Hello everyone!

I've opened up commissions again proper but this time on ko-fi. Do check it out here https://ko-fi.com/firestarteronibi/commissions

Lots of examples and style types to be found here on FA and on my behance site on kofi.

So I'm still looking for work and I wanna do commissions but I'm not sure what to offer or what people want. Been out of the loop for a while now since I was busy with full time work and managing my toy stuff.

Any suggestions?

Commissions are open for the year. It's a rough start to 2017, just lost my job due to company instability. A pity, I liked it there and was good at what I did but they were running that place all kinds of crazy and a lot of my colleagues have also been let go. Been shuffling about looking at part time work and may take up writing articles when I'm not drawing or sculpting or running my webstore.

Anyways, have a lookie.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/22871834/

So.. I'm flying out to LA tomorrow for DesignerCon on the 19th-20th of November! I'll also be popping by CTN briefly on the morning of the 18th before I do my set up. It's been a while since I actually puttered about in LA. I can't wait to meet old friends and make new ones and visit Disneyland and visit the museum and ahh so many things I want to do.

I'll be over at booth 1121, Firestarter Design at Designer Con. Come say hi!

Opening up some Balinese Boogie slots!

Examples :
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/20747130/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14886950/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14830613/

Email me at renegadedragons[at]hotmail.com with the following info :

Character Name
Character Species
Graffiti Spray Y/N
Character Reference

Prices start at 30USD.

In the light of the recent FA fiasco...

I am usually on tumblr. http://firestarterdesign.tumblr.com/

My personal tumblr is this one though http://therealfirestarter.tumblr.com/

I also use blogspot http://firestarterdesign.blogspot.sg/

And my shop can be found here http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

... if you want a fanpage to follow.. https://www.facebook.com/therealfirestarter

It's muh birfday! Again! I'm getting old argh. Spending the day at work hustlin' and making it rain. Tonight I will have cake! But yeah I don't usually celebrate my birthday much, usually treat it any other regular working day. Also I think I'm getting a promotion. I think. Boss was talking to me about giving me my own department to run and having me art direct the aesthetics of all the toy design that happens in the company. It's not on paper yet so I don't wanna celebrate prematurely. I'll just wait and see what happens during the company restructuring sometime next week.

The annual Toy, Game and Comic convention is coming up round the corner again! I've been hella busy with prepping new stuff and also with a Ghibli tribute show that I've been invited to participate in. There will be new stuff for sale and I will be rolling out promos images on FA along with the usual social media websites. Leftover merch will be made available on my bigcartel store http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

And that's it for now.

I've had a wonky week of flu, iphone screen breaking, book going missing in the mail and so on. Looking forward to my long weekend where I can hopefully recover and plan more art things.

Work is busy and convention season is making things even busier. However! Most of my company is away tending to SDCC and I figured I can squeeze in some commissions during this down time. Offering my Balinese Boogie head shots which can double as name card sized badges.

Examples here.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13940120/

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14830613/

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14886950/

They are 25USD each, converting them to a name card sized badge is free of charge. I am testing out the new google doc form so if I don't get back to you in like a day or two, please poke me on FA.

Commission form is here. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1h9.....?usp=send_form

My adventures are over for now and I can take a breather, I think. Going to an expo overseas alone to booth is tough. You need lots of friends and support on the other side which thankfully I did have and you need to be ok with being a bit of a loner. Which I'm also totally ok with. The expo wasn't exactly a raging success but I did manage to sell about half the stock I brought and considering that I'm new to the whole toy thing, I'm chalking it up to be in the 'pretty good' zone. Saw a lot of nifty 3A pieces, missmonstermel's seraphim toy prototype and lots more.

Photos are on my FB fanpage. .. You guys should follow. https://www.facebook.com/therealfirestarter

The new golden edition of Noodles is thus now available at my bigcartel store, link is right here. http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

Super limited since I could only handpaint so many pieces for the show. Oh and shirts. You should totally check out the shirts. The material and print is good and they look great on you and; look I have 3 shirts and they're all fantastic and I'll be printing more for myself to wear so there self promotion done.

