ikken - Blog

New calligraphic artworks of Wukong and Journey to the West for design uses now available on marketplace

News / 25 August 2024

Creation Background
The game Black Myth Wukong by Game Science was released recently. As a fan of the Chinese novel Journey to the West, I am very excited to see the birth of a Wukong story inspired game. From the data I am also surprised by how it is loved by the world.Journey to the West is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century. During hundreds of years its story and philosophy have become core of Chinese culture. It does not only reflects how Buddhism is combined with Chinese Taoism, but also shows strong spirits against the evils.

Here I created a set of calligraphy which are applicable to design purposes, particularly for your Asian style design or designs highly related to Journey to the West.

https://ikken-art.artstation.com/store/xkbqX/sun-wukong-and-journey-to-the-west-calligraphic-design-handmade-works-digitally-converted-to-vector-and-png-files-not-ai-generated

Key specs
- completely handmade / hand-drawn
- digitally converted to editable vector format Adobe Illustrator files for high quality design uses
- prepared transparent PNG files in mid size (~1500x2500 pixels) for general uses

3 themes in Chinese characters
- Sun Wukong
- Journey to the West- 5 mental states of Buddhism philosophy (greed, hatred, silly, suspect, arrogance)

A variety of forms and styles
- 3 calligraphic styles
- 2 seal styles

ikkenAugust 25, 2024

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ABOUTI am Ken (artist name as ikken 一健). I am from Hong Kong and now living in Japan. I am an artist dedicated to Calligraphic & Pictorial Design, Asian style Design as well as Ink Painting for over 25 years.

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Free download - Stamp design celebrating the Mid Autumn Festival 2022

General / 10 September 2022

Today is the Mid Autumn Festival, a traditional day celebrated in Chinese and some Asian cultures with very long history. It can trace back over 3,000 years. During this day our families will gather and appreciate the clear moon together.

As below I created a stamp design for this festival and made it available for free download. Just take it as a little gift for this special day. Hope you like it.
*I prepared the high resolution PNG without background so you can easily apply to your art. The one on the left is created by Illustrator, meanwhile the right one is hand-drawn by my hands.

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Here are some examples of application.

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Please provide the category for font design - suggestion to Artstation artwork categorizing

Article / 11 December 2021

No category for Font Art / Typography Design on Artstation ?

I am Ken from HK and now working in Japan. I am an artist / designer focusing on handwritten/hand-drawn font design (or calligraphic design).

Perhaps not only me but also a lot of artists on Artstation found that, there is no specified category for Font Art / Typography Design on Artstation currently.

As a designer I am quite shocked with this fact, because Typography is a very very basic and major field in graphic design. I believe almost all designers have experienced their trainings on Typography design during their studies.

Today in Japan, in parallel with the computer generated font, handwritten/hand-drawn calligraphic design is another major field. It combines writing/drawing techniques with traditional tools and media, and the CG skills for complex graphic outputs. Calligraphic design is not auxiliary, or a minor element in design area. Sometimes it plays key role. Let me share you some examples.

Even in complete CG, font design is also playing key roles in some featured product designs.

Font Design also plays key role in Game/Anime areas

Of course in Game/Anime areas, Font Designs including computer aided and hand-drawn play key roles as well.
I still remembered how I was strongly impressed by the cover design of Onimusha 鬼武者.