Rising Stars: Meet Kaia Tseng

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kaia Tseng.

Hi Kaia, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hello! My name is Kaia, and I’m a full-time industry artist specializing in fashion and merchandise design. I’m originally from Taiwan, then the Bay Area in California, and now live in the LA area. I’m also a freelance illustrator and the owner and creative director of Kaiami Character Shop. 

People often ask me how long I’ve been drawing and when I knew I wanted to be an artist. These are difficult questions to answer because I started drawing as soon as I could hold a marker, like most kids. The difference is that I really enjoyed it and never stopped. If I were to pinpoint a specific time when I considered making art a career, it would be in middle school. During that time, I loved collecting cute character plush toys, trinkets, and stationery items from companies like Sanrio, San-x, and Morning Glory. This led me to experiment with creating my own characters and stationery. One of my first characters was a little panda named Connor, and my dream was to open a shop featuring merchandise of him and my other characters. 

During my last year of middle school, I attended my first local anime convention, Fanime Con. Meeting artists I admired online and seeing their work in person was a huge inspiration for me. The following year at the age of 15, I lucked into tabling at the same convention for the first time. I continued vending at conventions consistently year after year, and as my work gained traction online, I opened my first online store in 2011 while attending college. 

Finally, in 2017, nearly a decade after my first tabling experience, I took the plunge and started my own brand, Kaiami. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Even though I had years of sales experience, it took me a long time to commit to art as a career. I had been influenced by my surroundings and convinced that art wasn’t a viable career. Instead, I saw my own work as a hobby. I studied fashion design in New York while running my online shop and creating new merchandise to sell at conventions. After two years, I dropped out of school and focused on vending at conventions while applying to other jobs on the side, still believing that selling my own work was just a hobby. 

In 2016, I moved back to New York to intern at a fashion company as a production assistant. During my internship, I realized that running a professional company wasn’t much different from what I had been doing independently for years. With newfound confidence, I began working on my first collection and applied what I learned during my internship to my own business. I had saved most of my earnings over the past nine years to invest in my new venture. Before starting my own brand, I sold both original characters and fan art. I handmade everything, from stickers and buttons to prints and keychains. With my brand, I wanted to focus solely on original work and outsource manufacturing to have more time for designing and running the business. Starting the business was daunting and required significant capital to create a full collection. I also wasn’t sure if my existing fanbase would embrace my original characters or if they were only interested in my fanart. Fortunately, my first collection received positive feedback, allowing me to plan my second collection. 

While I faced struggles, most of them were internal. It took me over ten years to turn my dream of starting a character brand with my beloved panda, Connor, into reality. 

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In the online artist community, I’m known as one of the early artist-run businesses focusing on original characters. With years of posting art online, I am recognized for various styles, but the modern audience is likely familiar with my cat doodles, outfit illustrations, and whimsical, simplistic, pastel artwork. One of my favorite recent projects was a commission for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to create merchandise featuring their new characters. I was excited about this project because I’m a big supporter of public transit and mascots. The art was turned into stickers and keychains to promote the new characters at Fanime, and I was baffled by the line for them, which extended far outside of the exhibitor’s hall! 

Out of everything thus far in my career, I am most proud of inspiring a new generation of artists. At every event I attend, there are those who stop by with a letter or artwork and tell me that my work helped them through a tough time in their life or gave them hope and inspiration to become an artist as well. Having that sort of impact and inspiring a new wave of artists in the same community that helped inspire me in my younger years is something I never could have imagined. 

What are your plans for the future?
In the last couple of years, I’ve worked as a fashion and merchandise designer at OMOCAT LLC while running my own business and freelancing. It’s been challenging but rewarding to design outside of my comfort zone and to work with such driven and talented individuals. I’m thankful for the experiences I’ve gained at my studio job, however, I haven’t been able to fully focus on my own work. 

Nevertheless, my time at my studio job is helping me grow as an artist. The skills I acquire will transfer to my own studio in the future as I gain experience in being involved in the entire design process from start to finish. When I return to my own business full-time, I have big plans and want to explore different types of merchandise. In the short term, I have small projects and collaborations with fellow artists planned. I want to dive deeper into the world of Kaiami characters and expand into the fashion industry. Looking ahead, I have a long list of goals I’d like to achieve, and I can’t wait to share those goals once I start working toward them. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kaiami.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaiami/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kaiami
• Other: https://www.kaiami.com/

Image Credits
Ren Kanoelani