Up Close - The Artist Behind Furry Feline Creatives

You probably know who's behind all these characters & other creative contents of Furry Feline Creatives. Hi! My name is Cheri, I'm the artist for FFC. 

I was born & raised in Quezon City, the largest city in Manila, Philippines. I grew up in a Chinese-Filipino household. I started to draw when I was 4 or 5 years old with those little sticker figures & smiling faces. My mom enrolled me in an art class at YMCA and she gave me my first complete set of art supplies for my birthday. Growing up in a private school, pretty much I was tapped as the artist of the whole class until high school, I would do the creative contents of the bulletin boards, shirts, even our intramural volleyball team uniforms. Then I went on to take Fine Arts in college. 

I started my professional career as one of the creatives in a manufacturing company that does licenses of towels, handkerchiefs, & shoes for Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, MGA, etc. Then I also did post-production & graphic design for a prominent wedding photographer in Asia. After that, I've decided to move to LA for career opportunities in 2007. Then married long time close friend Alvin the same year.

I've known Alvin since 1997 through common friends. Then he moved to LA in 2000. But even though we were far from each other, we manage to communicate through the internet. Those were the IRC & Yahoo Messenger days. 

The idea of Furry Feline Creatives was born in 2006 when I was building my online portfolio along with my good friend, who is a web designer, helped me build it. I did Purridge and Friends back in 2002. I start to doodle characters that were based from my friends's chat handles. 

 

(Finally done a splash page using Adobe Dreamweaver for my online portfolio back in 2008)

In 2002, after I worked for the manufacturing company, I partnered with a mobile content & media company providing them the creative downloadable contents such as wallpaper greetings & animated GIFs for Nokia-enabled mobile phones. At the time I was just learning to use Adobe CS & pen tablet wasn't on my budget yet so I have to rely on the mouse. 

 

In 2011, we went to San Diego Comic Con as attendees not knowing that this our beginning.  We went to a portfolio review and thought of applying a job as a designer artist when an animation executive told Cheri:  "Why are you here?  You should be at the exhibit hall selling these,  these are great!".  While another animation executive thought we were pitching for a tv show as they would not believe that the characters and their stories and well made.    We looked at each other and knew what we had to do.  We applied for a small press, submitted our books and we got in for 2012 on our first try then after two years moved up to the main floor.

This picture below is taken at one of our first small shows, first hand experience in selling our products.