I've been working on my paintings which will be released next year, its a collection of 5 paintings, based on the japanese vinyl toy culture. What I'll do is give people the chance to buy them as prints as well for a cheaper option. 5 originals and 5 sets of limited edition prints. In 2010 the Japanese toy culture will be bigger than ever. With Kidrobot moving from strength to strength and lots of graphic designers collaborating through "Facebook" and "Youtube" its no wonder its getting the media attention. "A Sitting Duck" is in its first year, I'm finding our style, meeting with other artists and designers to pick their brains on painting techniques, printing techniques in order to build a strong brand for 2010. For me its all about creating a cool looking website, which is easy to use and buy stuff from. Once thats set up and I have a cool style of characters, I think thats when I'll have the large investors and business's looking to stock my prints and t-shirts.
I've looked at the t-shirt market and one thing alot of the t-shirts websites have in common is they have too many t-shirts for sale, its over whelming and laborious to trail through a website to find a t-shirt, from the people and designers I've spoke to, they said 5 designs is enough, as you can change the colour of the t-shirt, mens, womens and childrens, so theres lots of options without having a huge website. So the plan is to have 5 banging designs, 2 different colour t-shirt options (black or white) and then a range of sizes s,m,l, for all ages.
I really need to work something out on the prints as well so I have a running theme and that people can say hey thats "a sitting duck" print, without reading the info. So that the t-shirts, prints and website as a whole becomes a brand.
I'm also going to make myself into a brand, I'm a bit reluctant as I'm not a show off, but public relations is very important in the life of a business.
In the first year it will be this blog of 100 entries, with links to my website, youtube and facebook. I'm also building 5,000 friends in Facebook, which are all involved in fashion or art of some sort, across the globe. This should have a good effect of people talking about the work, joining the group and telling their friends about the business.
I need a good write up for the "about" section of the website, I'm going to change the designers page to a picture wall of my work, and I'm thinking of changing the beak of the duck to blue to go with the designer toy culture!.
If I do all that over the next year, I think I'll be onto a winner. Stage 2 will be Youtube broadcasts on asittingducktv and then Stage 3 will be a range of vinyl toys launched with Kidrobot or one of the big toy companies in Japan.
Thanks
;]
David Edwards
www.asittingduck.com