Alchemaniac

alchemaniac

Real name

Gilang Andrian

Biographical Information

Gender

Female

Date of birth

1996

Place of birth

Indonesia

Almamater

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

Career Information

Field

Visual design

Occupation

Visual artist

Works

See Notable works

Other Information

Social media

• Twitter/X
• Bluesky

Website

https://gilangandrian.com

Gilang Andrian, better known by her pen name Alchemaniac (stylized in lowercase), is an Indonesian visual artist currently living in Singapore. Alchemaniac started her career in DeviantArt in 2011 and began creating artworks for Chasm, StarClash, and Awaken Destruction among others in 2014, but made it into the spotlight after being commissioned by Cygames for Shadowverse and later, by Yostar for the 1st anniversary artworks of Azur Lane EN.

Alchemaniac is among the first commissioned illustrators for Arknights, notable for illustrating Archetto, Grani, and Skadi.

Notable works

Arknights

Operator
Outfit

Other

• Goldie (Alchemy Stars)
• Laurel, Kalmia (Artery Gear)
• Box art for Chasm
• Alice, Rosalie (Eternal Tree)
• Cover art for Extreme Exorcism
• RPK-203 (Girls' Frontline)
• Xia Ekavira (Nijisanji ID)
• Rage of Bahamut, Valkyrie's Spear (Shadowverse)
• Various characters and background images in StarClash

Trivia

• Her given name, which is a morpheme of gilang-gemilang that means "radiant" or "glimmering", is generally used as a masculine name in Indonesian, leading to many in the Arknights community – especially Indonesian players – believing that alchemaniac is a male.
• Like Namie, alchemaniac is known for her love towards her characters.
  • Interestingly, alchemaniac pulled Skadi – one of the Arknights characters she drew – very often when she tries to pull for Mostima, to the point she managed to max out Skadi's Potential.
  • alchemaniac and Namie exchanged jabs between each other in Twitter/X that started when the former teased Goldenglow as being a dog (since the community initially believed that she is a Perro, but turned out to be a Feline), leading to a friendly quarrel where they brag that their respective characters (Mizuki and Skadi) is better than the other.
    • When Skadi the Corrupting Heart is revealed to be one of the boss enemies encountered in Mizuki & Caerula Arbor, alchemaniac "blamed" Namie for that.
• Around early April 2023, a Twitter trend titled "#ActualSkadiArt" occurred in the EN community in response to a Twitter user's controversial and unauthorized A.I. generation of Skadi fanart.
  • The incident occurred when said user, TwilledWave, purposefully used A.I. generation to create Skadi fanart and even tagged alchemaniac, despite her stern warning of forbidding such usage. TwilledWave defended his actions, claiming that he had the so-called "freedom of expression" and invalidated alchemaniac's concerns, or that hand-drawing is "old-fashioned". He even attempted to get Hypergryph involved, claiming that only they have the copyright to Skadi and thus have the authority to remove the artwork if they so choose.
  • The EN community lent their support to alchemaniac by posting their own fan art of Skadi. Additionally, they also posted memes and comments to mock and rebuke their unethical actions.
  • TwilledWave has since disabled the comment sections of both their Twitter/X and Bilibili accounts as of December 2023 to avoid further argument, bringing an end to the controversy.