Our story began some twenty years ago, when a shy, introverted animation student, Chrischa Van de Voorde, decided to play life with "hard mode enabled" and took a shot at making it as a freelance illustrator. She enjoyed initial success working for a local Ghent-based advertising agency, taking on major campaigns for Croky's crisps, the city of Ghent, and De Lijn bus service. After successfully escap— I mean, graduating from the KASK School of Arts in the early 2000s, "Ze Isch" began taking her freelance work more seriously, learning Adobe’s (booooo) Photoshop and Illustrator tools and tackling larger projects for local businesses.

By the mid-2000s, Chrischa aimed to take her freelance work full time, and in the summer of 2004, she established Happy Monsters' Studios—a name inspired by a dream involving two oranges furiously pleading for their lives as she hurriedly assembled a fruit salad for the King of Denmark. Over the next decade, she continued to grow the business. However, she eventually fell for a particularly clever scam from a mischievous Englishman named David Perkins, who somehow convinced her he was the sort of charming, sophisticated English gentleman she'd read about in books. A few months later, she realised she was dating Del Boy—though a Del Boy who could, when pressed, put together a decent website! With those web skills in play, Happy Monsters entered its second major phase, becoming a reliable web design partner for businesses across America, England, Sri Lanka, and, of course, Belgium.

Eventually, I got tired of the long phone calls and ferry trips, so we decided it would just be easier if we married, bought a house, a secondhand Honda Jazz, and had a kid… well, we didn’t buy that last one; that was the result of a buy-two-get-one-free offer on some particularly heavy Trappist beers one heady night out in… but I digress. We finally settled down, became a proper little family-run business, and have been doing our thing for the past twenty years.

Over the years, we've handled both big clients (we even had to dress up and travel to Brussels once) and small clients, helping various lovely people grow their businesses with brands that align with their visions. Beyond businesses, many of our clients have been aspiring children's book writers who hired us to create illustrations and complete the formatting for their work.

In the midst of all this, Chrischa ventured off to conquer the Belgian face-paint market, establishing one of the country's most respected face-paint studios, De Spinnekoppen. Not bad for a side hustle!

For the past five years, the business has been running on autopilot, happily servicing our existing clients while other projects emerged. Chrischa became a colourist for several comic book projects, and I became a layout designer for two of my favourite magazines, *Crash* and *Zzap*—the classic home computer magazines successfully re-energised by Chris Wilkins at Fusion Retro Books.

Which brings us to today, Sunday, 10th November 2024. Assuming the ants aren’t poised to take over and our AI overlords permit it, we’ve decided to re-launch and re-purpose the little business that has kept us afloat all these years.

We continue to offer the full range of services our clients know us for, but our refreshed focus now shines on comics, print design, and related creative services. We’re passionate about helping creators perfect the presentation of their books, magazines, and comics, and now offer a comprehensive, start-to-finish service for aspiring writers and small publishers. From transforming ideas into polished books or comics to crafting impactful branding, our years of experience with small businesses mean we’re also here to support the marketing side, making sure your creative vision reaches its audience.

We're at the start of our next chapter, and given the Belgian government’s treatment of pensions for the self-employed as an optional extra, this will likely be our longest chapter yet! So please, come help us write it. :)