Work wise I'm on some big exciting projects and I hope my company sends me over to sunny California for work related stuff, we'll see how that works out. Need to convince the boss that this is a good investment. I don't think they'll bring me to SDCC but I don't mind if they drag me over to the smaller, nearby conventions. Like the Tokyo Toy Show.

I think I may be quiet on FA for a while. I'm up to my nostrils in full time and freelance commercial work and at the same time trying to figure out new toy production and adventuring out to Bangkok for the Thailand Toy Festival. My evenings are pretty kaput; split evenly into gym nights or freelance work nights and don't even try to talk to me about weekends. Weekends are for errands and mailing pandas out.

I'm really trying to push for the making and production of my Manekozilla toy, small run, all resin. It's a toy I've been wanting to make but couldn't due to cost and uh.. I think it'll prove really popular. So small run first, to see how the market reacts to it.

In the mean time. Back to work.

In an interesting twist to the new year, I have just been hired by a toy company as Senior Illustrator/Concept Artist and uh.. I've only spent two days so far working and it seems ok for now. I work with pretty big franchises; Disney, Marvel, DC, Star Wars blah blah blah and we're moving to a new office at the end of the month. Ironically, I started getting more emails regarding freelance work on the second day of work.. go figure.

Once I acclimatize to the work day though, some freelance at night shouldn't be a problem. I am neither really open or closed to commissions at the moment..? If someone inquires then I'll look into it and see if it can fit into my schedule. I'm also looking into how I will juggle running my business while working full time; still got lots of Noodles in stock y'know.

Just got back from my trip and I'm exhausted... and the shop is now selling t shirts!

http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel....../category/tees

Please note the Chinese New Year delays that will occur over February, I expect things to settle down by the time March rolls in.

It's been.. a hectic start to the new year. Had a couple of job related emails and some interviews and it's been a whirlwind of stuff, so much so that I'm feeling kinda disoriented from everything that's been happening. Specifically it was an interview for a part time teaching position and for a job at a toy company. I have mixed feelings about EVERYTHING.

The interview for the toy company was just yesterday and uh... I think it went ok. Stable income is good and nice and useful but part of my head worries about being able to go to conventions and stuff. Some may feel this is a trivial thing to worry about but when you're growing your business, you kinda need to stay active lest your audience starts to forget about you. I'm not sure how I will juggle full time work alongside running my own stuff; this is vastly differently from just doing commissions on the side and can be far more time consuming. I try to keep a positive outlook towards full time work gigs but it can be hard, considering my track history. On that note, I'm tired of being guilted into working OT. It's an annoyingly Asian thing, the whole oh we mustn't leave the office while the boss is still in mindset is a terrible thing but people do it because they don't want to uh.. lose face.

On a better and much more uplifting note, T Shirts are happening! They will launch at my bigcartel store on the 6th of Feburary, when I'm back from a short trip out to the Philippines so keep an eye out for those. I'll make another journal announcement when I get back anyway. If there's a design that you want on a shirt but it's not in my store, let me know!

A fairly good start to the new year, I think. Sold 3 pandas already and it can only get better from here on, I hope. Hoping to do more toy related stuff this year and more merch... and overseas conventions. Financially I'm also hoping to get more independent and actually be able to give my parents a decent amount of rent money. Anyway it's stupid to move out; who the hell moves out of home when your island country is a mere .. what. 26 miles across?

Commissions are open; check out this handy dandy chart http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15046380/ or http://buttburnerart.blogspot.sg/ for more stuff. I'm being cautious with the slots since it's still the early part of the year and projects could crop up on me any time.

T-shirts are long overdue and I've signed up with a company that does on demand printing... Which technically means I can print off any design I've done so far in whatever quantity I'd like. Hoping to get some samples up so I can start listing them on my bigcartel store.

I've finally printed and packaged a small batch of stickers for sale on my bigcartel store, do check it out! Also if you've been holding out on getting a panda, fret not! I still have stock of them and shipping prices have been significantly reduced.

http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

Commissions are going a bit slow at the moment, hopefully they pick up after the Christmas holidays are over. I have a lot of travelling plans next year that involve toy conventions, both for work and pleasure and I need to save up for all that. I may be hitting LA at the end of next year for a weird mash up of Designer Con and CTN which are unfortunately happening over the same weekend so that's gonna be interesting. Other places I'll try to land in include Taipei, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Tokyo. We'll see; it's an ambitious schedule and one that I'm not sure I can keep up with.

