Studio Life Shifting

Hello friends!

I know it's a few days later than normal for me to show off the completed designs and send out the password. While I've been toiling away at the more complicated designs of SLR N3ptune and the peony design (which I grossly underestimated the complexity of), I was delayed a decent amount this past week because Taka had a client—also a fellow pin maker—fly in to get tattooed by him for 2 days (about 7-9 hour sessions each), plus we took one afternoon to hang out with them yesterday. While the tattoo sessions themselves were not the cause of my delay in completing the vectors, my delay was caused primarily due to the fact that I was more or less made to be a hostess when the client's boyfriend invited himself to hang out in my living/work space rather than sit in Taka's very large studio space which we even just got a couch and table for guests of clients. Taka tried to encourage their boyfriend to hang out in his space, but they said they'd get "bored" and wanted to watch tv and play video games in our living room. Naturally, while we are friends with them, I couldn't really focus on work with them yelling whenever they got excited or upset during gaming with their friends online. Plus, I can't help but want to make sure someone is comfortable and has everything they need if they're in my home. I'm very much a hostess/homemaker type, though usually by choice. >_<

So I do apologize for the fact that I lost a few days of focused work time due to this, but want to reassure you this won't likely be an issue in the future because Taka and I have some pretty big news to share!

About a week or so ago, while browsing stories on IG, I came across an ad for a new Seattle tattoo studio that was advertising they were looking for artists. The tattoo shop is focused on Japanese tattoo and I got a little shocked when I saw they were offering tebori services. I told Taka he should reach out because he was the first tebori artist in Seattle, but is still little known as he doesn't have a shop and needed to stake his claim as premiere tebori artist in Seattle. I also recommended he maybe try to work there otherwise they'd be his direct competition, but get more clients than him since they have a storefront.

Now I understand my stance on this may come off as aggressive, and I know people like to say "collaboration, not competition," but I also know how hard Taka has worked to be able to tattoo here in Seattle. One of the reasons we chose to stay in the NW despite the fact that it is so expensive to live here and our goal of owning a house seems nigh impossible, was because of the 8 or so legitimate Japanese tebori tattoo artists in the US, there is no legit Japanese ones in the Northwest, so he'd have a monopoly on it. So I can't say I didn't feel threatened by the fact that this tattoo shop was offering tebori and wanted him to research it more to either a) make his presence known, b) find out if it's a legit Japanese practitioner, or a wannabe, and c) possibly find colleagues in his field if they were legit. As it turns out, the shop owner is in fact Japanese, however not a tebori artist—they do only machine work. The owner is based in Vancouver, BC, but has a shop in LA and is opening another in Seattle in May during Golden Week. He's able to offer tebori because he has a tebori artist friend in Japan that will be able to guest spot in the shop on occasion, so it wouldn't be competition for Taka and Taka still maintains the title of being Seattle's only resident tebori tattooer.

I realize it also may sound pretentious to say there are wannabe tebori artists, but this comes from Taka's experience around foreigners pretending to know how to do tebori. Most foreigners (to Japan) will usually beg a tebori master to let them hang around their studio for a few days to "see" how tebori is done, or get tattooed, then after watching how it's done will try to mimic it back in their home countries (especially prevalent in Europe in South America) never having actually trained for the months or years it takes to become a skilled tebori artist. Taka would watch foreigners come to his master and say, "Oh, sensei sensei, you're so amazing," either so they could have clout for having met a master in Japan when they return to their countries and name-dropping along with photos on Instagram. Taka found that to be so disrespectful because while those foreigners would meet with his master for a few days, they'd then go to another tebori master and do the same thing. And that might not seem like a big deal, but uhhh, a lot of tebori masters are from competing "families," and when I say family, I think you know what I mean...

So anyway, the news is, after Taka spoke with the owner of the tattoo shop and both seem to think it will be a mutually beneficial situation. Taka is about 90% sure he will take a position in the shop, which means I won't have to worry playing hostess for guests of Taka's clients if I don't have the time for it.

In the past I've been resistant to Taka working for a shop because in general, shops take at least 40% of an artist's cut. So if a tattoo artist, makes say $300 during a session, the artist only gets $180 of that. The reason shops take a big cut is because they take care of the shop rent, pay for disposable tubes, gloves, cleaning supplies, razors, machines for cleaning (autoclave and ultrasonic), etc.. However, because Taka makes his own tebori tools custom for each client (which takes about 8 hours per needle bar), makes most his inks, has his own cleaning machines, etc, he and I have always felt it wouldn't be fair if the shop takes so much of his cut since he's providing most of everything he needs. That said, we also recognize that Taka will never really get renown for his work if he doesn't build a bigger name for himself working in a shop as opposed to doing private work. So we're essentially seeing this as an "advertising" cost for himself. The shop will also benefit because they can have the only tebori artist in Seattle working in their shop, giving them more legitimacy as a Japanese tattoo shop. Furthermore, the owner explained that if Taka becomes the top earner, he can keep 80% of his income, and he also understands that if and when Taka has built a name for himself, he will likely strike out on his own and create his own private studio again.

So why is this such big news and so important?

Well, to be honest, it will absolutely have an effect on Shishido Creative. As you all know by now, Taka isn't the best about meeting art deadlines because if we had it my way, I'd have an entire year's worth of pin designs finished in advance, as opposed to waiting for him to finish his designs right before the end of each month. With Taka focusing more on his career (if he takes the job), he will likely be unable to focus on our brand even more than he does now, at least the fan art end of it.

