This will be quite a gloomy post, I'm afraid. It involves a sad story. 

I'm 39 now. On the exact same day as my own birth, my best friend was born. He died when we were 21. He was an artist and I was a writer. We were quite the team. When I finally got a job writing visual novels, and I was surrounded by talented geeks like ourselves, I nearly cried openly because the message in my head was "We've made it."

Anyone who has been following the game for a little while will know that I've struggled with art assets and after a lot of strife hiring artists, I endeavoured to learn to draw so I could do the visual myself. I'm a teacher by trade and primarily a writer, meaning that art and coding are my biggest weaknesses. 

Just to throw a spanner into those works, Wong, the sloppy and corrupt detective, is an homage to my dead friend. I know this gets weird. (Sometimes I think the 'Liam' in my name is short for 'mausoleum'.) 

This was my first ever sketch of the character. It's a projection into the future, of course, imagining my friend as he might be today or in the future. They're very simplistic lines I did on an Ipad, but looking back on them I see a kind of truth in them. 

Then came the era in which I attempted to hire artists. This picture above is by the wonderful JakkiSenpai, who has to be far and away the most professional artist I've interacted with. However, in adding detail to my doodles, we seem to have lost some of the essence that I was going for. The image in my head is one of friendliness. Shambolic friendliess. Like a labotomised golden retriever. I also found that having Wong's face like this led to me writing some rather mean spirited things for his character.  

Then we have the picture that I did when I was learning to draw - As you can see Wong cleans up well. I find this guy too sexy, though. Wong isn't supposed to be a love interest in any way. Rat boy here is just a little too chiseled. 

And then we reach the current incarnation of Wong. It's not perfectly executed but I'm happy with where I've come with the basic lines and choices of signifiers. He's a lot simpler to draw but I feel the character there - I feel that sense of dumb friendliness, but I can also imagine something sinister hiding behind those dumb, cartoon glasses. To me, a face design like that feels pliable like a piece of clay - I can already see the shapes it can stretch in to.