Alright guys it's time for a sale! 15% off on a minimum spend of 50%, use the code 'FIRESTARTERFRIDAY'. Sale runs from Friday till Monday. Go go go!

http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/
http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/
http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

Alright guys it's time for a sale! 15% off on a minimum spend of 50%, use the code 'FIRESTARTERFRIDAY'. Sale runs from Friday till Monday. Go go go!

http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/
http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/
http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

After doing reviews of my shipping prices and seeing that the government seems to have stopped playing around the numbers, I've finally been able to lower the price of shipping down to just USD15 per panda. If you've been thinking of grabbing one for Christmas, now is the time! It will come via registered mail and a tracking number so you can keep an eye on your package until it arrives.

Check it out! http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

And I am back home now.

Despite the rather lukewarm crowds and poor exhibition planning, I did manage to sell off all the pandas I brought with me and made a ton of new friends and contacts. And now I have con fever. No not con crud. Just the insatiable need to go to more toy conventions next year.

Ideally I would like to hit Taipei, Indonesia and L.A for the conventions which will run from around August/September onwards right into November. I uh... I'm gonna need to save up for all this but gosh I think it's going to be so much fun. The toy community is a really tight bunch and is super friendly and welcoming and aaaah I love it.

Off to Jakarta tomorrow morning for ITGCC for more toy comic and game madness. I'm not going alone though; got some help/backing from another toy company and we're sharing a booth. Bringing limited numbers of Noodles with me along with my 2014 sketchbooks.

Kinda wish I could be at CTN though; all my favourite artists and people will be there and I want to grab me some Cory Loftis stuff. He was kind enough to ship a poster that wouldn't fit in my bag when I went over in 2012 and if I could I would ask him to ship me ALL the things he's selling this year. ... In fact just ship me everyone's things.

Flying to LA is pricey; I found a fairly good rate of 1.6k via Philippine airlines which is a pretty decent airline. Maybe next year. We'll see.

Anyway, wish me luck!

p.s ... May be dropping my new commission price list later today..

Sketch commissions! Yay!

Starting at $10 per feral, $15 if you want it stylised like the canine and the deer.

Starting at $15 per anthro, $18-20 if you want it stylised.

Keeping them loose and a little messy; there may be structural construction lines here and there.

Examples below.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14660703/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14431196/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14440146/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14478351/

Comment to grab a slot!

All prices are in USD.

Commissions are open again!

Balinese masks are available again for commission http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14830613/

And everything else from reference sheets to sketches can be found here. Do make sure to read my ToS while you're at it! http://buttburnerart.blogspot.com/

I've also updated my store with some watercolours and as usual you can pick up your very own Noodles the Panda while stocks last. http://firestarterdesign.bigcartel.com/

Running my business has been very stressful and sometimes I think about going back into full time work.. I've actually been advised to go into advertising since the pay is good and I need the money to help run the business and produce more stuff but I'm not entirely sure if it's the right place for me. I might look into it on a freelance basis though. I may have a convention coming up in Indonesia, still sorting out the logistics for that and how that will work out; never been to Jakarta before so that's going to be a new experience.

Oh man I'm so exhausted from the convention! Met a ton of people, new friends and new fans; that was pretty awesome. What wasn't so awesome was the crowd. I remember it being a much thicker crowd in the previous years and this year's lot felt a little... subdued. I spoke to other vendors and they all agreed with me that something was a little off this year. I did sell some of my pandas though so that was good! And I had people say they found my work via instragram/tumblr/twitter.

So with that I am officially launching Noodles the Panda for online sale! It's 60USD a piece, comes with a limited edition print and vinyl sticker. Shipping is 20USD to the USA, Australia, Europe, Japan, New Zealand etc. If you want it to be registered mail and with a tracking number, shipping will be 25USD. Shipping rates are subject to change since the government is apparently going to be doing some price shuffling but for now these are the current rates.

I'll also have prints, an artbook and stickers available so if you want to toss those in along with the panda toy, I can give a discount!

Email me at renegadedragons[at]hotmail.com for more enquiries.