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It’s been a big year for Johnson Ting, one of Malaysia’s most celebrated artists. The concept designer won an award as one of his home country’s top ten young artists and a toy company is even releasing a figure based on his work. Despite all this and working as a designer for numerous high-profile companies, he’s managed to also post a host of gorgeous illustrations, paintings and CG images for the whole world to see. This is work that simply must be shared!

As a concept artist for Project TriFroce, Johnson Ting is in charge of pre-production concept designs for a variety of major titles, in addition to his duties designing statues and replicas. In other words, he has what we imagine is the absolute dream job for many artists! For example, the artist has worked on everything from Mortal Kombat X to a project for Square Enix.

But that’s not all Johnson does — he also spends his free time (which we imagine is fairly limited) creating images for himself, often set in the futuristic world of Neo Japan 2202.

Though we hope the future won’t require quite so much firepower, we have to say that his photorealistic images are nothing short of gorgeous. It looks he’s developed a fully fleshed-out world as well. Here’s a quote from Johnson’s DeviantArt page summarizing one part of Neo Japan 2202.

“One of Japan’s current income are from wars throughout the globe, throughout the years several companies has focused on war economy. Many countries have seek loans from Japan to purchase these ‘Mechanical Mercenaries’ to aid them in their war, ‘cheap, durable and deadly’. A Kikai Yohei has an average lifespan of 15 years, they can also be easily modified to sustain themselves in different environments. However, these drones are a lot less refined as Japan’s own AI drones, Kikai Yohei are not compatible with AI due to the cost and they can only be controlled by a human operator.”

Johnson has gotten plenty of well-deserved attention online, as you would expect. He’s gotten so much attention, in fact, that Devil Toys, a Hong Kong toy company, is gearing up to release a figure based on one of his images!

▼ Shut up and take our money!

A release date hasn’t been announced yet, so you’ll have to follow Johnson on Facebook for updates. In the meantime, though, you can take a look through a few of our favorite Johnson Ting images.

If, like us, you’re wondering how Johnson can create these photorealistic images, he’s also released videos on YouTube showing part of his process! They won’t help to those of us who are not at all artistically inclined, but this video in particular is fascinating.

It turns out Johnson sometimes actually starts with real photos and uses computer programs to “paint” over them. For example, this image of Australian soldiers was used as the base for the piece below, but he also paints and draws, making the artist truly multi-talented!

Of course, not everything Johnson does is related to Neo Japan 2202. Here’s one fantasy illustration he did for practice that someone ended up turning into a proper figure!

▼ Johnson’s original

▼ Unpainted figure

▼ Final figure

Finally here is one of Johnson’s paintings. It’s almost hard to believe the same guy created the images of mechanized soldiers above!

▼ And, like everyone on the planet, it turns out he’s a Marvel fan too!

To see more of Johnson’s art and read more about the universe he’s creating, head over to his DeviantArt page for additional giant, gorgeous images.

Sources: Facebook/Johnson Ting, Johnson Ting, DeviantArt/Johson Ting via Inside Games
Top image: Facebook/Johnson Ting