Envato Notes

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 11:15 PM PDT

author-interview-wickedpixels

A team of young developers that spans three countries, stunning views of old European towns, rapid development in the browser, and why Slovak beer is best. This week we meet Matej Janovcik, a member of the WalkingPixels team on ThemeForest.

Walking Pixels Is a Team

Walking Pixels is a side project by Parallaq, small UX/web development company originally from Kosice. We now have offices in Kosice (in the Slovak Republic) and Prague (in the Czech Republic). They’re located in the city centers, and have outstanding views.

We don’t have policies about hardware infrastructures, and everyone works on the platform he or she prefers. This has resulted in a wild mix of i7 quad-core Windows machines, iMacs, UNIX based systems, and a variety of tablets. A 2×24″ monitor setup is a must have—usually using the HP LP series, plus what’s available. We also have one archaic dust collector—a Pentium 133.

Our Kosice office.

Our main work focuses on custom web app solutions for customers and developing our own services and technologies. To take a break from everyday work we make admin templates to sell on ThemeForest. As a company, we primarily work on UX/UI projects, so this is a familiar playground.

There’s a bunch of people behind Walking Pixels, who basically have some free time to help us with templates and template support. I wouldn’t make a list of names, but no one is older than 26, and all of us are self-taught and split across three countries.

Winter view from our Kosice office

ThemeForest Is a Profitable Hobby

We discovered the Envato Marketplaces very soon after they launched, and have been big fans of all Envato’s projects—especially the tutorial network.

The strong impulse to try selling templates came from hearing about one of the very first successful authors, Kriesi. We liked the idea of passive income, and were impressed by how much you can earn with well-built portfolio.

So we built the Chromatron template, and it sold pretty well. Since then we’ve been collecting badges and releasing new templates from time to time.

Our creative process is rapid development! We barely design in Photoshop—most of our templates are created directly in the browser, and a few on paper wireframes.

Since this is not our main income, designing templates for ThemeForest is more like fun. Most of our templates came from experiments, and we usually don’t know what the final design will look like until the end of the development process.

Advice to Other Authors

Don’t give up! Keep an eye on new stuff, current trends and technologies. Make sure to support your files, and help buyers to keep using your work.

Was your item rejected? Don’t get too frustrated! It happens to everybody. The top authors work hard to deliver quality items.

We don’t do much to market our files, to be honest. Envato is our main source of buyers, and has an awesome community. We use Twitter, Google+ and a simple homepage.

We made Christmas themed figures for 2012. They’re still available for download.

Favorite Files and Authors

Chromatron HTML5 Admin Backend

This is definitely our favorite file, and is actually our first ThemeForest template to be accepted. Chromatron was based on an unused prototype for a different project, and is still our bestseller.

Huraga Responsive Admin Template

Huraga is a very special template, because it was done in less than a week, and started as CSS box shadow experiment. It was fully designed in the browser.

Sangoma Bootstrap Admin Template

Sangoma is our latest template. In fact, we wanted to make something else, but it ended up as this neat flat theme.

There are a lot of awesome Marketplace authors! If I have to pick favorites, they would be Mike McAlister, Peerapong, Kriesi and OrmanClark.

And In Their Spare Time…

If I listed every activity for each team member, it would be a very long (and probably boring) list. We have one thing in common: we all enjoy drinking beer! Trust me, if you have an opportunity to visit Slovakia or the Czech Republic, our beer is worth it!

At the Kosice office.

Do you have a crazy story about how you discovered Envato? Or some great tips to share with other authors? If you're an Envato Marketplace author and would like to be interviewed for the blog, head over to this form. We'd love to hear from you.