My name is Neimy Kao. I was born and raised in California in the Silicon Valley.
„ What I remember most about my childhood is being easily terrified, like seeing a low pixelated character die in a video game or seeing the smallest amount of blood from Harry Potter movies. I still have a clear memory of the nightmare I had after seeing a scene of a man being eaten by a giant spider from a movie. Adelais is a part of me facing many horrors seen from a child’s perspective.
I find inspiration from old fairy tales, antique and European aesthetics. Adelais came from the inspiration of Alice in Wonderland and many horror games that I enjoy watching playthroughs of.
Adelais’ World is where all the children’s nightmare can escape to, however that causes a lot of unexpected surprising events occurring all around at random times. They seem creepy at first glance, but they are only nightmares. Interestingly, you may find a feeling of familiarity and comfort. Adelais accepts all these nightmares as experience and learns about the world through her eyes.
Any sane person will be lost if they come to visit. I wonder if we can find your childhood nightmares living there too? “
What is your character development process?
I first collect many images to create a mood that I want my character to be from. I tend to create better characters when I don‘t just focus on the character itself but the story around them. In the case of Adelais, I made many character sketches and when I thought I got it, I pushed myself more to make it unique. It made Adelais more recognizable and was the perfect main character of the world I was trying to create.
What was your biggest inspiration for Adelais?
My biggest inspiration is the Alice Madness Returns concept art book. That was the first art book I got when I was still figuring out what I wanted to do with my art. Concept art was just a small step towards the type of artist I wanted to be. Soon after, I started looking up lots of Let‘s Players where they play Alice Madness Returns and other really interesting horror games. I am easily afraid of anything scary so it was the first time that I was able to look into the horror genre in a different perspective since I was hiding from the horror aspect by watching other youtube gamers play it. These horror games made me realize how much I love the story behind all of it. I realized that many of the games I enjoyed watching had similar patterns of creepy dolls, nightmares, and scary mansions. Those inspirations had some part in creating illustrations for Adelais.