News

Special Guest: Rumen Petkov


Cyprus Comic Con has the honour of announcing Rumen Petkov, animator and director of Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo and Dexter’s Laboratory, as one of our Special Guests for CCC17!

 

Early Comics & Animation

Rumen Petkov was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1948. After graduating from Sofia Art School in 1967, he began his career as an animation director at the Boyana Animation Studio. He also obtained a Masters of Literature from the University of Sofia in 1978. He became one of the main contributors to Bulgarian comics magazine DUGA (“Rainbow” 1979-1992), which was loved by several generations of Bulgarian children. His most famous comic creations are the characters “Choko” and “Boko” from the popular 70’s and 80’s cartoon ‘The Adventures of Choco the Stork and Boko the Frog‘. While working at the Boyana Animation Studio, Petkov directed over fifty short animation films, including ‘Friends of Gosho the Elephant‘ (1968), as well as the first Bulgarian full-length animated movie, titled ‘The Treasure Planet‘ (1982).

He was awarded the Grand Prize at the Ottawa Animation Festival and the Palme d’Or at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival for the short film, ‘Marriage‘ (1985). His film, ‘Monkeys‘ (1981) was named one of the ten best animated films in the world at the Hiroshima Festival in Japan.

Cartoon Network & Other Popular Animated Series

Petkov continued to direct films in Bulgaria up until 1990 when the Animation Film Studio ‘Sofia’ closed down. This caused him to move to Los Angeles with  his family, in search for new opportunities. He began working for a small studio called ‘Animation Cottage’ focusing on 30-minute films for ABC television and subsequently worked for Warner Brothers, Universal and Klasky Csupo. In recent years, he worked as a writer, storyboard artist, animation director and director on episodes of Cartoon Network‘s popular animated series ‘Johnny Bravo‘, ‘Dexter’s Laboratory‘, ‘Cow and Chicken‘ and ‘I Am Weasel‘.

Furthermore, he helped revive classic characters such as Tom and Jerry in the animated film ‘Tom and Jerry Blast Off to Mars!‘ (2005) for which he was an animator and timing director, as well as Woody Woodpecker, in Universal Cartoon Studios‘ ‘The New Woody Woodpecker Show‘ (1999-2002). He was also one of the artists for Nickelodeon‘s popular animated series ‘Rugrats.

He has said about animation: “Animation will never die because it’s like music, because it’s like running with the wind, because it’s funny.”

Painting & Illustration

Other than animation, Petkov enjoyed working in graphic design and illustration, but his true passion had always been painting. His work has been presented at national exhibitions in Sofia and at the Biennale in Luca, Italy.

Visit this page for samples of his traditional art.

 

Artist Profile: Gregory Grozos


Gregory Grozos is returning to our Artists’ Alley with his magical miniature worlds!

Gregory Grozos is a miniature artist and calls his project “Miniature Worlds” because that is exactly what he makes, tiny miniature worlds, either as jewelry or individual works of art. He tries to make every piece an entire miniature closed world, with tiny people and complete, tiny scenes inside.

Most of Gregory’s themes belong to the steampunk and fantasy genres, with entire tiny factories making imaginary machines and mechanical robots, floating cities and crazy inventors.

Visit Gregory’s page on Facebook to see more of his creations!

 

Artist Profile: Neil Gibson


Cyprus Comic Con is proud to welcome back comic book writer Neil Gibson, whose work will be featured at this year’s Artists’ Alley.

Neil is the founder of TPub Comics, one of the largest publishers of comics in the UK. Formerly a management consultant, he left behind the corporate world in 2012 to follow his passion – good comic books.

He believes the comic book medium is one of the most efficient ways of communicating stories and has gives talks to universities, schools and businesses about comics and how they can help people in their studies and career. He also likes writing dark stories about bad people!

He was at the first two Cyprus Comic Cons and hopes to attend many, many more!

Collect your free pack of comics from TPub here.

Watch this video for fan reactions after reading Neil’s comic, “Twisted Dark”!

Artist Profile: Ermina Emmanouel


Illustrator Ermina Emmanouel is our newest addition to the CCC17 Artists’ Alley!

Ermina was born in Nicosia in 1992 where she now lives and works. She studied Fine Arts in Italy, at Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino and then completed a Master’s degree in Graphic Communication in Cyprus at the Cyprus University of Technology. She is currently working as a freelance illustrator and a professional graphic designer at Gnomi Communication Consultants.

She gets inspired by the work of other illustrators, movies or series and everyday life. Her past projects include children’s book illustrations, illustration commissions, mural illustration, posters for theatre and music events, brand identities and more! Her future goal is simply to never stop..!

Visit Ermina’s page on Facebook to see more of her work.

Artist Profile: Arinela Kociko


Our next Featured Artist is young illustrator Arinela Kociko!

Arinela is currently studying History & Philosophy of Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She loved painting from an early age and in the last couple of years, she began experimenting with creating comics. She attended freehand drawing lessons as well comic book design seminars at Ornerakis School of Arts and subsequently joined their 3-year comic book program as of this year. In the past, she had taken part in two group art exhibitions in Athens.  More recently, she participated in the group comic book exhibition “Όπου και να ταξιδέψω η Ελλάδα με πληγώνει” (“Everywhere I go, Greece hurts me”), having as inspiration the famous verse of George Seferis’ poem, “Με τον τρόπο του Γ.Σ” (“In G.S.’ way”).

Make sure to visit Arinela’s profile on DeviantArt!