions.

The very big things are done, so just lots of tweaking and bits to add such as some words today. We made some last minute changes and moved things around a bit. We went through page by page in a systematic order to ensure that I had everything covered.

I've felt very tired with this now and I just really wanted to get it finished. I felt really relieved when we had got everything covered and happy. It's now ready to go to a Printer. 

I also have some homework relating to the Silver Arts Award Challenge. Unfortunately, the comic isn't the only part of the challenge. I now have to think about possible routes forward should I want to pursue a career in illustration.

Hyper Japan Review

Yesterday I went to Hyper Japan as another part of my Silver Arts Award. Here's my review.

Hyper Japan is a Japanese Festival with games and loads of shops. Most people who came at least wore cat ears or as in Japan they call them Neko ears but some came fully dressed in anime/manga characters, Japanese school outfits, Nekos, traditional kawaii outfits, lolita dolls and many more amazing things. They mostly sold things there such as kawaii plushies and cosplay items but there were other attractions such as a dancing ring where some people danced to anime music and Japanese pop music, a place you could get yourself drawn as a manga character, and even some Japanese foods that were quite tasty.         

We tried some flavoured crushed ice mountain kind of thing but it was over priced and was pretty bad. It didn't taste of anything much - a bad slushy but in a bowl.

I think overall there was too much shopping and not enough activities going on which made it a bit disappointing. In the video game section that was full of activities there was a stand that was just too loud which made it uncomfortable to be in that zone.

Wouldn't rush back.

Me playing some kind of Anime Game in the Video Game area

Colour Scenes

Another chunk of time has passed in between sessions. This time because we've been away, but it's good that I can pick up this Arts Award Challenge as and when.

Today we were scanning in the scenes that I have illustrated using Ami's printer and we loaded them up one by one onto Photoshop. We used Photoshop to colour them in which was fun because I got to decide the colour of things.

After every scene was finished, we gave them page numbers and named them. Then we ticked them off on the rough scene layout in the scrapbook so we knew where we had got to.

The more I did, the better I got. Things are progressing well.