NEWS
Join Disney Publishing Illustrator Casey Robin and Glow in the Dark studio owner Katia Grifols on a Zoom discussion on how to grow your network in another episode in the series "Flourish" Monday, Aug 31 at 11am PDT. Donate $10 or join FREE with the code COVIDRELIEF
Click here to get involved http://www.ctntickets.com
Thank you Tina and Casey for organizing such a cool event and letting me be part of it!!!
This is the year to try new things, and this is one we have wanted to do for a long time! We finally joined the SCBWI! Much of our inspiration comes from our love of books, so it just makes sense that we would join this amazing community of fellow children’s books’ authors and artists! A great way to get our feet wet was to join their Online Event: the Summer Spectacular! And it was super fun! Among many Zoom meetings, we joined very interesting conversations with Spanish authors, along with informative panels. We think joining this community is going to help us expand our storytelling! It was also fun to meet with many artists and writers online from around the world!
Can’t wait for the next event!
Well… This year has been eccentric so far! With the pandemic still going and every beloved convention canceled, it’s been a breath of fresh air to be able to attend one of our favorite ones online!!! Once more, SPP has left a mark on us! We love this convention! It’s been super well organized, the staff has been super kind and receptive (it’s awesome that they have translators), and we have been amazed to meet all these companies from Asia!!! Attending SPP allowed us to introduce ourselves to new companies and to learn about them so hopefully we can work together in the future!
The convention highlight for us has been the Biz-Matching program. It was very easy to enroll and use, and once we filled out our information, it was extremely useful to track the companies we might be interested in - and for them to track us! This shared information through SPP made for great conversation starters and facilitated a lot of our company research, as it’s sometimes hard to find the right websites due to the language barrier. Thankfully, SPP had it all organized and in English for us! Also, they adjusted the duration for a longer convention time, so it’s easier to schedule those meetings from overseas!
We’re looking forward to it again next year, hopefully in-person!
Thanks SPP!
We are super proud to announce our story Mirror as a competitor in the Webtoons Short Story contest. Mirror is a Glow in the Dark Concept Studio original, that tells a horror-fantasy story in 3 chapters, full of rhymes and style surprises.
“A mirror opens a door,
a door to another world.
One where I can forget where I came from-
and won’t remember where I go.”
- Mirror- Glow in the Dark Concept Studio.
Quarantine keeps going… so we keep moving! It’s been an adjustment for sure.. and even if we miss the office very much we figured out a way to still be productive while “working from home”. We adapted as we could and now google hangouts, shared tasks lists and a some sense of humor are our best allies. We also tried that this pandemic affected our interns the less possible. It is hard for interns to go through a selection process and we thought it was not fair to “just let them go.. because!”. So we did all in our hands to adapt our little Creative Blips internship as well. Although we could not give them the “in office experience” we managed to keep working on their personal project so at least "they could get the best part of the experience. And today.. was their very last day! So we will miss the weekly chat with this two and thir spooky personal project! We hope and wish them the best!! And we will take notes.. because who know.. perhaps this unexpected experience opened doors to have interns from everywhere….! Keep an eye on our news!
While this virus is spreading around, we decided at the studio to play it safe and work from home to protect us and our loved ones. It’s been a hard adjustment.. but if we all do it will go away soon! So keeping it positive! After all… working from home is not that awful!
And while it’s been an adjustment, for sure!!! We also decided to keep being creative: comfortable and “semi-operational” work-from-home-station, lots of tea and coffee, adjusting to a new work flow.. and well staying creative on social media! We started an initiative on our Instagram: #quarantips where our #creativeblips
give some tips to stay sane and creative! The idea is promote a fun dialog with our followers and make everybody feel “we are together on this!”.
But with the ones we resonate the most are with the kids…! The ones who we rite our stories for. Can’t imagine what is it to be little, not really understanding and feeling trapped. So we thought.. we had to do something about it!!! And here is how our #QuaranTinyArt started!!! We decided to create little pieces of lifework-art for the “little-and not so little- ones in the house” and immediately our Pirateers (of course!) sparked that initiative! So from now on, till we are back to the office we will post line-art-activities free to print for anybody that needs to brighten up their day.. or just to be entertained!
This Pirateers Crossword puzzle, to dress-me up color-me activities are just a sneak peak of the fun activities we are preparing at the studio to help stem your boredom!!!
We created a very handy Linktree where you both download these activities now and start coloring, but also see additional pages as we‘ll be updating weekly! Make sure you click on the first tab!
Hope you like it!! And please if you know people with little ones… let them know about it!!!! Stay creative and busy!!
So happy we have been part of the Art Lectures provided by nonprofit Light Bringer Project through Locavore Literary LA. It’s always very refreshing to visit the next generation of artists and be able to share our journey with them! Thanks for listening, and for all those awesome questions!! Katia had a blast visiting Fairfax High School and Pasadena High School, and we can’t wait to see what they do with their art!!
