Saying it with Line stickers
Graphic designer proves success and happiness can go hand in hand
We’ve all used them at some point or another. Whether it be to accentuate a sentence or to act as a quick reply, the stickers of Line — the ubiquitous Japanese social-messaging app — have become a natural part of everyday interactions. Starting with the original group of characters like Brown, Cony or Moon, the app’s storefront has over 500,000 sets of stickers from creators around the world — from stick-figure images to detailed works of 3D-animation. Whatever the tone or message you want to convey, there’s probably a Line sticker out there that says exactly what you’re thinking.
“Stickers can be used in place of a joke, or a succinct reply to a comment we may not necessarily have an answer to, or just to accentuate our feelings,” said Cathaleeya Vankaew, creator of the Circle DookDik stickers currently popular in Thailand.
As the stickers with the most downloads in Thailand this year, Cathaleeya was recently awarded Best Newcomer 2017 at the Line Stickers Award 2017 event held last month, and was featured alongside rising star creators from Japan and Taiwan as one of the most successful to be featured on the app’s sticker store.
“It’s been a mixture of happiness and confusion for me, to be honest,” said the 25-year-old artist.
“While I’m happy that people appreciate my work, I’m also a bit surprised that it’s managed to become so popular. There weren’t any real expectations when I began, so it’s nice to realise that there are so many people out there who get what I’m trying to say.”
Making it big as a sticker artist for Line was never the plan, says Cathaleeya. Having graduated from art school just a little over a year ago, Cathaleeya began working on Cathaleeya Vankaew.
the Circle DookDik stickers as a way to pass time while she hunted for a job. Having heard of other artists finding some success on the app’s Line Creator’s Market platform, which allowed regular people to design and submit their stickers onto the app’s store, Cathaleeya decided to give it a try.
“There are plenty of ways to design stickers. Some people draw them on paper then scan them, some draw them digitally, some even start by creating 3D models and posing them in various actions. Some could be simple stickmen, while others could be intricately drawn pictures. There really is no right or wrong way to design them.”
For Cathaleeya, how the sticker is drawn isn’t so important as the message or tone it is trying to send. The Circle DookDik stickers, for example, feature a simple white, vaguely human characters with dotted eyes and mouths accompanied with various quippy phrases and poses.
“This particular set of stickers was largely borne out of a certain laziness on my part,” admitted Cathaleeya.
“I’m the kind of person who get’s bored quickly when I have to work on one project for a long time, so I went with a simple style of a white circular body that can represent any sex or age, so anyone can relate to them. I think that’s the trick to creating a popular sticker, is to make them relatable and applicable to as many situations as possible. I think the reason why people like my stickers is because of the little quippy messages I include in them, which are common phrases used among friends in day-to-day conversations, so these stickers can act as a shorthand for quippy replies or jibes among friends.”
But while Cathaleeya’s success on the Line storefront can hardly be disputed, she laments that many in Thai society still hold the misguided view creative careers like hers are of little value.
“As I see it, stickers, like most art-based careers in Thailand, are still largely seen as trivial or low value. A lot of people still feel like they are not worth paying for, or otherwise believe them to be easily done and as such shouldn’t cost much, if anything at all. It’s kind of a downer for people like me for sure.
“While I can’t really guarantee that creating Line stickers will become a full-time career for anyone, it is still a relatively simple way of earning extra income for those with ideas and some free time. With platforms like the Line Creator’s Market, anyone can earn income from their art, and I’m glad that there is at least an alternative or choice for many people today to express themselves and be rewarded for it.”
All it comes down to, according to Cathaleeya, is to be true to your own ideas and to be happy with who you are. That is the secret to creating something that will resonate with millions of people.
“Most successful Line creators I’ve known tend to be very happy, and also very unique, in a good way. I think that’s a very important aspect of succeeding as a Line creator, or any type of creative creator. As long as you can be happy with what you do, you can create something truly unique and appealing to others.”
It’s nice to realise that there are so many people out there who get what I’m trying to say