We Asked Our Envato Authors to Share Their Creative Journey: Here are 6 of The Most Inspiring Stories

From illustrators and artists to video creators and web designers, the Envato community is home to over 80,000 talented creatives who use our platforms to sell and showcase their work. For some, being an author is a hobby or side-hustle, while for others it offers a primary source of income. As you’ll discover in the stories they’ve shared with us below, many of our authors have been able to achieve both creative and financial freedom by selling their assets via Envato.

Having recently celebrated Envato’s 15th Birthday, we know that we wouldn’t be where we are today without our creative community – which is why we launched a competition inviting authors to use their talents and skills to show us their creative journeys with Envato. This resulted in some incredibly creative and heartwarming stories.

Without further ado, meet the six winners of our Envato Author Birthday Competition and find out how being a part of the Envato Community has enabled them to achieve amazing things. 

WRTeam is the winner of our ‘most creative’ entry in the Author Birthday Competition. The creatives behind WRTeam joined Envato in 2017 and have since made their mark on CodeCanyon with their modern and innovative mobile apps. For the competition, they created an entire app to depict their journey with Envato, plus a slick promo video to accompany it.

“We aren’t alone, we’re a team of developers & technology lovers who are enthusiastic, passionate and skilled,” explains WRTeam. “We’re always there to support our much loved clients, who are an integral part of our team.”

The winner of our ‘most heartwarming’ category, Dredstudio created an inspiring video to show how selling his music through Envato has helped to change his life – and the life of his children – for the better. 

“When my eldest son was five years old, he was diagnosed with autism,” Dredstudio explained. “We lived in Ukraine and did not have the opportunity to significantly help our child. During this period, I learned about Envato. I decided to register and upload my work. My first sale happened, and from that point our life began to change. I left my previous job and threw all my efforts into Envato. A year later, I started earning enough to begin dreaming of a different future for my family. Our children now receive high-quality special education and assistance – Envato has really changed our lives.” 

Burnhambox was awarded second place in our ‘most creative’ category. They joined Envato in 2015 where over on ThemeForest they’ve built a portfolio of memorable and functional WordPress themes and plugins. To enter the competition, they created an incredible interactive online story representing their Envato journey, which also doubled as a game with 24 different characters! Kerem Kandirali, the creator behind Burnhambox, has found Envato a great place to learn, grow and improve his skills. 

“Envato is such a great platform where you can always improve yourself,” says Kerem. “It’s a great place to find new ways to learn and discover opportunities.”

Awarded second place in our ‘most heartwarming’ category, MotionToolStore created an emotional and uplifting story using his motion graphics skills to depict his rewarding journey with Envato, which also showed his fierce passion for his craft.

“While trying desperately to be an artist in the midst of chaos, a dear friend from the past pointed me in the direction of a certain website called VideoHive,” said Indunil Ranawake, AKA MotionToolStore. “I didn’t take it seriously at first, but his response was, ‘Just do one project and see for yourself.’ And I did. After just three months and seven projects, I was already earning more than I did from my full time job.”

331, Cjkap, HotPenguin, MagpieMusic and SantiagoEffects were awarded third prize in the ‘most creative’ category for their super fun and engaging video. All the authors involved in this entry have found creative and financial freedom through selling their work on Envato. 

“Working with Envato has led to professional growth, the renewal of musical equipment and, best of all, it’s enabled us not to need to work elsewhere,” said Alexandr Rzhevin, AKA Envato author Cjkap. “I have much more free time, because now my work schedule is very flexible.”

This group of Authors, who have been with Envato for a number of years and are active members of our Audio community, worked together to create this amazing video, which manages to tell their individual stories seamlessly and ends by creatively wishing Envato a happy birthday (spoiler: it involves a drone, arts & craft and a cake!).

“Envato has radically changed my life, now I can do what I really like,” explains Yuriy Sokolov from HotPenguin. “I can travel, improve my studio and make cool tracks too.”

Winning third prize in the most heartwarming category, AnimaPiano composed a song and created a video – even featuring her own vocals – to share her emotional connection to music as well as her journey with music on Envato. She even included footage of her playing piano as a child, creating a truly moving piece of work. We’ll let her words speak for themselves.

“If not for Envato, I would be sitting in my home studio and working only with local customers. But now each day, each sale is such an incredible discovery. Today I had a sale in France, Hong Kong, Italy… It’s unbelievable! My music is in different beautiful parts of the world!”

If you’re looking for more creative inspiration from the Envato community, head to our Community Stories category, which features interviews with authors about their creative careers, as well as enlightening Q&As with industry experts and Envato customers.