GALLERY
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I graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2022 with a BFA in Illustration!
I'm currently applying to grad school; These are my Graduate Admission portfolio pieces.
My passions are good storytelling, good character design and writing, and making detailed illustrations. I love the fantasy, sci-fi, psychological and horror genres. I'm also dabbling a little bit in music.
Some of the pieces are videos and can only be viewed in another window; if so there will be a link in the description for easy access.
Thank you for your time!
⋆｡°✩ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊✩₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ✩°｡⋆ .・゜゜・ ・゜゜・． ｡･ﾟﾟ･ ･ﾟﾟ･｡
My 2D professor asked us to create hypothetical street art to photoshop onto pictures we took of Chinatown; I decided to create a mural to honour my parents' cultural heritage and represent my own unique (albeit tumultuous) relationship with it.
For a collaborative project with the Brooklyn nightclub House of Yes; I made 3 accompanying moving images for their club safety guidelines. The first piece is a cautionary guideline against spiking - to warn the clubgoers to watch their drink.
An accompaniment for the guideline on consent - any kind of activity/sexual interactions on the dancefloor must only happen with enthusiastic consent from both parties. The flickering TV screen is a metaphor - she changes the channel when SHE wants, no matter how quick it may be.
A trailer I created for Finding Sanctuary at Bluevern Academy during the pandemic. I found the viral song "Dancing in my Room" by 347aidan, and wanted to juxtapose a comforting scene of my characters Val and Julian dancing, against Val's waning sanity as she struggles to leave a highschool cult while keeping her tumultuous life a secret.
An editing assignment for my audiovisual composition class. The professor gave us archival footage websites to take videos from. The clips I chose included a video from the 30s on self care and properness, a bikini model on the beach, a 70s drug PSA, and an 80s instructional video on skateboarding. The song I chose was "Teen Pregnancy" by Blank Banshee. I instinctually edited the video around the theme of poor choices involving drugs and wasted youth, but I prefer to let the video speak.
Another assignment for my audiovisual editing class, on visual and audial synchronisation. The pandemic was a rough time for me and I mentally withdrew into an area of familiarity and comfort for myself, which was this movie from the 80s called Heathers. I edited this to "Eclipse" by Inner Wave, to project my feelings as I related to the protagonist Veronica (portrayed by Winona Ryder) and how she wanted a normal high school life experience but fought hard not to lose everything dear to her.
I was inspired by the "Chill Lofi beats to study to" radio stations on YouTube. I tried to be strategic with the room design - I wanted typical qualities of a girly girl's room. To evoke comfort, I modeled her bedroom after motel rooms, a place of solitude and privacy. I drew items and objects personal to her. I wanted people to see the room of a student (notebook, stationery), an athlete (soccer ball, dumbbell, numbered sports jersey), and an academically focused girl (trophies).
This was my first time learning to use the puppet tool in Adobe After Effects, so I made something very simple. It was a stationary pose so range of motino was limited. I realized if I made separate limbs and individual body parts it could've made a better quality animation with more options. Overall the experience gave me an understanding of how videogame animations worked, and how I could exploit the technological convenience to animate more dynamically interesting scenes.
My characters Naoya and his friend Dan sitting in an alleyway. A great learning experience on painting in chiaroscuro lighting, and organically depicting my characters' relationship dynamic - Naoya's the therapist friend and he knows Dan won't talk about his problems to anybody else, so every week he takes Dan down to the pub until the booze gets him talking.
an updated banner of the protagonists from my 2 main IPs: (Left to right) Zed, Julian and Val from "Finding Sanctuary at Bluevern Academy", followed by Roxxi, Naoya and Gerard from "Nueva Cambria", a project about anthropomorphic animals building a life for themselves in an anthropomorphic New York
A popular Twitter artist by the name of Gutmouth was hosting a "draw this in your style" challenge, where participants would draw her character in their own style/take. I went the extra mile and created a small animation, adding a glow in her eyes and the puzzle on her forehead. The video came out with a minor glitch where the illustration started flashing, so I used it to my advantage, synced it to a song with a fitting mood ("Human" by Sevdaliza) and posted it as an instagram reel.
an accompaniment for the diversity guideline - all cultures, orientations, religions etc are to be treated with respect and without discrimination.
i started collaging after experiencing a fallout with an old friend. I started taking images that resonated with my mood and digitally collaged them. I made this to honor my memory of her, and to find catharsis. I found catharsis in the simplistic yet straightforward display of my conflicted feelings for her. We'll never talk again, but I still care about her. I will always remember her with messy red hair and dark, edgy clothes, surrounded by death and everything leading to it.
I started using collage to conceptualize characters, and found it a very effective tool. Character development takes time, but collaging helps you dump the main ideas that represent them the best, which slowly reveals a picture of who they really are. This character Julian has a complicated past. He is an angel, but he has suffered sexual assault, fought in many wars, and has never found himself in his 200 years of living.
During Junior year I had just returned from my hometown in Hong Kong back to my university campus. I was displaced by the pandemic and starting over again socially was difficult. I felt like I didn’t really fit in at my school. My anxiety was bad and I felt like I was fighting against people and possible judgement just by setting foot on campus. I made this to remember the quiet empowerment and safety i felt, alone in the privacy of my dorm bathroom, staring into the mirror every morning.
Inspired by old Spiderman comic panels and 90s action scenes, my protagonists Val and Julian meet for the first time in my original IP "Finding Sanctuary at Bluevern Academy". Val hurries back to the photo-development room after realizing she'd carelessly left incriminating photographs out on display. To her dismay, the vocal and rebellious delinquent, Julian, stumbles upon it before she could hide them. with her and the only witness stuck together in the room, she knows what she must do.
a morph animation of my face shifting into my mascot, originally intended to be used as a moving logo
A short project for an animation class, centered around the prompt word "maps". Inspired by popular Youtube political/cultural Commentary videos, I made a video targeting a spreading problematic demographic of pedophiles on Twitter who self identify as "maps", meaning "Minor Attracted Persons".
This piece was incredibly challenging as it was my first time attempting a natural landscape. Inspired by painted illustrations for Blizzard games and League of Legends's splash art, I depicted my protagonists Val and Julian (from Finding Sanctuary at Bluevern Academy), unleashing their superpowers as they swung and flew through the forest, free to be themselves, away from human eyes. These characters mean a lot to me because they help each other grow and accept themselves despite their pasts.
The 3 main characters in my original IP "Finding Sanctuary at Bluevern Academy": Zed (the antagonist). Julian (the love interest) and Val (the protagonist). The project was still very rough at this stage of development - many changes have occurred since this design. Zed, who is drawn constantly in uniform, now dresses preppy/smart casual in his free time. Julian has a much more rugged appearance. Val is now a dryad and uses plant control, and starts experimenting with her appearance.