After the failure of his advertising startup and, in his own words, "hitting rock bottom", he changed professional tack completely, deciding instead to pick up a pen and delve into the depths of his imagination.

"I became obsessed with the fantasy world that I would read about in comics and see in animated films when I was a little boy," recalls Xu, who's based in Xiamen, Fujian province. "After going through twists and turns in my first 25 years, I thought it was time for me to follow my heart and become a storyteller."

He admits that lacking painting skills, he had to overcome the difficulties of drawing the scenes that were so vivid in his mind. "Despite this," he says, "I was motivated by a desire to tell a grand story."

However, Xu found that his lack of formal training offered him an advantage in that he was not bound by any traditional artistic dogma.

Additionally, an ethnic Korean growing up in Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture in Jilin province, he is a fluent speaker of both Chinese and Korean, and once worked as part-time literary translator, a vocation that equipped him with the skill to sensitively craft his characters and their dialogue.

Well-rounded characters and a logical plot are the basis for creating high-quality comics, he says.

"Characters are not the marionettes; they are the puppet masters," he explains. "By putting myself in their place and being able to think like them, they guide my pen to draw how their story unfolds."