Meet Vincent Ramos and Janet Chan of Honey & Absinthe in Glendale

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vincent Ramos and Janet Chan.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Vincent and Janet. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I was a young artist in college about to graduate art school. With high hopes for working in an animation studio, I bumped into a girl who was just as driven as I was. She didn’t notice me at first, but I was a huge admirer of hers. Her name was Janet Chan. We bonded over anime and our future careers. I wanted to be a visual development artist which is sort of like a jack of all trades position in animation.

She wanted to be… a lot of things: storyboard Artist/Director/CEO but she eventually narrowed it down to just storyboard artist. Once we graduated, we spent every minute and every waking hour drawing together until I mustered up the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend. She said, “Sure….why not.” And thus began our journey towards creating our own company.

First things first, we wanted to break into animation BADLY. But contrary to popular belief, an art degree doesn’t guarantee you ANY sort of work whatsoever. Nothing really does. In order to stay busy and sharp, we did the independent artist thing of selling art at conventions. We created our very first set of prints and set-up shop at any free craft fair or art-centric event we could get into.

Although we didn’t get a lot of attention at first, it was really satisfying to see people get excited about our work. It was addicting, and it inspired us to put everything we had into it. Sooner than we knew it, we started gaining an audience. At the same time, we both got noticed and picked up by big animation companies. Which was amazing right? Dream come true… sure.

Yet the feeling of meeting people and being a part of the convention community was always on our minds. While juggling a full-time career in animation, we continued to go to conventions. We were walking around the comic convention floor one day when we realized there weren’t any merchandise specifically geared towards women.

All the merch for girls were of what men thought girls wanted. They would default to pink and other stereotypes without understanding that female convention goers often want something that will make them look and feel awesome. Janet decided it was time to realize her dream of being a CEO and so we took our convention side hustle and turned it into our business: Honey & Absinthe. Honey and Absinthe’s mission is to create art and apparel for exactly that audience.

When men and women see our brand, we want to make them feel like they are badass members of a community that gets them.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
After we graduated, we were nobodies, not to mention. It’s really difficult to get noticed in a sea of talented artists. We took whatever kind of work that came our way in order to make ends meet, even though the jobs weren’t exactly what we wanted to do.

Since we were spring chickens straight out of college, we were taken advantage of by many different freelances jobs with unfair rates and micromanaging bosses. There were many times we got really close to breaking into animation only to be rejected time and time again.

We were living the true starving artist’s life as long periods of unemployment began to eat away at our bank accounts. Janet literally cried over not being able to afford a box of cereal once. 🙁

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Honey & Absinthe – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Honey & Absinthe is an outlet for us to create artwork that truly belongs to us. We spend all day working for someone else, and it’s really satisfying to make something that we can call our own. Be it art prints, clothing, books, or pins, we get to call the shots.

I am the illustrator for Honey & Absinthe. I come up with concepts for prints or a shirt line. Often when we do a line, I like for there to be a uniform style. I come up with a style guide so that everything is cohesive. I explore as many ideas as I can think of and boil it down to the best one.

Janet is my illustration partner and also manages the rest… it’s insane. She’s the accountant, manager, social media coordinator… in other words, I do the drawing, and she does everything else. And she draws. We are known for our original ink commissions and our illustrative clothing.

We’ve been creating traditional ink work for the past five years, and it’s become one of our biggest strengths and selling points. What makes us most proud is our fitness inspired t-shirt line. It’s our most successful launch to date.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We’d love to explore putting our art on a variety of items such as pins, bags, and outerwear. We’re constantly trying to merge our abilities as artists with other kinds of creative fields.

We also want to partner with musicians and other entertainers to create promotional material. Music is a huge inspiration in our work, so it is a great fit for our work. Finally, we want to expand our reach beyond California.

Contact Info:

• Website: honeyandabsinthe.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: instagram.com/honeyandabsinthe
• Facebook: facebook.com/honeyandabsinthe

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