Mxkly / My Kim Dao

Author: Mxkly

  • Buffalo State’s 28th Holiday Market Sale

    Buffalo State’s 28th Holiday Market Sale

    Illustrator and Photoshop | 2025

    Buffalo, New York is a place that always snows and also happens to be a place that LOVES the Buffalo Bills (Go Bills!). For a student holiday market happening at Burchfield Penney, I designed winter and holiday inspired greeting cards, gift tags and a bumper sticker that encapsulate some things that Buffalo is known for; snow, and football.

    Behind the Scenes:

    Here are some promotional materials I made for Instagram that you can look at here. Down below, I included an Instagram story that I made that you can click on for the full image. The other panel is a collection of the marketing catalog I designed for an Instagram post to showcase all of the products and variations being sold including the name of the item and its price.

  • Buffalo State University’s Upton Building Floor Plan

    Buffalo State University’s Upton Building Floor Plan

    Illustrator | 2025

    When creating the floor plans of Buffalo State University’s Upton Hall art building, I decided to use vibrant colors for the various majors’ concentration, where each concentrations are assigned their own dedicated color.

    The design itself evokes creativity and movement, turning the floor plan into a functional blueprint as well as a colorful visual composition where every color compliments one another. There is a combination of sharp and rounded corners within the typography, lines and shapes to compliment one another. Additional elements included are playful, childlike custom drawn icons for bathrooms, stairs and elevators as well as doodles using the color palette of the major’s concentrations.

    Behind the Scenes:

    On the left is the finalized floor plan and on the right is another variation using a different layout on a white background still keeping the whimsical, vibrant and colorful theme. I thought the composition had too much white space on the bottom, and decided to go back to the drawing board.

  • Stay in the Cave Postcard

    Stay in the Cave Postcard

    Illustrator, Photoshop, Blender, and Premier Pro | 2024 and 2025

    A propaganda poster about Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ from the perspective of a cave dweller persuading the escapee to return to the cave. This postcard is about embracing the comfort, safety, and predictability of the cave’s shadows rather than the uncertain light beyond.

    Behind the Scenes:

    Throughout both in high school and colleges, I have read Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ numerous of times and when tasked with creating a propaganda poster in 2024, I knew I wanted to make a vacation themed postcard (except it’s a bit sinister) from the perspective of the cave dweller. I wanted to highlight the views of the cave dwellers that didn’t want to risk the unknown and break free from captivity. I thought about what they would say to reason against freedom like safety and security. In 2025, I wanted to revisit this project with the tools and knowledge I learned about Blender and used that to create my own mockups.

  • The Scratch Behind the Art Painting Hoax

    The Scratch Behind the Art Painting Hoax

    Blender and Premier Pro | 2025

    This piece was created entirely in Blender, starting with a realistic 3D museum built using detailed textures, soft global lighting mimicking an art museum , and a natural shaky hands movement applied to the camera. The calm atmosphere is interrupted when the lights briefly flicker done by animating the brightness of the scene’s key lights. After the loud scratching noise, the camera searched for the source where it is met with the giant claw like scratch on the painting itself.

    Below, you’ll find behind the scene of this scene (*cue evil laugh* Mwahaha).

    Behind the Scenes:

    Lights, painting frames, paintings and cushion bench are from Blender Kit and everything else was modeled by hand like the wall trims.

  • GK Film – Film Fare Vanity Recreate

    GK Film – Film Fare Vanity Recreate

    Blender and Premier Pro | 2025

    Made entirely with Blender, I recreated ‘GK Films’ opening sequence by replacing “GK” with my initials, MK. Recreating this required finding the exact typefaces that were used and a combination of procedural nodes that created the metal texture and different lightings to resemble the original video. Lining each frame and object’s position up was tedious but extremely gratifying and fun.

    Original video can be found here.

    Behind the Scenes:

    The viewport render’s video and snapshot showcases the different lightings and placements of objects cuing up for their appearances on camera. Click on the image on the right to see the full Blender’s viewport.

  • The Bestiary Academy: Student Roster – ABC Book

    The Bestiary Academy: Student Roster – ABC Book

    Procreate, Illustrator, and InDesign | 2024

    Illustrating all 26 letters as characters of the alphabet, the ABC book was inspired from ‘The Addams Family’ and ‘Coraline’. I designed mythical creatures based on different cultures’ folklores and myths. The book introduces all 26 characters as students attending ‘The Bestiary Academy’.

    Below you will find the first few pages of the book.

    Behind the Scenes:

    Researching about the folklores, myths, and cryptic was the most important part of this project to ensure the characters would be represented truthfully and respectfully. The idea behind the pages inside of the book was if they were drawn like Victorian framed photographs. And accompanying that picture frame was an about the creatures’ captions that would pertain to their folklores, and/or myths in a humorous way.

  • Cowboy Bobcat, Arthur

    Cowboy Bobcat, Arthur

    Blender and Premier Pro | 2025

    Using Blender and in combination with Grease Pencil, Cowboy Arthur was created. The video features a country song playing, so turn up your volume to hear the tune. Creating cute, and simple characters are some of my favorite projects to do, so being able to combine my love for 3D software and 2D techniques was a dream come true.

    Behind the Scenes:

    A bit different from my usual workflow, I envision the character and made him before creating a story first. I knew how I wanted Arthur to look and the outfit he would be wearing. What is a cowboy without his giant cowboy hat, leather vest, blue denim jeans and of course, his cowboy boots.

  • The Sun, Clouds, and Rainbow Ceramics

    The Sun, Clouds, and Rainbow Ceramics

    Blender and Photoshop | 2024

    Modeled entirely by hand in Blender, each ceramic piece is shaded using the sky texture node and illuminated by a carefully composed arrangement of colored area and spotlights. The different light sources creates soft gradient blends that melt into one another across the shadows and backdrop, while the highlights catching each piece add a layer of warmth and quiet ambiance to the overall scene.

    Behind the Scenes:

    Here are some various other camera’s positioning that shows more details. I absolutely love the colors within the ceramics as well as the way the lights’ colors blends with one another to create such a dreamy look. The perfect fit to the title of this project, ‘The Sun, Clouds, and Rainbow’.

  • PenPals

    PenPals

    Illustrator and Photoshop | 2023

    PenPals was made from a deep love and appreciation for stationery. It is a sweet fictional pen company from Portland, Oregon who specializes in making pens, pencils, and markers. It is also a company who loves to use adorable puns as part of their marketing strategy.

    How I work: It all started with a story concept first before any sketches can be made. And then from there, I would start sketching out ideas for logos and finding fonts that would fit with the brand identity. Seeing everything come to life after the first initial steps is my favorite part. After that step, it was time to do the die-lines of how the packaging would look and work, then finding mockups that would fit. After everything starts coming together, I would proceed with building out the brand’s visual system and identity in a format that shows things like their colors, logos, and fonts.

    penpals-brand identity

    Behind the Scenes:

    Here are some sketches of the different logos I made for PenPals before deciding on the sweet motifs of having two pens hugging one another like they’re pals. Added bonus is stickers variation that the company would include in their orders and purchases.

  • Abstract Motion

    Abstract Motion

    Blender and Premier Pro | 2025

    Buffalo, New York is a place that always snows and also happens to be a place that LOVES the Buffalo Bills (Go Bills!). For a student holiday market happening at Burchfield Penney, I designed winter and holiday inspired greeting cards, gift tags and a bumper sticker that encapsulate some things that Buffalo is known for; snow, and football.

    Behind the Scenes:

    Below is the viewport’s snapshot to show the multiple lighting techniques used to create the reflection on the backdrops and how those lightings affects the abstract sculpture.