21, fresh commerce graduate, and having his first comic book published in Vietnam, Lan Vu may look like a very successful and admirable young man. Except that to achieve his primary goal, set before he even started drawing, there seems to be a long way to go.

It has been nationwidely acknowledged, after his effectual crowdfunding campaign for Project Icon, that five years ago at his 11th grade Lan began drawing comics with a hope of finding himself a puppy love. And then, either after three years when he turned out completely serious about being a comics artist or another three years later when Lan became quite a name in the industry, he still described himself with one word “forever-alone”.

If appearance is an ingredient of anyone’s puppy love, the reason for Lan’s ho-hum adolescent years can be seen in numerous caricatures by his artist friends. However, Lan embraces those mocking portraits of himself.

“If I were handsome, I wouldn’t have drawn comics; and I consider being born hideous a huge blessing,” says Lan, shyly but playfully.

Actually, in person the young artist is rather decent-looking, with a long artsy hair, a casual black shirt and jeans that are — surprisingly or not — tidy and neat as if he really respects our brief meet-up in between his busy hours. And that, I have learnt, is also signature about Lan: the humble image, the clear impression that he respects everything he is given, including jokes of his attractiveness.

Obviously, the want of a girlfriend is as big of a motivation for drawing 10 hours everyday as that statement in the crowdfunding video for Project Icon is of the factor for its success.

Notably, it was one of the first made-in-Vietnam comics titles that got published that way: excerpt chapters uploaded online for free reading and audience’s reaction survey, and then a Kickstarter-style crowdfunding campaign run for capital and recognition at the same time.

After two months, on 13 March 2015 it was official that the crowdfunding campaign for Lan Vu’s first comics series Project Icon reached its goal of 100 million dongs (i.e. almost £3,000) with 324 backers. And such achievement had been expected, given Vietnamese readers’ observed eagerness about enjoying a pioneer brain-teaser comics series by a domestic artist.

However, more than anyone else Lan knew it was just a start of anything but a bed of roses.

“I thought it was gonna be my triumphant day to look forward to, turned out it was the dreadful deadline to finish the rest of the first book. Yet what’s worse, in fact it was the deadline to draw the first book mostly from scratch.” Because at first, the story of Project Icon was co-written by Lan with author Duong Nguyen about a mind-game behind a music contest reality show. Until later on when Nguyen left the project, Lan, with less knowledge and interest in music contests, decided that the reality show would be in the shape of an escape game instead, making a big surprise to the audience when the book was officially released on 31 August 2015.

“So more than 100 pages of the draft literally got burnt.” My jaw drops open. How long does it take to make one page then, you must be asking. “Three to four hours for me,” Lan says, as if he had been counting the sheep during all that time, instead of restless pencil sketching, ink lining, then digitally retouching and dialogue adding.

But he is not trying to be cool, I can tell. He just takes things lightly and never blames. That is clearly visible from the way he talks about his lack of professional training when asked if he regrets studying “uninteresting” commerce entrepreneurship: “I don’t think I’m disadvantaged; I have a lot of advantages already.”

Grateful, passionate and does not mind dumping 400 hours working, but on the other hand Lan is also as down-to-earth as he should be. “American style is my favourite, but Japanese takes less time and is more effective,” he tells me. Now having finished the bachelor degree at RMIT — the most recognised international university in Vietnam, he determines that he can only continue working on comics series that sell, and could no longer live on his parents’ funding, despite being the only child of a well-heeled Hanoi family. However, he will insist writing mysterious, intelligent stories instead of romances and comedies which all other popular Vietnamese comics series have been about so far.

“There is a long way to go,” Lan confirms. “To achieve your goal of having a girlfriend?” I ask jokingly. He just smiles, “That, and my other goal of creating comics series that foreign publishers must fight to buy.”