Artist Biography — Guang Yang

Guang Yang was born in Shiyan, China, in 1981. In 2000, he entered Capital Normal University, where he studied Oil Painting and Art Education.

After graduating in 2004, he moved to Shanghai and joined SEGA Shanghai Software Development, becoming a concept designer. This marked the beginning of his professional career and provided an important foundation for the creative development that would later define his work as an artist.

In 2007, he was invited by the Japanese software development company Matrix to work in Tokyo, where he lived and worked for nearly four years. During this period, he contributed illustrations and concept designs to several well-known game projects, including White Knight Chronicles, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, Avalon Code, and Cooking Mama.

In 2009, one of his personal artworks was selected as the album cover for INHERIT DISEASE, marking the beginning of his career as an album cover artist. His work soon attracted attention from international bands and metal fans, gradually establishing his presence within the global metal scene.

He returned to Beijing at the end of 2010. In 2013, he established his own studio and began focusing on large-scale oil painting. Throughout this period, he continued creating album artwork while developing his personal artistic practice. At one point, commissions from Chinese metal bands accounted for approximately half of his album cover work.

In April 2021, his distinctive dark artistic style once again attracted attention from the game industry. He was invited to create character illustrations for Diablo Immortal and concept designs for the animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots. He subsequently joined Joyfun Games as a concept designer and art director, contributing to the development of Phantom Blade 3 and Phantom Blade Zero. Throughout this period, he continued his personal artwork and illustration work without interruption.

Since 2023, his album cover work has gradually shifted from digital media toward traditional painting. When AI-generated art began rapidly transforming the creative industry in 2024, he became even more conscious of the value and rarity of traditional painting. This has become one of the main reasons he continues to choose traditional media for his album artwork today.

Guang Yang has always worked across multiple fields, constantly moving between commercial projects, personal creation, and everyday life. He has never truly stopped.

Since creating his first album cover for INHERIT DISEASE in 2009, he has produced artwork for numerous metal bands around the world, including Nunslaughter, Putridity, Vulvectomy, Bheaded, Infant Annihilator, The Black Dahlia Murder, Zuriaake, Equilibrium, Ripped to Shreds, Black Kirin, and Leviathan, among many others.