Nho Huy Le

The story behind the puzzle

Nho means "grape" in Vietnamese. It's a family nickname he's had since he was a kid, and he later made it his pen name. He's been drawing "since I can remember things... since I knew how to hold a pen." In elementary school drawing contests, his teacher scolded him for drawing "little, little, little things" instead of one big painting. He kept doing it anyway. His parents didn't want him to be an artist, and Vietnam had no illustration major back then, so he taught himself, with a few short workshops along the way.

The piece that made us fall for him was never meant for clients. When he left his first job at a small, crowded studio, he drew his coworkers a farewell gift: the whole studio as an impossible world that goes up and down, over and under, packed with people and dogs, some of the dogs bigger than the humans. "I just did it in my joy, my happiness," he said. As Ginny told him, "We love the fact that it was small, little people and dogs so that there's like hundreds of them. And that was actually what attracted us to you as an artist."

Snack Attack wasn't just his first puzzle. It was his very first project as a professional, and before it he didn't even think of himself as a professional artist. We pitched a high school where dogs are the teachers and the students are humans, with the classrooms sliced open like a dollhouse. The catch was that Nho had never set foot in an American high school. So he and his partner Uyen, who also translated on our calls, studied American movies, with High School Musical as the main reference. Even two friends fist-bumping was something he'd only seen on TV. Then they took the idea even further by adding a rival cat school. It worked so well that one puzzle became a trilogy: Woof High, then the rival Kitty High, then Paw Park, an old dog and cat theme park brought back to life for a carnival.

"I put like 200% of my effort and my love in this project," he told us. Snack Attack 1 alone took about two months and well over 200 hours. Over the three puzzles, there were bumps along the way, and we worked through every one of them together. Terry and Ginny even traveled to Vietnam to visit him. In Ho Chi Minh City, Nho and Uyen took us out for hot pot, led us to a secret brewery tucked upstairs in an apartment building, and let us hop on the back of their motorbikes for a ride through the city.

Since Snack Attack, he's been creating puzzles for other American companies, something he never imagined doing. His art even ended up in Uniqlo, and we couldn't be happier for him.

"When I was drawing the illustration, I always tried to deliver little joyful and positive things. So I hope you can feel it while playing the puzzle."

— Nho Huy Le

Inside the artwork

• Find Nho himself in the Woof High gym. He played a lot of basketball in high school, but figured that next to taller American kids, "I would be that guy. The one wiping the balls on the sideline." That one got one of the biggest laughs when he told us.
• Six black spy cats are hiding in Snack Attack 1. Nho's own building tip is to find them first, spread them out, and build from there.
• Terry and Ginny's real high school memories are hidden in there too, like Ginny and her best friend running for student council, and the locker Terry shared with a friend that was so packed, textbooks tumbled out every time they opened it. Nho brought those memories back to life.
• Visit the teachers' office and meet Ms. Sally, a tiny white Pomeranian in a pink shirt. She's Nho's favorite teacher.
• If you've built all three, look for old friends in Paw Park. Fans kept writing in to ask for the dog and cat teachers, so they all came back, along with callbacks to Woof High like the Hotdog Dog, still Terry's favorite.

How he works

• Every character has a reason to be there: "For example, a student is running... because he is a basketball player and he is so late for the practice." Pick anyone and ask what they're up to.
• He draws from everyday life, "my neighbors, my relatives... cats and dogs," and from Vietnam's beautiful chaos: "too many people, too many dogs, too many cats, too crowded."
• He works fully digital, sketching in Procreate on an iPad and coloring in Photoshop. He draws the two scenes as layers on one canvas so every character lines up between them.
• He always thinks about the person building it. Every room has its own flooring, so one piece can tell you where it belongs, and he adds extra detail so that "every single piece looks different."

Interview

What inspired you most?

Nho: "The idea that dogs live with humans and they have a school. That's where I feel really inspired to create my micro-stories about dogs."

What was the hardest part?

Nho: "I had to draw things that I've never been through. This project is about schools in the US and Canada."

Had you seen puzzles like this before?

Nho: "I haven't seen anything like this in Vietnam. We usually have photos made into puzzles, but not illustrations like this. And a story too, so it's really special."

Describe Snack Attack in three words.

Nho: "Fun, exciting, and cute."