"Untitled (Assorted Character Designs)" - January 2026

Digital illustration (IbisPaint X)

Combined set of character designs accumulated over a period of about 3-4 weeks.

The aim was to try to create characters with a diverse range of species (human, humanoid, non-objective) and with differing design elements and silhouettes. Shape language is something I'm not as strong with, but I tried incorporating it here - Especially with the contrast between a softer flowing character and a sharper angled character. This also let me mess around with the rendering/shading somewhat, where I could emphasize shadows and highlights on golden or metallic elements; I also got to play with textures like crystals and glowing/light source elements.

Additionally, these characters are intended to be vibrant and cartoony, and have proportions like such. I had to make sure the characters were appropriately scaled side-by-side (the left-most character is about 5'5") when making the canvas layout. This project is still currently ongoing, and it's not so much a learning experience as it is a design drill, like practice or exercise. It involves a plan where I have to decide on a restricted and thoughtful colour palette, then I draw a few design proposals for each character, then I draw the key pose and continue from there. It's also purposefully simplified so I don't burn myself out as fast.

"Untitled ("Unexpected")" - October 2025

Digital illustration (IbisPaint X)

Based on Pent from Supermental. Was intended to be an experimental piece with a lot of noise (static) and bold shading/outlines.

This piece was an exercise in breaking out of my typical style. I don't normally leave my lineart uncoloured (therefore, just solid black) and I tend to keep my shadows slightly darker. Something struck me that day, and I really wanted a piece that felt loud and obnoxious. This is also lent to in some of the colours, where I made the eye sclerae bright neon yellow and the pupils a very saturated pink-red. This piece was also like a test run for me using the lasso tool, and since then I've been incorporating it in my pieces more. I found that it gives my work a bit of an intentional imperfection, which is a style I've been enjoying so far. I also find that using bolder outlines in certain places can help distinguish the perspective of something, where sometimes I felt I struggled with trying to get foreshortened hand poses to look less homogenous (ie. indistinguishable from the background). Overall very fun exercise that helped me familiarize myself with some design choices I otherwise don't lean towards.

"Untitled ("Crawlspace")" - July 2025

Digital illustration (IbisPaint X)

Original character. Three-hour long piece with the challenge of being restricted to certain colours, and only the lasso fill tool (with one other dot brush for garnishes). At the time I was even less familiar with the lasso tool, solely using it for non-objective or semi-transparent highlights, but this piece actually made me realize the overall usefulness of it. The lasso tool, for me, can be used to get some really nice sharper points that I can't otherwise reproduce with my normal brush without having to purposefully erase and taper lines. Also, I tend not to do lineless pieces like this, since it's a tad more time-consuming, but this one made me reconsider since I found the process deceivingly therapeutic. I'm also a bit averse towards drawing full scenes with background elements and props, so making this piece also involved the work of placing things in a drawn space and making it work.

I used some gradation maps, and also worked with contrast to create a focal point (orange on purple). I like how it works, and I really like how it turned out. It helped me break the mindset of trying to get all of my background scenes to be overly perfect, and I was able to settle with a slightly messier (but still readable) environment.