Hi, I’m Karmen Loh, also known as Bearbrickjia. I’m a freelance illustrator based in Malaysia. I work mainly on book covers, posters, music covers, advertisements and more.

I’ve worked on book covers for publishers such as HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, H&S Books, and more. I also created key illustrations for Costa China, and recently the Pokemon Card Championship in Asia.

I have loved drawing since I was a kid； my notebooks and homework were always full of my drawings and scribbles. I was always the “art kid” in school, and my teachers loved asking me to help with any activities that included art and decorations. After graduating from high school, I decided to properly pursue an art career and joined a local art college.

I’m glad that my parents were very supportive. Although I graduated with a major in 3D animation, I actually enjoy drawing more. I constantly post my artwork on social media and am slowly building my portfolio. Luckily, I got a job as a character concept artist at a game company. After working there for a few years, I decided to quit and work as a full-time freelance illustrator.

Example of my character design portfolio:
https://karmenloh.artstation.com/projects/v1g8mA

Since I was young, watching cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls inspired me to start drawing. My family found out that I love to draw, and they were very encouraging. They would buy me art supplies like colored pencils, paints,brushes, drawing paper, art tutorial books, all kinds of craft materials, and even send me to art classes.

During elementary school, I loved reading local comics such as Gemeilia and Japanese manga like Doraemon, which inspired me to make my own comics and share them with others. My dream job when I was young was to become a comic artist. During college, I was inspired by many amazing illustrators, and my interest shifted from comics to illustration.

My personal favorite would be Voyager, an artwork I created for my online course. That artwork was inspired by my urge to travel around the world, and there’s a tiny airplane among the clouds, which symbolizes traveling.

This artwork includes a few things that I love, such as the ocean, clouds, moon, and stars, because it’s my dream to travel under the sea, among the clouds, and out in space. I really enjoy placing elements that I like on my characters to make my artworks look magical.

I was really excited and honored when PUBG MOBILE and Medibang reached out to me for this collaboration. It’s great to see a big game title like PUBG MOBILE nurturing and supporting artist creativity, and it’s inspiring to look at all the amazing entries from past contests, which makes me even more excited to start creating my own design. I’m glad that the themes for this contest are so diverse and fun.

I chose the Ocean theme for my character design because I really love the ocean, and I think there are a few fun ocean elements I can apply to my design. For the overall mood of my design, I want it to be magical and enchanting.

The dress is made from layers of ocean waves, and her hair is inspired by jellyfish. There are pearls under her eyes and a white shell on her chest to decorate the character. I’ve decided not to give her any shoes or footwear to make her look more fairy-like.

The most challenging part was designing the layers of the ocean wave dress. In my initial sketch, the whole design looked too static, and I wanted it to look more dynamic. So I scrapped it and redrew a new one, and I’m glad it turned out better.

To make the dress look water-like, I decided to make the bottom part semi-translucent to show a bit of her legs. Another challenging part was the hair. I knew I wanted a hairstyle inspired by a jellyfish, but I wasn’t sure if I should keep the frills or just the top part. I tried out some frill designs, but they were too distracting. So in the end, I decided to remove them to keep the design clean and simple.

After the sketch was done, I think the fun part was rendering the ocean wave dress. It was very calming and therapeutic. I listened to some soft piano and instrumental music while rendering it. I also enjoyed applying the glow to the dress and hair, which enhanced the design and made it look more magical.

I think my dream project would be to design a character for a game, movie, or animated series. I want to see my character come to life and exist in another world. That would be something really fun to work on.

The PDP project is a great opportunity for me and other artists with similar dreams to achieve our goals. It allows us to showcase our ideas and have a chance to be featured in the game. It would be amazing to see our creations come to life in the game.

It would be great to see people sharing their initial sketches and ideas for their designs. I think it would be very inspiring to see how these initial concepts transform into the final design.

Keep creating the things you love, and don’t be afraid to share them with everyone. Always be open-minded and treat new challenges as opportunities to improve. I never thought that one day I would collaborate with PUBG MOBILE. I feel honored, and this motivates me to keep working hard. I’m sure that with persistence, there will always be a chance to work on your dream project like this one day.