Lore Intro

So recently I went home for Lunar New Year, and I found some of my old “drawings” lol, just thought I’d share them here. “Drawings” in quotations because, I guess some of these is closer to what artists call “trace”, yeah most of these is me looking at a reference and basically copying them, but there is some stuff I draw on my own, and I still think they tell a story or something at least. Back then, I used the alias “Zax” or “Zaclord” (son 😭), these probably dates way back to 2016, 10 frickin years lol.

After showing my drawings, I think might as well showcase my more recent “artistic” works in graphics design.

Paper drawings

Most of them are pencil, some are colored by those cheap colored pencils, but i especially like that one shaded work that was done using a ballpoint pen.

Let’s go deeper into their lore one by one, from left to right, up to down:

1. Carol, a character from a gacha-rythm game called TapSonic TOP. This game was introduced to me by an old friend, I really like it and was quite good at it, unfortunately the game reached EOS :(.
2. Alice, playable hero from a mobile MOBA Arena of Valor (AOV). I think this one wasn’t copied.
3. If I’m not mistaken, Ivy from Cytus II, it seems I was already a big rhythm game guy lol, surprised I didn’t draw Osu’s mascot.
4. Original work I think…
5. Nekomiya Hinata, Vtuber, I don’t know how I knew about her back then lol, this pose is original I think.

1. Yoshino from Date A Live, my ass was watching that when I was 11? 😭
2. Referenced from this one song from the rhythm game Deemo.
3. I love this work… Nora from Cytus II, goddamn 11 yo me was producing heat with this ballpoint shade thing tho 😭.

1. Another character from TapSonic TOP, Horyeon, she was the first highest rarity character that I rolled in that game (I never got Carol who i actually wanted 😭), characters from that game was hard to get asf for a F2P…
2. Hinata again. I think I referenced her head and the gun, then I just freestyle the rest lol…
3. I honestly don’t remember… if you know this character, do tell in the comments…
4. Felt from Re:Zero, I think back then I read the novels, because this was copied straight from the novel’s art 🤔.
5. Kanna from Dragon Maid, pretty sure I referenced the pose from somewhere.

Graphics design

I think I stopped drawing around 2020 or something, sometimes I did produce a few original works, but these days, I mostly do graphics design (which I dropped again for many reasons). Nevertheless, I’m going to showcase some of my works. I started this graphics design thing after I enrolled in HUS VNU, and join some clubs and stuff. I did these using Adobe products like Illustrator and Photoshop.

so yeah, i mostly did GD for others, nowadays I don’t do it much anymore because

1. I don’t work for them anymore (I never got paid for these btw, for the enrollment promotion poster they deadass had to use a senior as a meat shield to wire me 50k VND as like shut-up money or something lmao. I wired it back to him)
2. Partially because AI.

Yeah, I guess this is one of those time where AI discouraged someone who isn’t 100% passionate about something. But well, I’d say that AI or not, I probably won’t be that deep into this kind of work anyway, honestly, you can absolutely be decent in something without making it a core part of your personality right?

I have to say graphics design skills, and just my overall “taste” still aid me though, such as the design of my UI in projects, or even this blog in of itself, I usually care quite a bit about the gritty details of things, but only if I do truly “care” about it lol. For example, here are some stuff I made in illustrator for my TrafficLab 3D project recently:

So that’s a side of my that I’ve never really shared here before. After adding some new features to my blog recently, I plan to become more active and have a more “real” writing output on here, one of the place that I still have control over. Hope you enjoyed this, until next time.