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Artist Profile: Heba Rena Yassin


We are pleased to welcome back illustrator Heba Rena Yassin to our Artists’ Alley!

Heba was born in Sutton, UK and grew up in sunny Limassol, Cyprus. She has been participating in the Cyprus Comic Con Artists Alley ever since the first one, in 2014! She studied BA Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire and later graduated with an MA in Digital Art and Design at the University of Nicosia, where she further developed her passion for digital art. Subsequently, Heba moved back to London to start her life and career.

She loves cats, ball jointed dolls, Japanese food and bubble tea! Her work is very much influenced by Japanese art and culture. She has always been interested in Character Design, Narrative and Illustration. She enjoys creating her own comics, character designs and illustrations based on her own or other people’s stories. Heba’s aim is to convey important and powerful messages through her work, relevant to the world we live in. She says that the most rewarding thing for her is managing to convey emotions to the viewer. She truly believes that ‘‘Progress is the consequence of internal conflict’’. The harder we work the more we progress, and the better our work becomes. For Heba, art is a very rewarding and enjoyable field of work, despite the difficulties and competition faced.

Visit Heba’s page on DeviantArt for more images of her work.

Currently she is very much interested in Japanese fashion. In her spare time, she likes to make her own jewelry inspired by J-fashion and has launched a little online shop, ‘FairyCakez’, where she sell her creations. She recently worked as a volunteer at London Craft Week 2017, which was an invaluable experience for her, as she got to see work by different creators and help out at the event as well. In 2015, Heba worked as a character designer and comic page creator for Tag2 Team Studios, while in 2016, she created a short comic entitled ‘SAM’, pubished by WriteCY, a creative writing joint, in collaboration with a writer, for ‘The Comic Book Project’. She has worked as an artist assistant to artist Christopher Christou during her studies in 2013. Her duties included canvas repair, mould making and casting.

Furthermore, she also participated at Malta Comic Con 2015, and Limassol Art Festival 2015. She has self-published a comic entitled ‘KOKORO’ inspired by Japanese anime and manga in 2016 and wrote an article for Bibliophilia magazine, ‘Mapping of Galleries in Limassol’ in 2014. She feels honoured and blessed to be part of Cyprus Comic Con and hopes to continue to be a part of it in the future as well.

Artist Profile: Steve Agoto Chatzidakis


Today’s Featured Artist is the talented illustrator Steve “Agoto” Chatzidakis!

Steve, or “Agoto” as his friends call him, has been creating art for as long as he can remember myself. He is a resident of Athens, Greece and holds a Master of Arts in Graphic Design degree from Middlesex University, in London. Despite the fact that he hasn’t participated in many art conventions, he has a large amount of work published since 2011, from when he first started working at the daily newspaper “CHRIMATISTIRIO” (Motor Press) and later on as an illustrator for children’s books, published by Bookstars Publishing – a collaboration that still holds to this day.

Currently, Steve is pursuing a career as a freelancer, in the fields of corporate identity, typesetting and desktop publishing, but his true passion is and has always been, to draw comics and illustrate, using both traditional and digital media. His future goal is to put together a team in order to co-create their own comic universe!

Visit Steve’s profile on DeviantArt to see more samples of his work!

Featured Participant: Indie Studio Evistoria Games


Newly formed local indie game studio Evistoria Games will attend this year’s Cyprus Comic Con!

The developers will reveal to us the fictional world of “Yenefan” – an unusual place, where four individuals with unique abilities are forced to form an unlikely alliance in order to save the world from an ancient prophecy – or else they will forever rot in the King’s dungeons!

The game, which is an action/adventure with RPG elements, is still on its early stages of development and the team behind it is thrilled to showcase the first samples of their work. Their initial goal is for the game to be released in 2020 on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Evistoria Games was formed in 2017, while the core team has been working on Yenefan, their first game, since 2016. Their love for story-driven games has led them to grow and form their own kinds of alliances with other talented artists and programmers. The founders decided to form the studio after noticing the big variety of talented artists on previous Comic Cons and the need for a local project, so they would be able to promote their work, helping them follow their dream career at video game studios.

You can follow Evistoria Games through their official website (www.evistoriagames.com) or through their pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

Artist Profile: Savvas Papadopoulos


Cyprus Comic Con welcomes talented illustrator Savvas Papadopoulos once again to its Artists’ Alley!

Savvas developed a love for drawing from a very young age. When he was just 15 years old, he had the opportunity to approach Byzantine iconography lessons for one year. Byzantine art greatly defined and shaped Savvas’ artistic style later on.

After graduating from school and finishing his military service, he completed a yearly foundation course in art studio laboratories, where he had to decide which art field he wanted to continue studying in as a university student. Among his choices were Fine Art and Photography. He eventually chose to study illustration and in 2011 he enrolled in Birmingham City University. He completed his three years of studies where he was able to experiment in various creative fields such as printmaking, digital art, photography and others.

Upon finishing his studies with a Visual Communication – Illustration diploma, he started working as a freelance illustrator. He has since worked on various projects, such as book covers, creating artwork for coffee shops, logos, board game designs and creating digital paintings. His style is still evidently influence by byzantine iconography, ancient Greek pottery design, as well as modern illustration trends. He enjoys working digitally just as much as drawing traditionally by hand and is always looking for creative ways to combine the two. Savvas is always looking forward to respond to new challenges and gain new experiences!

Visit Savvas’ page on Behance for more samples of his work!

Artist Profile: Eleanna Mavrofrydi


Comic book artist and illustrator Eleanna Mavrofrydi is our newest addition to CCC17’s Artists Alley!

Eleanna was born on 16th of December 1991 in Athens, Greece. Having an appeal to painting from her early years, she attended art classes during her adolescence and in 2014 she graduated from AKTO college with a Bachelor in sketching, comics and cartoons while attending the one-year workshop of Nikos Koutsis for designing and creating comics in Vakalo college. In 2012 she participated in a group fanzine called “Caffeination” and the comic anthology of IDW Publishing, “Womanthology Heroic: Greek Division“. She continued to involve in other forms of artistic work as a stylist & art director of photography, in collaboration with independent Greek clothing brands.

In 2013 she collaborated with the Greek clothing brand, Black n ‘Rose, creating designs for T-shirts, the brand Clic Jewels to create fabrics for their bag collection for Spring/Summer 2015, and the brand “Vatomouro” for which she created handmade notebooks. Finally she has participated in group comics and illustration exhibitions and her last personal work is called “A Motivational Guide to Capitalist Ideology” and the comic book “Omega” where she illustrated a script from the comic book artist Kostas Pantoulas.

To see more of Eleanna’s work, visit her artist blog and profile on Instagram.