How a Hong Kong manga artist caught the eye of the Dutch company behind popular gaming app Cube Escape
- Lau Kwong-shing faced identity problems after relocating back to Hong Kong from Japan, and dealt with cynicism towards his comics dreams
Artist Lau Kwong-shing is taking in a surreal moment as he sits in front of a wall adorned with pencil sketches while dozens of fans line up for his autograph. He is holding a solo exhibition at Gallery Z in Shek Kip Mei.
On his career milestone, Lau, 29, a college dropout, says: “A former teacher came up to me and said: ‘You’ve really grown up’.
“And to think that just hours before the event, I was terrified that no one would show up.”
The exhibition, which will last till May 18, represents seven years of hard work as a cartoonist for Lau, culminating in his first published comic book Cube Escape: Paradox, based on a mobile game with the same title. The 100-page work is produced in collaboration with Rusty Lake, the Dutch company behind the game, and which helped present the ongoing event.
While Lau has come a long way from his early days in the craft where he had to scrimp and divide a HK$4 pack of uncooked rice into four meals a day, his road to success highlights the plight of aspiring local artists who rarely get noticed by big companies.