Cartoons are serious challenge

Celia Allison produces cards and books with the Cecily range, and cards and other gifts under the Moa Revival label.

At boarding school, Celia Allison sold her drawings so she could have money to buy ice-cream.

Twenty-one years later, the Lyttelton artist is still earning money at the stroke of her pen.

Allison's Moa Revival range has grown from a selection of New Zealand gift cards 20 years ago to prints, wrapping paper and stationery, depicting native birds and Kiwiana.

Her cartoons of the quirky "Cecily" have also spawned cards, books and linen.

Although the drawing comes relatively easily for Allison, establishing markets for women's cartoons has been more of a challenge.

Next week, she sets off on a three-week road trip in Australia to try to get the Cecily range stocked in more gift stores there.

To some extent, Cecily has more currency across the Tasman than in New Zealand. The cartoons are published weekly in one Australian newspaper and in the bi-monthly Ha! Humour Australia magazine.

At home, Allison is looking for a new publication after eight years of regular appearances in Next magazine and several regional papers has ended.

She wants the cartoons to be a bigger part of the business and knows to do that will require getting Cecily further afield.

Small volumes of Cecily products are sold in Britain and the Australian market is growing quickly.

Allison has always done her own selling as it helps her to see what's going on in the market and approaching specialty gift and book stores with the products and newspaper editors for space has required a tenacious attitude.

Cartooning was not the first direction Allison took. She completed a BSc with a plan to follow her grandmother's footsteps into medicine.

When she failed to make the grades for medical school, she left New Zealand in her early 20s to travel through Europe.

She returned to study for a diploma of visual arts in Wellington and that led her into graphic designing, working mainly on product packaging and some freelance illustration work.

It was working on other people's products that made Allison envy their creative freedom and inspired her first range of cards - funded by stretching her credit card to the limit.

"I figured if they didn't sell, I'd just get a full-time job to pay back the credit card."

But they sold well in Christchurch gift shops and friends were recruited around the country to sell them on a wider scale.

As for Cecily, the cartoon began as a pet project eight years ago. The dearth of any publications depicting women's humour inspired the idea for a book of cartoons on the trials and tribulations of New Zealand women growing up.

Allison describes Cecily as a self-effacing, middle-class and middle-aged woman "who exposes her fragilities and foibles with a wry, self-denigrating humour".

She appeals to women from 30 up because "she exists in many of us and, through her, we are able to laugh compassionately at ourselves.

"The humour's quite soft, so a lot of men don't get it. It's not clear enough for them, I don't think."

Although Allison has picked up on and used some humorous aspects of her own life, she did not intend Cecily to be autobiographical.

Cecily's "unfashionable" nature has helped her survive.

"I think she will grow old with me. I don't intend to pull out and do a new one. I'm enjoying her journey at the moment."

Although shy bachelor Gordon makes the odd appearance in Cecily's life, she will remain a single, working woman, who is not following any sort of timeline.

For Allison, there is a fine line between her financial needs and the adventure of her creative ventures, as she really only wants to make a "reasonable" living.

But she is hoping her endeavours result in a big global Cecily fan club that will "allow me to travel".

Turnover reached $240,000 last year for the self-funded business. The only outside help came from a New Zealand Trade and Enterprise grant that helped pay for her first exhibit at a gift fair in Sydney.

Allison employs one full-time staff member and contracts out most of the packaging.

Although a keen advocate of challenging jobs, she is wary of encouraging others hoping to make a living out of their creative talents.

"We live in a world where everyone is told they can do whatever they want", leading to the romanticism of any creative endeavours - but the reality of making a living was much harder. Allison said the market for gift cards was now more competitive than when she started as more people had access to home printing.

And the challenges of marketing were often underestimated.

"Drawing the cards is just the beginning of it," she said.

"If that is what you want to be doing you should be selling your designs to a larger company."

Establishing a clear point of difference was also important.

"If you want to follow a fad, you'll last only as long as the fad."

www.cecily.co.nz

www.moarevival.co.nz