Hi, welcome! My name's Derek Yu, and I'm a 24-year-old illustrator and game designer living in San Francisco. I like comic books, video games, and pigeons. I like the artwork of Jamie Hewlitt, Katsuya Terada, Mike Mignola, Dave Cooper, James Jean, Nicholai Fechin, and John Singer Sargent. My heroes are Mom, Dad, and MacGyver. I think drawing could solve all the world's problems. Or at least mine. I think strangeness is a great quality in things.

Credentials

I've done illustrations for print publications like The Portland Mercury and Game Developer Magazine. I've also done some conceptual artwork and ingame graphics for web games (Nickelodeon, MTV) and mobile games.

I've also been developing video games independently for about ten years. Notably, the mega oldschool platformer Eternal Daughter, which was described by 1up.com as a "must-play bit of freeware," and the gruesome Murder Simulator I'm OK, which appeared in Electronic Gaming Monthly and on ABC News. Some random guy called it "the best satirical work concerning video games since they first came about." (I love that quote.)

I run a few other websites, including The Independent Gaming Source and the (currently inactive) Accidental Video Game Porn Archive.

I also have a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. I think it's collecting dust on a shelf somewhere in Sproul Hall. But it's nice to know it's there, anyway.

Currently, I'm working on an underwater fantasy game with Alec Holowka called Aquaria, which has been nominated for four awards at this year's IGF!