Studio F-ARTs from August

Hello again.

I hope you are keeping well.

The most pressing concern at the moment seems to be the Monkeyverse social media marketing. The account has grown from being a freelance artist account to becoming a studio that provides art direction, worldbuilding and other creative services. We are also producing independent content and physical products — And it’s all a bit all over the place and overwhelming.

Since 2014, the chosen year of jumping into the colourful void of art, my Instagram and ArtStation, have largely been my source for client work; putting the proverbial — bread on my plate and clothes on my skin. Though, if you were to scroll my insta, you might very quickly realise that my way of being consistent has been to not post for months. I can explain though.

One, a large part of my work is under NDA’s. Two, the studio project ‘Bandar Chhaap’ and ‘Thousand Arms’ were in early stages of development. And posting only roughs and broad ideas, made the portfolio look like a forever-work-in-progress. Which is not good if I am looking to make a living.

But what is the future?

Blogging (for now). I know its an ancient art form lost to the ruined caves of time but it brings me and the work some much needed grounding. It gives me time to process and filter. And while rambling on this website is not enough, it is the path of least resistance. Moving forward, I would be more active on my Substack, which is currently a void of white emptiness, but it does seem like a platform I would be comfortable populating with my in-urgent consistency.

Another concern is that the kind of work that goes into creating a portfolio to reach new clients differs drastically from getting ‘customers’ for the thousand arms or bandar chhaap. These new offerings require a patient rethinking of what it means to market and sell digitally to a broader audience. And I can’t think of a better way to do it then through long format blogging.

The shift is imminent, though the journey is unclear. At the moment, the best contender to fill the gap seems to be a strategy called #Build-in-public for which blogging is a perfect fit. It is an early-stage marketing strategy that focuses on trust building through transparency. It gives me the option to focus on the building the products instead of the bells and whistles. And for that Substack with its estimated 35 million active users is a large enough audience.

I have considered writing on Instagram as well, but the medium itself is very ‘momentary’ for the stage we are in right now. All that said, from next month I will be posting on Substack (come join me there) and review the outcome in the coming months.

—