About ChenYun

Most of the famous artists you read about say they've been drawing since the moment they could hold a crayon, with me that is totally not true. In fact by the time I could hold a crayon my parents were really confused as to whether I was left-handed or right-handed (a problem that would haunt me throughout primary school until left-handedness was finally accepted by teachers). Anyway, my entire childhood was geared completely towards academic goals. I still had a few arts in there, I played various instruments and did various performing arts but it never occured to me to draw.

I suppose I was raised in an environment perfect for growing an aspiring fantasy artist but I used those creative surroundings more for making my own little worlds and stories than for drawing anything. I've been surrounded by fantasy since birth - from my father I learnt the myths and legends of China and great stories of heroes and dragons.

For my mother I have one of the most loving and nurturing people in existence. She wasn't one of those mums like the ones today who tell their kids to stop imagining or tell them fairies aren't real. My mum was the opposite and I believed in fairies, Santa Claus etc until much later than most people because of the way she loved to surround our childhood with magic. On Christmas eve she would run around the house throwing pebbles on the roof, gnaw at the carrots we left out for the reindeer (and even left "reindeer poo"!!) and the Christmas Tree would magically go from empty to overflowing with beautifully packaged gifts without us hearing a peep! The Tooth Fairy left us little cards with writing so small we needed magnifying glasses to read them, and there was always "magic dust" around our "fairy tree".

She got the "magic dust" from my grandmother, a rather insane old lady (I mean that in the nicest possible way) who thought she was a fairy (she called herself "Wandering Star" although "Wandering Mind" might have been more appropriate. Again, I mean that in the nicest possible way :P ) and worked for a place called "The Faerie Shop". Her entire basement was dedicated to her work for that place and she therefore had literally barrels of every colour and shape glitter or sequins you could imagine.
When my grandmother was growing up the only real job available for ladies back then was to be a wife and mother and that wasn't her thing so she aspired to be a great ballet dancer. But then the war happened and ladies were recruited to sew stuff. After that she became passionate about sewing - but especially for the fantastic. Her elaborate and lovingly crafted fancy-dress costumes got her a job at The Faerie Shop where even now, in her 80s, she still makes the loveliest fairy costumes and accessories you can imagine. They're so beautiful you don't want your toddler running around in the backyard wearing it, you just want to frame it on your wall because of how beautiful it is.

Anyway, part of her being a "faerie" were a lot of mystical crystals and other fantastical stuff around her house, so that (coupled with her eccentric taste in clothing) led me to believe she was an enchantress for most of my childhood. She passed on her secrets of costuming to her daughter (my mum), and when my older sister decided to become a ballerina, I was constantly surrounded by gorgeous tutus and princess dresses. My sister was really serious about dancing so I was dragged along to countless classes, recitals, competitions, and ballet productions throughout my childhood which not only filled my mind with fairytales but also visions of princesses and fairies, wizards and magic.

Suprisingly enough, with all this going on around me, I was more interested in school and math than in fantasy and it had still never occured to me to draw until the end of primary school when I got a sim game called "Creatures". My natural need to create and some weird talent for programming (probably the aspergers) led me to start creating objects, worlds, species and all sorts of other things for the game (It's a lot like The Sims, where you can make furniture and clothes for them). Of course you can't have invisible creatures in an invisible world playing with invisible toys, so I learnt to use Microsoft Paint. The images I constructed laboriously pixel-by-pixel in MS Paint were probably the first pictures I ever made (other than childhood fingerpainted scribbles, of course).

Around this time I also had the most fantastic teacher who encouraged creativity in all her students even the ones who thought they didn't have any talent (like me). I owe a lot to that teacher, because it was while I was in her class I drew my first pencil-and-paper picture and discovered that hey, I quite like making pictures. But my life was still very much aimed at the academic side of things, I was four years ahead in certain subjects and I was really devoted to learning.

But perhaps it was fate that sent me an illness right around this time - when I had just discovered art. The thing in my brain slowly eats up bits of information in there so soon I was no longer the genius child but just some bored kid stuck in hospital, frustrated by her inability to solve simple problems that once took an instant. So it was that while I was lying around being bored, I began to doodle my various ideas for new items/species/worlds/etc for my Creatures game. Making any of those things for the game required both programming knowledge and the ability to make graphics that other people would like.
It wasn't long before my sketchpad was filling with ideas for things other than Creatures, such as my very own worlds (which I later turned into morpgs) and I realised that game design was a really, really awesome thing. But I knew that I needed to know how to draw my concepts before any of my ideas could become reality, so my parents got me a laptop so I could do this stuff from my bed.

Fast Forward a few years to when I was about 15 and I had a wonderful period of a few months where I was in this remission stage and I was able to go to school a few times a week and for once be normal. I met my bestest-best friend in the whole wide world ever then, and she introduced me to Elf Wood. As soon as I went on that site a whole new world opened for me and my journey towards being a fantasy artist began!!
The pictures in my Elfwood gallery aren't very good but I didn't get a chance to update because when I was 16 my illness came back with a vengeance and started slowly wiping things out of my memory. I can't tell you what happened between then and now because I've completely lost all memory.

The first thing I can remember is being in hospital just after a huge brain operation. My mum had been looking for magazines for me but couldn't find the "right" one - tabloid magazines were just depressing and gaming magazines just made me wish I could afford those games. Then she saw a magazine that had this awesome picture on the cover called "Imagine FX", proclaiming at the top it was a magazine dedicated to Fantasy & Sci-Fi Digital Art. Could there be a more perfect magazine???

After reading that I was hooked and I've gotten every single one since. When I lost my genius brain I thought my life was over and that I'd never have a future but these magazines have shown me there is an alternative route - I don't have to be an engineer or a surgeon, there is actually an industry out there that employs people to design games!!

So that's my story up to now. I can't believe you read this far!! Right now I'm waiting for my illness to get sorted out and then I plan on doing a course and maybe even a diploma. Ultimately I want to end up on the design team for Final Fantasy XXVIII but who knows what fate has in store for me in the future? I may not be the best artist - in fact I have absolutely no talent whatsoever - but I'm doing my very best to learn and IFX has been a godsend. It reawoke a part of me that I thought had died of depression long ago, and it's helping me learn how to be a better artist so that even though I don't have any natural talent in that area I may one day be able to produce pictures that people like.