Finally, my blogging journey about the NFT/Cryptoart space begins.
I have been planning on making a blog documenting my experience in the space for a long, long while now but it’s always been put off because of all the art that I’ve been busy churning out. I realized that I need to get my ass moving on this because the longer I postpone it, the more I have to play catch up when it comes to updates!
As a first post, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Shelly Soneja, an Art Director for mobile and blockchain games based in the Philippines where I manage and mentor a team of 10+ artists. Previous professional experiences include being a digital colorist and team leader in an outsourcing art studio where I worked on storyboards and animatics for advertising agencies around the world. For several years, I was also a full-time freelancer handling a variety of projects like comics, illustrations, and video game art. All-in-all, we’re looking at around 15 years of professional art experience.
Growing up, I was never really formally trained in art. It was an obsessive hobby of mine that I naturally gravitated to; being an awkward kid who spent most of her time at home reading comics, watching cartoons, and playing video games. I would be tracing cartoons off the TV screen, drawing on walls, reinterpreting existing comics I’ve read with my own characters and filling up sketchbooks and journals with them. I learned through copying and observation, as well as with the very scant resources that I could find online at that time (younger readers have no idea how different the internet was back in the day!). I’ve also learned a lot through the various creative jobs that I ended up in, picking up various techniques and processes along the way.
A relic from the past - made when I was in High School for the school's yearbook!
All the things that I obsessed over as a kid (comics, animation, videogames) were big influences on my personal work. I love character-centric pieces, mostly supernatural women that have a mix of both Eastern and Western aesthetics reflecting different moods, themes, and emotions relating to personal experiences.
Pre-pandemic, I was active in local comic conventions, releasing and selling various prints, stickers, and zines of my original artworks that were created digitally. These tended to not be profitable with most of my expenses being spent on rising booth costs and printing out the various merchandise that I wanted to sell, but I did it for the love of it.
I’ve always made art for other people, companies, and clients. The thought of being able to make good money off my own original digital artworks was something that seemed like a distant pipedream. Little did I know just how much exactly things would change.
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