Four chars: bringing Chinese idioms to life

Chengyu are four-character Chinese idioms, four characters with full attitude. I found a small niche between language learning and illustration and returned to it daily while stuck in Australia waiting on a U.S. work visa. Neocha Magazine wrote the longer backstory.

Scope

2017 to 2022 · 300+ panels on Instagram (@four_chars) and Dribbble (@four_chars)

My role

Illustrator and curator
Community operator

Impact

Grew past 10k followers on Instagram
Featured by Neocha and UXCoffee podcast

Flat color and bold one-liners

Poster-flat backgrounds and chunky shapes. I'd pair a textbook idiom with an everyday phrase and try to get a laugh before you zoom in.

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Splashes, motion, movie brain

More paint and motion than tight ink, with film stills on my desk and palettes borrowed from whatever I'd watched that week.

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Sketchy panels and food crimes

Looser pencils and a lot of food setups. If a pun fell flat in English, I redid the caption instead of hiding behind a literal gloss.

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Quieter rooms and outdoor stills

Slower compositions: corners of a room, small props, skies where the metaphor sits in a lamp or a horizon instead of shouting the joke.

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Three weird wide posters

Full disclosure: this stretch is shamelessly Nintendo-coded. I drew it while I was neck-deep in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I kept stealing mood from cliffs, shrines, anything that read even slightly Hyrule to me.

Three horizontal pieces with real empty space (mirage, glow, spotlight). I wanted the quiet areas to feel tense, not just padding around a figure.