Owi Liunic’s illustrations comes to life through distorted shapes and jittery strokes

Multi-hyphenate creative Owi Liunic tells us an early childhood memory on how she got in touch with her creative side. In the early days, Owi and her illustrator sister Martcellia used to have drawing sessions on Sundays with their mother. “I guess it wasn’t enough for me back then so I used to continue scribbling in the hallway and often got scolded for it,” she says. “I remember I drew a Sailor Moon character on the wall. I’m still a big fan until now.” Owi was first introduced to digital art, her current forte, when she took multimedia courses at Itenas Bandung.

Before freelancing full-time, Owi worked as an art director for a brand consultancy where she learned the foundations of branding and graphic design. However, as she moved on to work with new clients, she found that she had to equip herself with different skills for projects that required her to be slightly more versatile. “I tend to try different mediums because I get bored quite easily,” Owi mentions. “I try to be balanced in both the digital and traditional approaches.”

For instance, she recently took an interest in creating AR filters, a practice that seems to have boomed in the past year and a half. “I remember the first time I made an AR filter,” she says. “The software was still in beta and there weren’t as many creators as there are now. I didn’t have any background in coding either.” When she finally felt that she had cracked the AR code, getting objects to interact with one another, she felt a newfound satisfaction unique to discovering a new medium. “I love seeing people’s happy faces using the filters that I made,” she adds.

Her work is bright and playful, the kind that’s not shy to be expressive in mixing different patterns in the same image. The jittery strokes and the neon colours are calculated rather than slapdash. Don’t take colours for granted, she says. “For the composition, I usually combine patterns and colour blocking,” Owi describes. “Maybe I can say that I consider my work to be cute with a twist. I like everything cute but I can be versatile too.”