This pas year was even more scary than the pandemic one… Finding out about the horrific war that started near the border, in Ukraine turned my world upside down also bringing back a lot of stories that my grandmother use to tell me about her family taking refuge in Romania from Hotin ( in Basarabia of those times) running out of the Russian troops way. It was a huge tragedy as you can imagine but the recovered as best as she could (altho, I know that the scars were so deep they could never be healed) and had a beautiful family. Back in our days, strangely and beautifully (as this Universe is) Florin Bica, after he wrote a heart worming and beautiful story about an Ukrainian refugee girl, asked me to illustrate it and I was very glad to accept the proposal. It turned out to be one of my favorite projects till now. You can find the book here.
Also this year, I’ve got the big news that in 2023 the other comic that I’ve worked on, some time ago, will be published by TITAN comics!!! YAY!!! What more can I say?… I’m so happy and so grateful and I want to give a big shoutout to Dave Dwonch , a great person that has always been by my side, encouraging me and making me part of his projects since the publishing of “Mishka and the Sea Devil” in 2014. Thank you, Dave!!
More about this comic book and why is it so special! The story (written by Dave and Mia Goodwin) is based on the lore of an online game that is well known and loved by the gamers of this era, Astroneer!!!!! This was also one of my most favorite projects since I worked with the nicest and understanding people and because the characters are SO ADORB, drawing them was immensly fun for me. So stay tuned to find out more about the release of the book in March this year.
This year I also had the surprise of finding out that the Artificial Intelligence is starting to make art… and had the occasion to see it evolve step by step. I can not describe in words the feelings I got along the way. I was very excited and very confused at the same time but I’ve played with it long enough to discover that I can create faster so my horizons had widened and I could approach a larger spectrum of styles (drawing, traditional painting, digital illustration, the possibilities are endless) I just needed a cool idea to put in a prompt and BOOM! I mostly played with MidJourney and I was amazed every time. Then I started to see artists rebelling against all this idea of machines making art… so yeah… the rest is history, I guess. I still don’t know which part of the barricade I find myself because I am aware that I don’t yet understand the phenomenon fully and I think I won’t understand it for a long long time, for now I consider it a tool and try to use it as that… So when I had the opportunity to participate to an Ai conversation panel at Dev.Play Conference last year, I couldn’t say no! Surrounded by my fellows Fortizens , Amber Studio and other colleagues from the game industry world, we tried to explore the possibilities and find out how will this phenomenon impact the lives of artists in general. I remains to be discussed over and over again until we find safe ways to use this tool in our advantage.
You can find my Ai generated collection of illustrations, here.