Making Your Vision a Reality
Project 'NEON'
I started Project 'NEON' with many goals in mind. However, as the work load piled up, I decided to seek a helping hand. With the lack of illustrating skills, I approached my then instructor, Josh, who guided me into picking a concept artist. The selected individual then being Luna, a Swedish Concept Artist, began working with environmental studies as instructed. While I continue to develop NEONREF (NEON Reference Guide), Luna worked on these amazing drawings that I could not have done alone. Besides, NEON-verse (NEON-Universe) is intended to be very complicated so, the additional help is very much needed.
Subsequently, Project 'NEON' is a pre-production project that will aid in the storytelling of NEON, the official manga. So, in order for NEON to succeed as a manga, Project ‘NEON’ has to play its part in guiding me, the author, with in-depth information regarding the plot, storytelling, the environment set in NEON-verse and the characters. That is why I began by introducing Project 'NEON' to NEONREF.
NEONREF is purposely documented to be very detailed in its pre-production stages as it strives to showcase its readers a variety of possible different interactions within the story arcs. As I work on NEONREF, my then Concept Artist, Luna, worked on the creative aspects of NEONREF, providing me, the Creative Director, the drawings I intend to convey and exhibit in NEON-verse - where every detail in the world's lore is planned thoroughly to fit my visuals.
February 2022 - March 2022
I compiled both Luna and I's works and delivered my first moodboard for NEONREF, called "Yishun MegaComplex @ Tuesday's Avenue, Neo-Yuggum". Yishun was derived from the residential area of Yishun in Singapore. After studying Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay, I captured a variety of points that are vital to creating a fictional society and community. There, I chose Yishun because, locally, Yishun has been deemed as the "most terrifying city to live in Singapore". Additionally, I have referenced Singapore in terms of its diversed community and economic strength in tourism to create such a peculiar skyscraper like the "Yishun Megacomplex" as seen below.
The street "Tuesday's Avenue" was also inspired by the many cities in Singapore that has a tint of the English colonialism (for eg. Commonwealth, Queenstown). I tried to replicate the idea of those cities and towns and therefore creating "Tuesday's Avenue".
With "Neo-Yuggum": as "Yuggum" sounded like a combination of some languages spoken in South-East Asia like Tagalog, Bahasa Melayu/Indo, Thai and Laotian, I put in the mix of "Neo" to surrealized the era NEON is set in, pre-Cyberpunk.
In summary, the megacomplex throughout the city are created and designed to showcase what pre-Cyberpunk HDB (Housing & Development Board) Flats would look like. I played around to include: MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) train platform being as close as three storeys beneath one's house, local convinient stores or "kedai mamak" that are usually located at the lobby of a HDB flat facing your front door and shopping malls being the lobby of your block.
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April 2022
Overjoyed with the outcome of the first moodboard, I attempted a second one immediately. Again, I studied Singapore's success in tourism and how it has impacted Singapore's economy. After acknowledging Singapore's best tourist spots, I decided to make a very different mock up of the Marina Bay Sand and its iconic three pillar and boat and challenged Luna to attempt "Tower Of Doom".
Replacing the three pillars with horns and the boat at the top with a female humanoid, Luna created "Tower Of Doom" as perfect as I had visualized it to be. With the birth of "Tower Of Doom", I began researching for it's moodboard write-up; finding a purpose for its structure.
Besides Tower of Doom, I also came up with the city of "Numan Circle" where, again, "Numan" sounded like a combination of the common languages spoken in South-East Asia such as Tagalog, Bahasa Melayu/Indo, Thai and Laotian; "Circle" to also surrealized the impact of colonialism.
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I bet you're wondering, how is Project 'NEON' doing as of right now?
Well, I hate to bring up the bad news but, as of May 2022, I had to let go of Luna due to the insufficient of funds of Project 'NEON'. As much as I want Luna to stay, it'd be more thoughtful to let her go and go solo. That is why I am opening up a funds account to try kick start some donations to get Project 'NEON' going again.
So, if you find Project 'NEON' appealing, I highly encourage you to keep up with NEONBLOG, a blog series that I will be documenting for Project 'NEON' and its progress. Lastly, there is a (non-refundable) donation link below if one is interested to show financial support!
*Donations are non-refundable.