I've basically told him, if he chooses to take this job, I'd like him to spend the rest of this month trying his damnedest to sketch and complete as many pin designs as he can for the remainder of 2022. I know he can do it because would you believe he drew all the pretty winkers original collection within the span of about a month and a half? That was 12 new designs after the initial Cutie Moon and Baby Love design. This isn't to say we won't still do the pin club in 2023, but there is a high possibility that we will only offer 1 Pretty Winker per month. With this likely shift in work for Taka, we will probably produce more original designs, because in Taka's downtime at the tattoo shop, he'll naturally be drawing a lot more original Japanese style artwork which I have no doubt will be amazing and we'll want to produce products of.

From the beginning of Shishido Creative, I chose this name for our brand because I never assumed we'd always do one type of art or style. Yeah, as a name it's a bit generic and vague to say "Creative" but it was purposeful because it meant as long as we are creating, the name still stands true to what we, the Shishidos, are doing as a company.

Rest assured, even if Taka's presence in the company wanes over time, this does not mean we won't continue to make fan art—I love making fan art and will continue to do so as I have passion for it. But I do want you all to understand that over time, it may come to be that Shishido Creative art may also shift in style and pace a bit. As you all probably know by now, I handle the majority of the business, which means very often I don't get the free time to create much art myself. I wish I had the time to show you my capabilities as an artist. While I do not believe I'm as good an artist as Taka, I also have a lot of art I've not shared very much of. If you do go to older posts, you could find my more details artwork in art nouveau style, but I also have so much tucked away in our house that I've never shown.

Like Taka, I am actually pretty darn good at mimicking different styles, including, yes, Naoko. I spent my early teenage years trying to copy many styles of manga artwork from so many different mangaka, especially Naoko Takeuchi and Chiho Saito (Utena) . So if it comes down to Taka being unable to continue creating our Pretty Winkers in his own emulation of Naoko's style, it will likely come down to me creating Pretty Winkers in my version of Naoko's style. It's possible you won't be able to tell my work from his, but also possible you will. haha only time will tell!

Furthermore, if the brand comes down to me doing closer to 90-100% of the work, well, I'll likely put focus on spending more time doing art and a little less on business efficiency. Meaning, I may possibly limit my trips to the post office to once a week like some artists, or I may close the public shop a few weeks at a time, reopening when we have new collections or drops. That's not what I want of course, but a consideration if I need to have more time to spend on creating. Or you know, if we are doing extremely well at balancing our finances and can afford it between Taka's work and the brand, then maybe I can hire help for vectoring, or fulfilling orders, or managing social media/product photography. Though that's probably a stretch because I'm a bit of a control freak. >_<

ok, can you show me the designs now?

If you actually read all that and made it this far, thanks! And if you just skipped ahead, that's cool too, but you might go back and read because it kinda affects the pin club in the future. :p Anyway, here's the designs for April.

For the mugen club, we have Taka's favorite floral to draw, the peony (botan)! As I mentioned earlier, I severely understimated how long it would take me to vector this. I though it was a simple enough design so I saved it for last to vector. I couldn't be more wrong! It definitely took me longer to work on than Calaveras (the baddie Pretty Winker). In any case, we are both super happy with it. You might notice at the base of the peony is the houju that we like to sneak into a lot of our designs. Houju are a holy item used to purify in buddhism and you'll see it a lot in Buddhist art, statues, etc, sometimes being held by deities, sometimes even worn on their headdresses.

The design that took the least amount of time to work on was Calaveras. Still took a while, but not as long as the other two.

I worried initially her design would be somewhat boring with just her whip and her hair having no looseness or flowiness to play around with, but I requested Taka add her wine glass and the space pillars in the headquarters of the Black Moon Clan and I think it looks amazing now!

And at last, we have the ever-gorgeous, Neptune to pair with last month's Uranus!

I feel like her civilian design she looks a little demure, and here, she looks a little more powerful and flirtatious which is a side of Neptune I always enjoy seeing. The background is a little bit wild, but hey, the ocean is always hard to tame!

Pin Drop

All boxes have been sent out unless they have original designs. This time around because I needed to finish up the vectors, I needed more time to get the extra info sheet materials I pack in every box finished to send those out, but should have all that handled and shipped out by Friday. I'll then go ahead and get pics of all the most recent pins taken and inventory counted to drop all the extra pins in the secret shop from the latest batch on Monday. I'll plan on having the drop Monday, 4/11 at 5pm PST.

Production Updates

And now, as always, time for some production updates! Well, the update is no updates. >_< While the factory was starting to pick up the pace, unfortunately, many regions in China are on a semi-lockdown limiting how much people can work, which is of course a bummer but out of anyone's control. I will absolutely give y'all more updates when I get them, but I suspect we won't have any of the new pins in hand until we get back from our trip to Boston.

Our trip will be from April 17th-25th as a reminder. You'll be free to order from our shop, but we won't be able to ship until we return. But feel free to follow stories on IG as I'm sure we'll have a few fun days with my family in the city! If you have any tasty food recommendations I'm all ears! :p

Ok, wow, that was a lot! So thank you always for your patience, for taking the time to read and always being such an amazing group of supporters! We look forward to the ways our brand may evolve and hope you'll enjoy the journey with us!

- Mandy & Taka