Friday 30 March 2018

How to create a unicorn

I love En Lazim. He is one of the nicest, kindest and sweetest gentlemen that you will ever meet. He is also the creator of a lot of the batik artworks for the SENI by Fit Rebel leggings. Here is a photo of him proudly displaying one of his latest artworks for our next collection, a fairy! He was so in love with this piece that he almost didn't want to hand it over to me after completion... but luckily he did!


After this piece, we discussed our next project, which was a unicorn inspired piece. My brief to En Lazim was as follows, "I want a majestic white unicorn. However, the highlight of this piece would be his hair, because I want his mane to be rainbow colored".

En Lazim nodded and got to work.

2 weeks later I showed up at his gallery and he proudly displayed his artwork as below:


I was stunned when I first laid eyes on his piece. To a certain extent, En Lazim totally nailed this piece. Here was a majestic white unicorn with gorgeous rainbow colored hair.

But... unfortunately he had crazy eyes and looked a bit too badass for my liking. In fact, this unicorn looked kinda scary. 😨

Wasn't quite sure how to react and I didn't want to upset En Lazim especially since he looked so happy and proud of this piece. I smiled and said the nicest thing I could, "His hair is gorgeous!!!".

I then left the gallery sweating. SHIT. What was I gonna do about this?

I frantically got in touch with the only person I knew who could save this, Illustrator Extraordinaire, Soefara Jafney

We both agreed that his hair is gorgeous but he was one scary looking unicorn.

"Don't worry. Can be fixed", said Sophie.

And relief spread through my body and soul.

With much care and love, Sophie made small adjustments and gave Mr. Unicorn kinder eyes.


I remember staying up (pretty much) all night admiring his kinder looking eyes and asking myself what else can be done to turn this piece from good to great. So I took a shot at editing this piece.

Here is my version below (pay attention to his mouth to see the difference).


When I finished making the edits, I remember taking a step back to just stop and look. It was almost as if Mr Unicorn was finally smiling at me. And I smiled back.

Finally crept into bed at 3am and woke up at 6am to prepare for a presentation that I had to give at OCBC Bank's belated International Women's Day celebration.

It was a great event which was organized by a bubbly and friendly bunch. The audience was awesome and the energy was extremely positive. I had a blast.

Me with Kok Lai Ching, Head of Human Resources of OCBC Bank (Malaysia) Berhad
 After the event was over, I got home and crashed.

Woke up the next morning and shared the edited unicorn with En Lazim. He loved it.

Later in the day I was emailing some of the ladies from OCBC Bank who attended my presentation and this email came in:


This is the best. thing. EVER!!! 😍

When you give good vibes, you get good vibes.

And that ladies and gentlemen is how you be awesome... and create a unicorn!

XOXO

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