Victo Ngai acquired a huge following on the Internet in her hometown Hong Kong after winning a Forbes award. Xiao Lixin met the gifted illustrator in New York.

A preschool Chinese girl wearing a cloak made from newspaper sits on a wooden chair in a cramped living room. A noodle bowl is upended on her head. The girl doesn't look particularly happy with the haircut she is getting.

The illustration, named Bowlcut, is a kind of self-portrait drawn from childhood memory by Victo Ngai, a 27-year-old New York-based illustrator from Hong Kong.

"When I was a small kid, parents in Hong Kong were keen to give their children a neat bowl-cut hairstyle. So was my mom," recalls Ngai. "But I didn't like it as every kid looked similar with the same hairstyle. I wanted to be different, unique. I put those feelings into Bowlcut."

It's easy to recognize Ngai's trademark style in her artworks published in The New York Times, The New Yorker magazine and other publications. The features include detailed swirls and a signature palette of bright and lively red, green, blue, orange and brown - creating a highly-traditional Chinese feel.

It's a style that comes from her distinctive cultural background. She is a Guangdong-born girl who grew up in Hong Kong. She speaks fluent Mandarin and Cantonese. Ngai chose to go to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), one of the world's top art schools. She's now a freelance illustrator in New York.

"Hong Kong has left me with a lot of childhood memories, affecting my illustration style. The experience of living in a city with streets always crowded with people, tall buildings and cars has somehow led to my preference for detail and the richness in my work."

The story-teller

Her dream to be an illustrator began in Hong Kong. "I moved with my parents to Hong Kong when I was 1 year old and grew up there," she says.

As a child Ngai was not encouraged to watch TV. Entertainment options were fewer than the five fingers on her hand.

"I was an only daughter. While my parents were at work, I was home all alone. I would draw the ideas I would get in my head as a way of telling stories to myself," recalls Ngai.

"My mom would always end with a cliffhanger when she told me stories, letting me imagine where the story might go. I would share my imagined ending with her the next day, drawing my imagined magical world on paper," laughs Ngai. "Sometimes my version was even better than the original, at least that's what the young me thought at the time."

The parent-child interaction formed the basis of her training, believes Ngai. She would, as a matter of habit, illustrate the entire sequence in a story, on a single sheet of paper.

Although she never had any formal art training, Ngai's application portfolio impressed the RSID selectors. She was offered a seat at the top-notch art institute. She was only 18 at the time.

"Every year the RISD would hold an exhibition of the freshmen's three admittance assignments," says Ngai. "Looking at my peers' works, I found many were very abstract or loosely based on the assigned topics yet still relevant and surprisingly creative."

It dawned on her that it was the idea that mattered the most, rather than techniques, as she had believed before joining the RISD.

Her first big break was a half-page illustration published in the magazine Plansponsor in her junior year. It would eventually help get her freelance career off the ground.

"It was actually a class assignment for my professor Chris Buzelli which his wife, Soojin Buzelli, creative director of the magazine, later saw and chose to print," says Ngai.

"That break was very important for me. Being an international student, I had only a year to get a work visa to be able to stay and work in the US. I started to do part-time work in my junior year to better make use of the policy," Ngai explains.

"If it was not for this very smooth start, I don't know if I could have taken the decision to work as a freelance illustrator or just followed the example of many other international students in the school and joined a company to do routine office work."

Ngai is hugely grateful to her professor, Buzelli, who has always been encouraging and helpful since her days back at the art school, and even more to her mother who has not only been supportive in her career choice but also been a source of inspiration.

"My mom used to be an 'educated youth' sent from the city to the countryside for labor work. That experience helped make her a woman of fortitude. She never stopped thirsting for knowledge and dreaming of becoming a college student," Ngai says.

"I guess I learned a lot from my mom's stories," she shrugs. "And if my mom had not supported me in following my heart to go to RISD, I might have just chosen the safe path as many Hong Kong high school students do and become a lawyer or financial analyst - jobs that are considered as decent by society in general."

Among the finest

Ngai's unique style helps attract commissions from both renowned publications as well as companies like IMAX and MTA Art for Transit etc. as well. She is also followed on social media like Tumblr.

"It's boring to draw in the same style without the slightest change for 10 or 20 years, isn't it?" she says. "One's work cannot remain totally unchanged over the years as one's surroundings and the sources of one's inspiration keep changing constantly. Otherwise your work is insincere."

"My work now may look different from my very first attempts, but it is a gradual change if you look closely," she adds. "I consciously changed from my previous 'too crowded' compositions, leaving a bit of space in the work called Horse Too Big and I like it very much."

Ngai would probably have gone largely unnoticed in her hometown if she hadn't made it to the Forbes' 30 Under 30 list last year. Since then her success and recognition in the US have become major topics of discussion in the social media.

She already has been remarkably successful in terms of the praise and honors she has received: She won two gold medals from the US Society of Illustrators and her works figured among The New York Times list of noteworthy illustrations in 2010, 2012 and 2013.

A winner of the Forbes 2014 award in "Art and Style", Ngai seems surprisingly cool about her success.

"I was indeed surprised when I was told I was among the finalists, after being recommended by my university, but not as much as I was when I actually won the award," says Ngai.

"This title helps expand my client list," she adds. "But it doesn't change things as much as people outside my profession expect."

"What makes me happiest about being a Forbes honoree is that after my story spread on social media many people in Hong Kong and from the Chinese mainland have become more curious about the art of illustration, inspired and encouraged by my example."

Victo Ngai, who was called Victoria by her professors in the US because her Chinese name Ngai Chuen-ching was too difficult to pronounce, later changed her professional name to Victo. She is a youthful and self-confident and yet mild in her disposition.

She downplays her success. "It's just what people say," Ngai says with a smile.

"How should we define success? In my case it means being recognized socially and professionally by those who previously did not think I could make it."

Ngai still lives and works in a 55-square-meter apartment in Manhattan, similar in size, to an ordinary Hong Kong home. Small as the place is, the creativity and imagination emerging from it seem boundless.

Contact the writer at xiaolixin@chinadaily.com.cn

Hong Kong-bred illustrator Victo Ngai has secured commissions from prestigious US publications such as The New Yorker magazine. Xiao lixin / China Daily

Illustration for Plansponsor magazine on the theme of transitional management, as shown by the figure of the leaping fox. Provided to China Daily

Ngai imagined a wise frog saving a piece of nature inside his belly before the earth was destroyed by an apocalypse. The image was her contribution to Frogolio, an annual calendar featuring frog-related illustrations. Provided to China Daily

Ngai's cover illustration for CIO (Europe) magazine is a symbolic representation of companies that are too big to be agile enough, like the huge horse in the image which seems to be constrained by its own weight. Provided to China Daily

Ngai harked back to her childhood experience of being given a regulation haircut in the illustration titled Bowlcut. Provided to China Daily

(HK Edition 05/11/2015 page7)