Every now and then when I’m reading my twitter feed I would chance upon artists and illustrators whose art work I like, and I would follow them. Sometimes these artists might not be very active on twitter for a while, and with the vast amount of new content springing up on my feed I would then lose track of their work.

Aliya Chen, an illustrator who works at Netflix as a visual development artist, is one of these artists. I must have followed her on twitter sometime over the past year/years, but I’ve not been keeping track of her updates recently. This new post that she put up a few days ago however, caught my attention very quickly –

these moments remind us why we're here #kingdom pic.twitter.com/of1xxteLOu

— Aliya Chen (@chenalii) February 6, 2020

With the hastag #kingdom and the attached illustrations I quickly recognized them as fan-art for the Japanese manga Kingdom (キングダム) by Yasuhisa Hara, which was adapted into a live-action film in 2019. But really it is the stunning quality of Aliya Chen’s illustrations that impressed me.

What strikes me the most about her art work is her incredible grasp of framing and composition; and indeed the ability to create strong cinematic visuals with her art work. One can be very technically proficient and paint the prettiest of pictures, but having a good eye for cinematic composition elevates their work to a whole new level, a remarkable skill that Aliya Chen demonstrates in her work.

Here’s a small sampling of her illustrations – head down to her website to see even more, and follow her on twitter.

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