A Design lecturer and tutor who specialises in digital illustration, conceptual art, character and game design, Via has previously completed her studies in Visual Communication Design (BEng Hons) and Design (MDes Hons), designing an atmospheric visual novel game for her undergraduate final year project and researching the influence of character designs and expressive cues on player experience for her master’s dissertation.

Influenced by several video games she has played since her childhood and deeply impressed by Tetsuya Nomura’s vision for Final Fantasy Versus XIII, she has continued to pursue her passion in character and game design—which seeks to find its culmination through her current PhD research project.

Through her practice-based research with creative practice at its core, she wishes to combine her multidisciplinary interests in Design (Character & Game Design), Art History (Italian Renaissance Art), Philosophy (Aristotelian Ethics), Literature (Shakespearean Tragedies), and Psychology (Catharsis) through experimenting with designing a cathartic visual novel game, starring a tragic hero as its main protagonist, by undertaking the numerous creative processes of conceptualising, illustrating, animating, creative writing, game prototyping and programming.

Her ultimate wish is to grow into a polymath and a lifelong scholar, continuously honing and wielding various abilities to crystalise her vision by transforming ideas from the realm of imagination into reality, from which she finds sincere joy.