Illustrations
Digital, Analog, Print
2019—
Miscellaneous illustrations including editorial illustration, poster design, zine, album cover, animation/animatic etc.
︎︎︎ Role: illustrator, artist, designer, animator, sound designer
︎︎︎ Dimension: various
︎︎︎ Dimension: various
Nostalgic Gaze
An illustrated portrait of a children’s book illustrator.
Rabbits fly out of the book, just like how feelings and imagination run wild in the illustrator’s brain. It is a portrait of an instantaneous fantasy, a fleeting dream, and nostalgic remembrance of childhood.
This is a portrait of a dear friend of mine. I told her that I discovered many of her books often end with a “nostalgic gaze”.
Digital illustration
Editorial illustration
Hyperspace
Theoretical album cover redesign for Hyperspace by Beck.
Originated from my experience when studying abroad in Florence, Italy, this work is influenced by the Italian adaption of Surrealism — Metaphysical Art, especially by the artist de Chirico, whose exhibition I have visited in Venice during my study abroad semester. Hyperspace's lo-fi quality is harmonic with the pop vaporwave aesthetics that employs classical Italian statues such as David, which was among many of my on-site studies in Florence. Other influences include Storm Thorgerson and Robert Beatty.
In this illustrated album cover, I turned the artist Beck into a classical statue as well. Adopting Surrealist elements like the open sky, the horizon, spatial absurdity, and the stark contrast of light and shadows, I hope to capture the essence of the album and its key message of nothingness, etherealness, and paradoxicality.
Album cover design
Digital illustration
Visual culture
St. Louis Riverfront
A visual essay zine that interprets on-site and off-site research about the Riverfront area of St. Louis into illustrations on three book spreads, capturing an emotional sense of a place within a physical area.
The St. Louis Riverfront area, spanning along Mississippi, was one of the oldest St. Louis neighborhoods before the monumental Gateway Arch was erected, witnessing the old and the new, the big and the small, as well as the past and the present.
This project hopes to deliver a storytelling quality by practicing visual journalism like Robert Weaver and Franklin McMahon. It started with multiple on-site trips that generate sketches and photography. Then the project moved on to off-site research about the culture and history of the Riverfront. The image-making consists of watercolor, pencils, color pencils, photography, and digital illustration.
︎︎︎ Represented in Sam Fox School Student Work
︎︎︎ Featured in Sam Fox official brochure
Analog image-making
Digital illustration
Narrative illustration
Typography
Photography
Visual journalism
Visual essay/reportage
On-site research
A Witch’s Rube
Goldberg Machine
An animation imagining how a witch would use a Rube Goldberg Machine to complete magical tasks.
Project originally assigned as a silent GIF. Interested in adding sounds, I taught myself basics of sound design and revised the animation and illustration in post-production.
P.S. Mr. Rube Goldberg himself saw this work on my Instagram and commented “👏”, which is the ultimate appraisal this work could get : )
Animation
Digital illustration
Sound design
Character design
Family Reunion
Every year on Lunar New Year’s Eve before nightfall, my family will set out a feast for ancestors and passed family members.
Ink on newsprint, then digitally manipulated and illustrated.
Analog image-making
Digital illustration
Narrative illustration
Editorial illustration
Mother Goose
Nursery Rhymes
Three illustrations based on three nursery rhymes from Mother Goose.
Digital illustration
Children’s illustration
Typography
It’s Good Enough
A risograph illustration based on a fortune from a fortune cookie—”it could be better, but it’s good enough.”
Digital illustration
Risograph
Narrative illustration
Editorial illustration
Color separation
Voyage to Pluto
An animatic sequence consisting of 200 frames for a theoretical upcoming feature film named Voyage to Pluto.
The name of the film and characters are predetermined, but the character designs, plot settings, screenwriting, music, and cinematography are left entirely to the artistic freedom.
︎︎︎See process