CHENJA ILLUSTRATION COMMUNITY
Illustration is one of my favourite things in the world and for the last two years I have had a burning desire to start my own online community.
This is a self funded project (super scary) that aims to bring the decisions back to the artists using the platform. As an illustrator myself I recognised the need for a central hub for general illustrators of all types. I'm not trying to compete against the other resources out there, I am more interested in collating and collaborating with them all to make something that is truly beneficial for the illustration community.
Most of the general communities like Instagram and Twitter are more geared around making money from advertisements and don't really care much about their members. As an illustrator myself I am more invested in the illustration community and have better intentions, I have worked as an illustrator for over 12 years so have first hand knowledge of the industry and truly care about the subject.
I created the community from the ground up. During my career I have led many projects but have always had a client and a team to steer how the product evolved. This project is just me, I had to learn about every aspect of launching a product into the public domain. It was also tough to create an initial MVP, I have so many ideas for features but had to be realistic with the budget I have got. As a rule of thumb I decided to concentrate on the most important features that needed to be there from the beginning and set out a plan for all of the features to add in the future as the community grows.
Something that is particularly important to me is mindfulness, I do think social networks are beneficial for illustrators I just think the competitive element isn't. With Chenja I wanted to introduce various limitations to limit how much time each member can spend on the site. With this in mind, Chenja uses a sticker compliment system, each sticker is a different artistic compliment. Each member is given a limited number of compliment stickers every two weeks, meaning that members will be more considered when they compliment an artwork and they can't just sit for hours liking everything. There is also a limit on how many posts a member can make and there is currently no following mechanic. I do plan on having a following mechanic so members can have a customised news feed but I don't want to show how many followers each person has, to remove this harmful competitive element that followers bring.
The current build is actually an updated version built by the super talented development agency, Hiyield. The first version of Chenja was a much simpler offering and had a tonne of problems, the original developer didn't build it very well and it was a very stressful part of the project. We tried to rescue the original version but in the end decided it would be best to just rebuild the whole project. This was tough as I had invested a fair bit already, but was a good lesson in building a product from scratch. Nothing great ever started off perfect and it is important to always accept mistakes and keep moving forward. In the end the rebuild was the best thing for Chenja, the current version has so many more features, is slicker and generally a much nicer experience as a whole.
We now have a proper news section with Chenja articles, Member News and Interviews. Originally the news section was a very simple blog where I put all of the mini stories from the Weekly Chenja mailer, now I write full articles about all aspects of the illustration world and I get sent articles from the members. I really want to keep developing this section so it can be a significant news space for illustration and have many features in mind for it.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the unique parts of Chenja is the use of compliment stickers over of likes. When a member compliments an artwork, the sticker will slap onto the illustration, it's actually really satisfying. There is also a full achievement system where members can earn hundreds of unique achievement stickers, I have illustrated all of them but plan to get members to draw different stickers so the sticker collection looks really diverse and interesting. Members can also win shiny stickers for various monthly and yearly achievements, the monthly achievements also give the winning member a golden crown for a month afterwards and all of their posts are highlighted with a gold outline. I want to give actual prizes for the yearly achievements and have even been designing a Chenja trophy that is more of a vinyl toy for the yearly winners.
Below is a video showing some of the achievements on one of the more popular members profile.
Unfortunately I had to close the Chenja community as it became way too demanding with my full time job and various family issues during the pandemic. It had a great 4 years and I plan on starting a smaller entity under the Chenja brand very soon.
Although it was a tough decision to end the project, I learned many lessons about building a company from scratch, working and managing external developers and marketing a product. Investing money is always a scary risk but seeing the result, however successful, is undoubtedly satisfying.
The Chenja community is still active on social media and the members have been very supportive, it is amazing how nice illustrators are!
As the community is no longer running I can share all of the achievement stickers I created for the site, the Chenja mascot illustrations and the advert animation. If you scroll to the bottom, I also interviewed a super talented illustrator, Geo Law.
