Happy belated Chinese/Lunar New Year, everyone!
It’s been a while — not that there is actually anyone reading what I write here. At the beginning of last year, I told myself that I would try to make time to write at least one post every month just to keep those writing muscles working. Well it hasn’t gotten a full workout since last November when I wrote my last general tarot card reading… unless you count the various ‘updates’ I’ve been posting on the Kickstarter, then I guess at least it has gotten some stretches in.
Quite a lot has happened since November 2020, even in spite of the Co-vid situation here in Hong Kong (which we’ve more or less also adapted to rather quickly on my end):
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✽ The Kickstarter campaign for my tarot deck had launched and ended successfully, raising over $122k HKD, and as of 1 March 2021, has entered production mode (I wanted to wait until after CNY so the manufacturers wouldn’t need to rush it) . It still brings me immense joy knowing that I am so close to seeing my dream of creating my own deck realised and that soon there’ll be more than 250 people also using the deck! I don’t plan on a second printing so it will remain a limited first-edition copy only for the 500 people who will have a copy (actually probably won’t be 500 since I’m definitely going to keep a few copies for myself haha). But thank you to everyone who supported the campaign and my process of creating it <3
Of course, this also led to nearly two months worth of liasing with the vendors, designing and creating the products I had promised during the campaign, and so, so much customer service work. But I wouldn’t exchange this experience for the world. This is also definitely teaching me how to have a better grasp and flow of running my own online business.
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✽ I was interviewed by Nicole Hurip and Rosamund Chung for the Localiiz feature ‘Humans of Hong Kong’. It was unexpectedly open and placed me in a more vulnerable position than I expected. But still it was a heartfelt conversation that I enjoyed very much.
Check out the interview!
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Amabie illustration for Asia Art Archive
✽ A (now ex-) colleague, Alex Seno commissioned me to illustrate an Amabie (ah-mah-bee-eh) for my workplace as a Chinese New Year greeting.
The Amabie is a Japanese yokai originating from the 19th century, and was known to have appeared in the Kumamoto shores prophesying a pandemic. Legend goes if you drew a picture of him, disease will leave.
And so this is my depiction of the Amabie as a long lost cousin of HK’s lo ting 😌
It’s one of the rarer moments when I’m actually satisfied with a commissioned illustration and it was thanks to Alex, Crystal, and Ruby and their fantastic feedback that I was able to work on this efficiently and happily. Also the commission managed to attract interest from people I did not expect to now be connected with and has led to several new very exciting projects in the making — I’m not allowed to say yet, but I will be kept busy all through this summer.
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The pandemic situation is definitely better than most places here in Hong Kong, mostly because the people know how to protect themselves (we’ve been through SARS, we are fucking careful as fuck). My workplace goes through a rotational wfh/office during the worst of the waves and we’ve only just opened up the library again after two months. While the system is not the most convenient for everyone, I think I’m rather well-adapted to change now. Even though I have many, many deadlines looming, the stress and anxiety doesn’t hit me quite as bad as it used to be pre-pandemic.
Politically, we just went through one of the darkest days with 47 pro-democray activists arrested under the National Security Law over the self-initiated primary elections for the Legislative Council election. And yet there seems to be nothing we can do about it. But I still draw ‘The Sun’ whenever I ask about the future of Hong Kong, it’s just a matter of how many years it will take until dawn.
Anyway, I hope you’re safe and well. Thank you for being here and for reading my very long-winded rant.
Lots of love,
Charlotte