Marketplace Success Story: Logan Preshaw
Logan Preshaw is a freelance concept artist and illustrator who has worked at Weta Workshop, Studio Moshi, Working Dog, and other studios around New Zealand and Melbourne, Australia. After moving away from working in-studio work last year, Preshaw now focuses on growing his freelance business and creating his own content, such as books, intellectual properties, and tutorials.
Before that, Preshaw met Sacha Bryning while they worked together on a studio job. The two became friends, and their desire to collaborate again led to their creation of Scavengers, an “art of” film book without the actual film. Originally a physical book, Preshaw has revived it for digital release on the ArtStation Marketplace, renaming it Junkernauts.
A Perfect Fit
Preshaw says his audience often consists of fellow artists and others interested in creating artistic work. ArtStation Marketplace seemed like the ideal place for him to set up a store and sell to these people.
“I use other selling platforms alongside ArtStation, but have found it to be the most accessible and well-supported. The sales metrics are especially useful, and due to the ‘community’ nature of ArtStation as a platform, I have a lot more information about my audience.”
He adds that this community and its mix of artistic skill levels hold a lot of potential for the products he wants to provide.
Ebook Publishing
The ArtStation Marketplace has given new life to Preshaw and Bryning’s book. Originally a title with a 200-copy print run, Scavengers didn’t sell well at a convention that ended up low on visitors. Preshaw says that after he left studio work, he focused on sharing Scavengers with a wider world via an updated digital release.
(Bryning and Preshaw made an agreement that left Preshaw as the sole producer of the Junkernauts revival since Bryning was focused on other projects at the time and could not get involved with the digital version.)
Preshaw ended up creating new content for the book to draw the attention of a more artistic audience, like additional tutorials. The ArtStation Marketplace provided space for all this extra material and more.
“Having been on ArtStation for a while, I had a pretty good idea of how it would be received and the audience that would be engaging with it. ArtStation handled the varied assets perfectly, but the added benefit of an art community hub altered the way I marketed the book since I had a lot more options available.”
Preshaw says that ArtStation overall has an ecosystem that works well for a seller-creator. Fans who follow him or people who just visit his profile also have direct access to his products on that very same platform. Tying his store page into his artistic identity and portfolio has been helpful to Preshaw. He finds that the more attention his art gets, the more he sells.
“On other marketplaces, you need to play to your audience. Here, you can pull an audience in. Someone not interested in ebooks, but who loves the artwork I post may give it a shot. They can support me on the same platform that they discover me.“
Video Communication
In contrast, Preshaw says the tutorial videos that currently make up the rest of his store were simpler to put together since they tend to be more straightforward. His videos include commentary, which Preshaw says is part of what makes ArtStation also a communication platform for him. He can express his thoughts as blog posts and detail his process on the site.
“If you like my work and my thoughts, you can invest in more concise material with higher value and comprehension than you would find in my written or visual material alone.”
An Artist and a Merchant
Preshaw shares that in the future he would like to get more involved with the community on ArtStation and increase his presence. Although he feels the marketplace is becoming somewhat saturated, he also thinks that it’s grown less dependent on “selling” to get sales.
“I find that the more myself I am in the community, the more appreciation I receive since it doesn’t solely operate as a marketplace…so it’s not all about squeezing sales out of you. When I succeed as an artist—when I gain more followers, get more jobs, receive more comments—I increase my odds of a sale. This reduces the pressure of acting like a storefront, and it allows me to be an artist first and a seller second.”
Follow Logan Preshaw on ArtStation for updates on his store, portfolio, and other projects.
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