Skyler Chui | Creative Sparks

The Alaskan Frontier

About this project

The Alaskan Frontier is one of the IP I developed during my third year studying at The One Academy. The story is about an Eskimo Hunter whom is tasked to protect this village from bio-engineered creatures. These creatures were made by Central, the same corporation that supplies weaponry to the native folk; using them as testing grounds for all their creations.

The inspiration of this project came from watching Maze Runner, and Aliens vs. Predator (2004). The idea of putting the protagonist in a controlled environment; while the antagonist masquerades as both ally and enemy, really captivated my attention. This ended up influencing the direction of this project.

Creating worlds within pixels

There's nothing like immersing myself into believable worlds, from movies, video-games, and eventually, my own art. I haven't had many opportunities to travel, so experiencing them through media is the next best thing. To me, environments have the potential to tell a story of its own, which can heavily influence the design choices of character designs!

Coveted Whispers

About this project

Coveted Whispers is a group project I worked on during my third year at The One Academy. It's a story about sibling rivalry, dragon racing, and jealousy.

While discussing the direction of this project, we came to a unanimous decision to have it set in Arab; with international dragon racers competing in the country's annual dragon race. Below, is my contribution of designs to Coveted Whispers.

I was given the opportunity to create Abbas, the main character's father. I designed the character that best suited the role, which surrounded the keywords of traditional, unimpressed, and stern. As for Borstig, he's a Nordic inspired dragon racer set to compete in the race. The keywords I used for him was sore-loser, angry, and rough.

To create a more believable relationship between Borstig and his Dragon, I carried forward the warm color palette, and keywords used it as an anchor point for my designs.

During this semester at The One Academy, we learned how to use Blender to efficiently speed up our workflow. It was especially useful for creating believable shadows and lighting onto our designs.

Breaking rules, pushing boundaries

Exploring stylized art, was a breath of fresh air for me. Throwing me back to when I was younger and enjoying art at its purest form; without limits. Only by attending The One Academy did I realize the importance of studying the fundamentals, especially human anatomy when it came to stylized art; thus was when I came across an alleged quote by Pablo Picasso "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist".

Ngam-Chit

A young veterinarian from Thailand suffered a traumatic head injury in a boating accident. When she awoke, she found herself stuck in the Afterlife without memory of the incident. There, she met a spirit guide who decided to help her get back to Earth.

I was heavily inspired by Thailand culture when creating this concept. Through this project, did I reignited my passion to create stylized art; making this one of the happiest projects I've made in The One Academy.

Keeping the spark alive

When I'm not doing college work, I enjoy spending my time painting portraits and fan-art of media I've gobbled up (yum!). It's during this time, when I'm able to recharge my creative juices and let loose exploring different styles, techniques, and coloring methods. My favorite pass time however, is doing color studies! Especially when it's from a movie or TV-show screen cap of my favorite characters.

(from left to right) Fan art of characters from Dead By Daylight, Persona 5, Pokémon, and Marvel's Spider-man.

(from left to right) Studies of Marvel's Doctor Strange and Marvel's Jessica Jones.
(below) Fan-art of Cuphead!

Art is all I've ever known, and something I'll always keep dear to my heart.

Thank you for checking out my work, and I hope you enjoyed every bit of it!