Who Am I and what is Ash Something Art?

I am Ashton, and I go by the pen name Ash Something. Ash Something Art is my independent/sole proprietorship business centered around my art and design services.
I am a multidisciplinary artist who started working as a freelancer fresh out of highschool in 2007.
In the last 18 years since, I have continued learning and growing my business as best I can, and have gone from doing just one-off projects to working on multi-project contracts, selling prints and merch, and branched out from just drawing to many artistic fields, including but not limited to:
Character concept design, graphic and logo design, book cover and album art illustration, animation, jewelry and fashion design, poster art and illustration, photography, photo and video editing, fine art in both digital and traditional media with a wide range of styles, and so on.

I have been published many times over the years, and I am currently working on some of my largest publication projects to date, specifically for multiple tarot card decks that will be hand-illustrated in digital media.

I am a traditional artist first, though the field has pushed me into doing digital art- which isn’t a problem, but it means that whether working digitally or traditionally I put in the utmost care on every line and color swatch to assure that the work I do is the best work I can do, every time. I do not use GenAI or cut corners in my art, and my best pieces can take somewhere in the range of 60-100 hours of work- I love what I do and I am seeking opportunities to do more of it, and to make things easier on myself to put the time and energy into a variety of projects that I have been planning for years that, purely due to financial setbacks, I have been unable to invest the required time into- all of which I have outlines and prep work to show for anyone who wants to assure their investment is worthwhile.

Who are You?

Ideally, you are a person who is well versed in business, who doesn’t balk at double and triple digit figures.
Someone who loves art and wants to see more of it in the world, and who is excited at the potential to help support a small artist and provide funding to help them take off and go to new heights.
Hopefully, you are someone whose values regarding social justice, self empowerment, and equality, align with my own- a supporter of the LGBT community, a feminist, and someone who appreciates sex-positivity who doesn’t balk at the idea that my art will have themes centered around sexual liberation, fetishes, and the like, presented in ways not unlike artists of the past such as Frazetta, Brom, Luis Royo, and Heavy Metal Magazine have done for the last 30-40 years.

What Will I Do With Your Sponsorship/Investment?

This is probably what everyone wants to know. Where would your money be going? Getting a return is important to you, but a promise on return is nothing in the face of actual factual plans.
The predominant need I have for Sponsorship comes from the fact that as a small business I am stuck in a daily grind, and often feel like I’m barely able to tread water on the good months. Because of this, a HUGE amount of my time is currently spent seeking new commission projects just to pay bills.
However I have spent the last 18 years working as an artist planning and evolving, and trying to direct my time and energy into projects I KNOW are profitable because I’ve seen other artists who don’t have the same skillsets I do, do them and thrive.
However, as a one-man-show, without up-front funding for these projects, I end up with only about 10% of my work time able to go into any of them, while the rest is spent drowning in social media marketing, and working on one-off commission projects to pay the bills.

The following is a detailed breakdown of the projects I am planning which, were I to have the funding for, I would be able to pound out relatively effortlessly over the span of the next 1-2 years.

Project 1a: Three Hand-Illustrated Tarot Decks, with Guidebooks:

I mentioned above that I am working on tarot decks with a publisher. One of these decks is that project. However, the contract is a royalty-only contract, which will not see any returns until the work has been published, and I may sign with the same publisher for the remaining decks, however I am still exploring my options and would like to have more progress made on the decks before making a decision on where and how I will publish- my original plan was always to self-publish.
The decks and what I currently have to show for them are as follows:

Project 1b: The Digital Tarot App:

Alongside the above Tarot decks, I plan to release a digital app for download that will be included for download via QR code.
I spent a good portion of 2024 learning how to use Unity so I could create the app from scratch, and have a deep understanding of what I would need to do to make the apps happen, on the development end. The plan is to create a single app framework into which I can plug-and-play the digital artwork for each of the 78 cards for all three decks.
The “Learning” phase of this is done, and the next step is to start development- which I have been holding off on doing until I have more cards finished, and can use the Alpha version of the app as a test and sample while I work on it.

This app will be created alongside the Lokabrenna Tarot deck, so that both are able to be released at the same time, after which the 2-3 months of work I spend on it will be shortened to around 3-4 weeks for the remaining two tarot decks, as I will be creating the framwork specifically to be plug-and-play/reskinable, and just require the new cards and graphics to be slipped into it.

Project 1C: Tarot Merch and Prints

As each tarot card is completed, I plan to release high quality 18-24″ Litho poster prints, in limited runs totaling around 300, with 100 signed prints for each set. These prints will be sold person-to-person via sources such as Patreon/Kickstarter or my already extant online shops, or through a third party gallery-preferably the latter.
While the primary intent is prints only, there is a possibility that I may also create tshirts, stickers, and other such merch of the more popular or more heavily demanded cards.

Project 2a: The Ash Something Art official web zine, Something Strange:

Inspired to create this by Heavy Metal Magazine, I am working on creating a newsletter that will be offered via my website’s VIP Funpass membership, as well as over Patreon and on Ko-Fi for all of my subscribers.
This scene is planned to be a 10-page project ever2 or 4 weeks, and will include a beautifully illustrated cover art, followed by Ash Something Art news and updates, an Artist Spotlight page that brings attention to a small artist who I know/follow, a separate spotlight page to talk about a “Master” artist and their breadth of work, as well as a special Tutorial page dedicated to me teaching artists new techniques or various aspects of art.
On top of these things, this Zine will be the primary source of publicaton for my two upcoming webcomics: Strange Company and Funhouse Mirrors, both of which are still in the planning phases but I also have a handful of sample pages for, to showcase the art style I intend to use, and the overall feeling of the comics and scripting style.

Project 2b: Marketability and Plan for use outside of Subscription Services

The actual intent behind the Zine is to start developing a backlog of works which I can turn around and funnel into tangible items.
Once I have a minimum of 100 pages for each of the webcomics, I plan to release a hard-copy printed book of each, in the vein of the Calvin and Hobbes books and other such.

On top of these comics, I will be compiling the tutorials I create into a How To Draw book, and I will be turning the covers into prints and other such merch- some to be released as special perks for the VIP Funpass subscribers and others to be set aside for release as limited runs similar to the plan for the tarot decks.