Hello, everyone!!! How’s your early 2020 looking?? For us- frenetic! Busy, with lots and lots of new updates! We have been Pod-Casted!!!! Yessssss!!! We had a lot of fun being part of Terry Ibele’s awesome Animation Industry Podcast! We are sharing some Pitching secrets, tips and shenanigans and… we created a super-secret only for listeners and patrons handout called “Pitch Bible Basics”. So if you are interested in Pitching, Bibles or just too curious about Katia’s anecdotes check it here to hear the podcast interview!!!!
Well, the end of 2019 it’s here and we wanted to celebrate our little victories!!! We had a year full of changes and excitements so it’s nice to look back and see what we have accomplished!
We moved to a new office!!! Got a fish named Sancho, got finalists with an NDA pitch at ATX, started two new In-house projects! Traveled to Toronto for Taafi, as finalists as well with our We’re woofs! Pitch, started our new Pateron (yay!) , did some milestones on Social Media and attended to CTNx!!! Can’t complain huh??? well.. next year more!!!!
Till then, thanks for coming along!! happy Holidays you all!!! looking forward to all the exciting adventures that await for us in 2020!!!!!
Oh yes!!!! After a long year.. (better later than never really!!!) we scored one of our yearly goals… to create our very own, new and shiny.. PATREON!!!! Woooh woooh!!! We really wanted a place where we could engage with our audience, where we could show safely work in progress and share lots of shenanigans!! For this… we worked really hard on a baby Patreon! We hope we can grow with our community and they can enjoy with us!
But first things first… what is a Patron? and Why did we created it?
Well, we got all this positive feedback from various lectures, conventions and various networking meetings where people were very interested in seeing our process, asking questions and creating a bond with the studio. We decided that of all social media Patreon was the best option! For a small token we will be able to share our experience! So we created different tiers:
For a small coffee-in price, our patrons can engage with our activities in different ways! Get answered those questions they really want to ask, get some studio news early than anybody.. and of course.. Work in Progress!!
And what better to be sharing that our first-born story at the studio: our beloved SCREAM’INN!!!! we are having a blast sharing insights of how this story came to be! Starting with our main trio and expanding on pitching anecdotes, tips.. and well whatever our Patrons are interested in!!
Stay tuned for more news!!!!
Yess one more year at CTNx! And this year we came full of new things and excitement!!! To start, it’s the very first year we have done an Online Raffle through our Instagram!!! We wanted to celebrate on a special way our 3 years attending to CTN as a studio!! And what better way than to give a ticket to one of our followers that really wants to go there, so they can benefit from the convention as much as we always do!
It was hard to choose among all the submissions, but all worth it! We got to meet Eugene Paek , the lucky background designer that got to get not only our free ticket, but a studio visit and a private portfolio review! You go Eugene!!
But that was not it!!! We also got very lucky to be once more giging a hand at Raising the Bar, meeting all this incredible talent that we hope we can work with in the future!
And more!!! We got Super happy and excited to be able to give a Panel about “ Finding your audience by Tailoring your content”. We were super happy to see everybody engaged on the panel and to be able to answer all this questions!
The only thing we regret.. like always..is not having better pictures!! But oh well! It will always be… NEXT YEAR!!!!
Great news everyone!!! Our wonderful We’re Woofs! team made it to the Finals at Taafi! And… we had an amazing time!!! It was super nice to see the fall season in Toronto, enjoy some delicious Canadian food and attend to very inspiring lectures at the Conference! Not to mention very successful meetings at their Meet and Greet and extremely friendly and helpful staff!! We definitely recommend Animation creators, storytellers or people with pitches, in general, to attend. Not only is super well organized but it’s full of resources and wonderful networking! Not to mention their Big Pitch competition, Where our Woofs! were finalists!!! Such a nervewracking and exhilarating experience! 100% worth it and looking forward to it next year!
Finally, it’s out and published a small piece Katia worked for “Literature for Life”. The assignment consisted on illustrating a short fictional story from Vivian McInerny.
Katia: “ I really loved the dark and decadent tone of the piece and talked about a topic that is very relevant and close to my heart: Emotional Orphans and Unappealing Children. The text is been given in several highschool classes to read as a discussion topic and I am very happy and proud to be able to help on such a matter! As an artist, the ending really appealed to me, I wanted even if it was a hard reality to have a bit of “strange hope” kind of a feeling, so I chose neon-bright colors and I tried to give it a peaceful atmosphere for the privacy of the characters. I hope you like it!”
Please read here the story: https://locavorelitla.org/?story=the-home-for-emotional-orphans-and-unappealing-children
