Justyna

I keep drawing cats and putting them on t-shirts

An outline of a happy cat with a red text "So What" above it. — So What

If you are hesitating to start your own store because you “can’t draw”, then you should know that some of my designs are really not that complicated.

Make a few sketches of your favorite animal and chances are that one of those sketches will be interesting enough to sell it on a t-shirt.

Edit (2021 June 22): Design moved from my Fox Shiver store to my TRUFFLEPIG store.

February is the worst month and that’s okay

If you are a freelancer, your income is often unstable. When I was starting there have been months when I didn’t earn anything, and when I did earn something, it was less than $5 a month. Now, that I have a lot of designs in my online stores, I get regular royalty payments each month, but the amounts vary wildly.

The best months are November and December when people buy gifts. Black Friday, too, has a massive impact on sales, of course. That makes up for the months when sales are lower. At the start of a new year people spent less, many probably need to rebuild their depleted savings after Christmas.

It might be scary for new designers when, in some months, they are only paid a fraction of their regular earnings. I remember it was for me. When I saw how my sales dropped in January and February I worried that it would continue. But sales always pick up in March, or April at the latest. After that, the income is fairly regular till October, when it picks up again for the next two months. And the cycle continues.

How funny are you?

Overall, funny t-shirts sell better. It’s not only my experience. Just recently I watched Michael Essek’s videos where he shares advice on designing and selling and marketing and he said pretty much the same thing. He said about 90% of his t-shirts are funny.

It’s difficult to think of a funny design on the spot. At least for me. So whenever I hear someone says something funny I note it down on my phone or my reMarkable, and then I put it on a t-shirt. It’s one of my habits — collecting snippets that I can later combine, rearrange, and use.

I doodled some leaves

I was sketching on my reMarkable while watching YouTube and I drew very simple leaves and then turned them into a design for apparel.

Forest Person – another variant

A few days ago I shared my Forest Person design:

Grass and flowers with the text "Forest Person" — Forest Person (First Version)

This is a black design on a grey background. But not everyone likes wearing light t-shirts. So I always try to invert colors and upload the design again, this time as a white design on a black background. However, when I inverted the colors, the design didn’t look so good:

It sort of looks like a white blob. I decided to paint the design again so it would look better on darker colors. Here’s the new version:

Grass and flowers with the text "Forest Person" on a t-shirt.

“Forest Person” on Threadless

This design was made with reMarkable 2, which I love.

Attic — a little progress

Our cat book: Attic - by Justyna Dorsz and Rafał Dorsz — The Attic (Work in Progress)

Sharing a small update to the attic in our cat book 🙂

Making a children’s book – some notes

A few weeks ago, my brother and I started working on our first children’s book about cats. This is a good time to write a bit about the process and why we decided on this project.

From the start it was a challenge:

Both my brother and I are artists, but we make designs for apparel and 3D art for our games. We are not illustrators, we have never illustrated a book before.
We don’t have a publisher yet. We don’t know if we are going to find one.
We have never done anything like this before. We have no experience in making or publishing books. So if we are doing something wrong, we don’t know it.
At first, we wanted to make a simple book but soon decided to draw rich and beautiful illustrations — and that takes a lot of time.
From what I know, books don’t bring a lot of income. At times, it feels like we should be working and earning money instead of making a book.

Why make a book then? Our time would be better spent making a new game or starting another apparel store. We have experience with those so we would know how to make them profitable. But that would mean working on something that we are familiar with and staying in our comfort zone. That’s not good. It’s better to challenge yourself, work on something difficult, and learn in the process.

There’s another reason why it’s a good idea to have different projects — income diversification. If you have just one income source, then you are vulnerable. If that income source dries up, then you have to scramble to find work and might be forced to accept unfavorable terms. But if you have two or three income sources, then you are in a more secure position. Even if you lose one of your income streams, you are not going to be desperate. You will have time to figure things out, search for other opportunities.

You never know how successful your project is going to be. It’s a risk to work on something new, it might not work out at all. We had some failed attempts. But we worked on so many things that at least some of them became profitable.

There’s a risk that our book won’t get published or won’t get many sales. There’s also a chance that it will get published and become another passive income source.