About The
Artist
Simone Smith is a talented Caribbean-British Artist based in the United Kingdom! And here is where her webcomics, character designs, Illustrations, animation and bespoke commissions come to life with boundless creativity and artistic flair.
She graduated from the University of the Arts London with a BA (HONS) in Animation. And shortly after decided to follow her dream and start her own business.
She describes her work as being Blerd-Fantasy as she loves mixing elements of her Jamaican heritage with things that are quirky and magical.
"The best stories come from your own perspective!"
Simkray
Comics
The brand Simkray was created in 2018 when Simone began by creating T-shirts with her own original designs.
With the help of her family, she was able to attend a few markets & events around London such as the Made in Croydon's Box Park Market, The Teenage Market and The Voice Black Business Fair 2018 to name a few.
After talking with her local community at these events she realised that people were more interested in her illustrative and creative skills and wanted to work with her and read her stories and so Simone decided to focus on creating Comics based on her culture and interests!
As a Black British person, Simkray’s aim is to create fun and positive content that includes black people.
YouTube
Simkray's Channel is dedicated to sharing her passion for creating illustrations and webcomics. Her videos Range from helpful advice and tips on creating your own webcomic to discussing secrets about her stories.
Simkray's
Brushes
Simone started making brushes for fun and for her own work. As an Artist who illustrates her own Webcomic, she found it really difficult to find any hair brushes that reflected black hair textures, and since she had a lot of black characters in her stories she decided to try making her own, initially, she made them just for herself but decided to share them online by chance which unexpectedly ended up going viral, reading all the comments from other people about her brushes, she realized she had made something that was both needed and useful and slowly started sharing more of her brushes and created Simkray's Brush Club.
"don't let your fear of not thinking your work is good enough stop you from creating. it is always better to have something to look back on than nothing at all"
Insparation
I've always loved making my own stories, From a young age, I was instantly captivated by anime, manga, comics and movies like Spirited Away from Studio Ghibli, and anything fantasy related.
I wasn't able to grow up seeing characters that looked like me that were the hero of the story doing positive things or had cool powers, There were no games or comics or shows about my culture, So now I'm making my own.
I want to be able to make stories that show how interesting and uniquely beautiful my culture is with black characters that aren't based on what people expect.
