Rainbow-Colored Rose Boy

The background of this project stems from the LGBTQ community, also from my own personal experiences as part of this community. As a transgender male with queer inclinations, I faced bullying in middle school due to my identity and sexual orientation. I lived in a self-centered environment, surrounded by various psychological pressures and despair. I heard countless sarcastic and discriminatory remarks until I attended high school. At an international school, I realized the support of teachers, classmates, and one important friend who encouraged and supported me to choose my own path, pursue my interest in art, and study abroad. Sadly, he left me due to societal pressure and bullying from the majority group. Despite studying at an excellent art college, the person who encouraged me to pursue everything and loved the unremarkable me is gone forever. In this world, I've hated countless times, struggled countless times, suppressed countless times, wavered because of my identity, but ultimately, I still choose to accept my identity. So, I turned all my experiences and struggles into artworks of different emotions, incorporated them into this series, and the protagonist of this series is the artistic comic character I designed for myself.
In the design, I combined traditional conceptual illustrations with my favorite style of Japanese anime illustrations, using a narrative approach of concept art combined with comic style, blending tradition with modernity. I hope to create a unique and emotionally expressive style rarely seen in illustrations, and to convey the stories and emotions I want to express more clearly through this combination. I believe the highlight of my design is the use of contrasting colors to create emotional intensity: using darkness against brightness, low saturation against high saturation, utilizing the imagery of roses and rainbows to evoke strong emotions, using dark colors to create a sense of repression, and bright colors to create a sense of ambiguity, just like the tiny love and redemption I once experienced.