Tried a mildly seductive design.

Just a warm-up.

Originally this was just a test to see how the character illustration would look, but I ended up expanding the whole scene as the logic unfolded.

It was really fun to draw, but it drifted away from my initial goal —
to make the character stand out (and, honestly, to make something that could sell).

Still need more trials.

My next personal project I can talk about publicly is - how to change my ability into bread I need.

As you may think — yes, this is basically what freelancers do. But still, it can be seen as a puzzle that needs to be solved.

Let’s take a look and see if I can figure out a way to make some creative money through a project-solving SOP.

According to a simple investigation (I checked some platforms that creators often use and summarized the most popular characteristics a product should have), if I can fulfill one of the values below, I can make some money:

- emotion value

- knowledge value

- community connection value

I’ll do all three anyway. But I tend to start from the one I’m most good at — ideation.

So I want to be a role that turns users’ OC (original character) s into real paintings. I’ll start from simple character design, as you can see in the picture.

For more money, I’ll set levels in my service system — but that’s a future talk, not now.

This is a practice method I often use:

1. Start with random references

I tend to use a reference site with a flow view — then I can smoothly switch from one reference to another.
(ex. Pinterest)

2. make good use of reference without copying

In this step, I just try my best to turn every reference into a single design element in my image.
Without overthinking, the picture will grow by itself — which trains my ideation ability.

3. arrange the composition carefully

Since I need to keep adding elements into the picture, I have to try hard to keep the composition funny and understandable at the same time.

Good exercise.

In shorts, this process can be regarded as a simple hybrid exercise for my creative muscles, and it is funny anyway, so I can keep doing it.

The outcome always out of expectaion though

This is one of my rare attempts at painterly rendering. Among my other works, it feels like adding a different perceptual filter to the world. An interesting experiment.

Since I haven’t had the time to properly update the Sketchlog, I decided to just start filling it with something anyway.

I’ll gradually move over the parts of my creative process that feel meaningful, interesting, or simply well-drawn.

Using CATBOX-001 as the first post feels right—an imperfect beginning is often the start of something good.

Today is the first day of my website going live — worth celebrating.