Lau’s journey began in 2017, when he sent a 16-page fan art with comic characters from the game to the developer’s social media account, quickly attracting attention from the company and gaining widespread popularity among fellow fans.

Robin Ras, co-founder of Rusty Lake, says: “The whole fan base was amazed, and people were asking for a sequel. My mind was blown too, just thinking: who is this guy?

“His work is so detailed, [with] a unique kind of atmosphere. It just stands out somehow.”

Lau, who spent two weeks on the piece, said he not only intended it as a tribute to the game but also to seek his own art style.

According to Ras, Rusty Lake reached out to Lau when they decided last year to produce derivative works based on the game, including films and comics. “I feel grateful and honoured to see him making a huge step and for us to help a fan artist rise from a small community, because that is how we grew as a company.”

Fellow artist Siumou Chow, who started out by self-publishing 10 fan art comics since 2007, says it is quite rare to see such doors open for her peers locally, because the city’s manga publishers and game companies lack resources to support this.

“Most of us do this for love, sometimes also to practise our drawing skills and cultivate a fan base,” Chow says. She estimates that there are about 500 fan art groups based in the city.

For Lau, the call-up from Cube Escape was a turning point in his career, finally giving him a professional platform to showcase his talent. He was paid HK$30,000 and received 50 per cent of revenue from book sales, but the exposure he got was priceless.

Lau is currently in talks with a French publisher about collaboration.

“I’ve been in love with comics since childhood, and I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist at six,” he recalls. At the age of two, Lau had moved to Kyoto, Japan with his parents and brother, during which its manga culture became part of his identity.

Lau remembers feeling “shocked” and “confused” when the family had to return to Hong Kong in 1999 after his father’s Chinese restaurant business folded. “Until then I always thought I was Japanese, and I felt as if I was forced to leave.”

Finding it hard to adapt to school life and the language in Hong Kong, the then nine-year-old Lau immersed himself in Japanese manga while longing for the land where he grew up.

His dreams, however, were often dismissed by local teachers and parents, who “disrespect manga and link it with eroticism and violence”, according to Lau.

“My mother once told me: Hong Kong is a realistic place, you have to seriously think about whether you want to become a cartoonist.”

Despite self-doubt and cynicism from others, Lau enrolled himself in an art programme at Chinese University. But he later dropped out in his final year because he “got sick of how society only values degrees”. “I thought I could prove myself solely through my art,” Lau says.

From 2012 to 2016, he had to survive on a monthly income of HK$7,000, contributing short manga stories to local magazines while working on illustrations and special effects projects for movies.

“I used to split a pack of uncooked rice worth HK$4 into four meals,” Lau recalls. “By 2016 it seemed like I was making no progress during all these years.”

But the clouds would part the following year, when he received an invitation by the Hong Kong Arts Centre to attend a cartoon exhibition in France. In awe of the free, flexible and distinct form in European comics, he strived to develop a different style, with simpler visuals, fewer dialogue and anti-dramatic storylines, which would later capture the eye of Rusty Lake.

“Perhaps it no longer matters who I learn from. I am exploring my own way,” he concludes.