About Me
Shirley Zhijia Liu is a 2D artist and designer who is working to make things look better and easier to navigate.
She graduated Swarthmore College in 2022 (this year!) with a Biology major and a Japanese major, and she has professional experience in a variety of disciplines including science, education, music and law. She enjoys anything that belongs to the mystery genre and wrote her senior thesis on this topic. In her free time, she likes to experiment with new art mediums, read mystery novels, make tunes in garage band, and work on her passion projects (mostly narrative driven solo-dev games).
Now if you're the type of person who want the whole deal... Read on to know even more about me.
Joyful Chaos
I find it very difficult to describe me when a stranger ask me what I do, and usually the more I tell them about myself the more they want to ask "But...Why?". The short answer is, I'm someone who loves to try new things and becoming good at them. My liberal art education at Swarthmore College convinced me that everyone has the potential to find joy and achieve something in drastically different fields if given time, opportunity and resources. I'm lucky enough to have all three at times, so I did all I could to explore around and leave a trail of, well, joyful chaos behind me.
As you might have seen on my experience map, I did a bit of science, language, education, digital and traditional 2D art, animation, UX/UI design, fashion design, game design, narrative design, legal stuff, music, dance, and much more. While part of this chaos is due to my being in a diverse environment, another contributor to it is my undiagnosed ADHD. I keep making impulsive decisions that take me to somewhere new, and when I notice I'm way off my trail, I'd say heck, let's make something out of it. This is reflected in my many art styles and mediums, which you can find on my TikTok account.
Wholesome Hoards
There are many things that inspire me/make me smile even during the worst times. I want to share them with you, so here is some of them:
Games:
Stardew Valley (duh)
Splatoon 2&3
AI: the Somnium Files and Nirvana Initiative
Ib
Manga:
Witch Hat Atelier
Delicious in Dungeon
Blue Period
To Your Eternity
Accounts:
- Anna-Laura (https://twitter.com/annalaura_art)
- John Sandwich (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9aYv-TebxoXw8Isi3MEGdg)
- Creamy Ghost (https://twitter.com/CreamyGhost)
- Junferno (https://www.youtube.com/c/Junferno)