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Artist Profile: Vera Kartalou


Cyprus Comic Con welcomes author Vera Kartalou to this year’s Artists’ Alley!

Vera Kartalou carries writing as a means of expression and creation. She loves police narrative, noir aesthetics, fantasy literature and satire. Her work has been distinguished in creative writing competitions organised by well-known publishing houses and her writings have been published in literary collections and electronic journals. She is the founder of the literature page 121 λέξεις (121 words).

Her first book was published in 2016 and was titled “Ο Μπάσταρδος και το μεγάλο κόλπο του Νότου” (“The Bastard and the great stunt of the North”) with the support of 120 λέξεις. It is a police adventure novella with intense action and subversive heroes that are accompanies by 8 noir illustrations by Costas Pantoulas, while the world map was illustrated by Nicos Papamichael.

Vera has collaborated with several comic book artists as a script-writer for published works such as “Αιώνια Καταδίκη 1 & 2”, “Biography”, “12 Νοσηρές Ιστορίες” and “Ο Βρυκόλακας Θανάσης Βάγιας”, while others such as “Σήψη”, “Batman”, “Dark Heroes”, “Μην Πας”, “Evolution is a Bitch” and “Game of Bones”, were showcased in comic book exhibitions in Athens and Thessaloniki.

Visit Vera’s website to see for more of her work.

In the last few years, she has coordinated and participated in several group exhibitions, including “Διάψευσε Το”, “The Proust Effect”, “V for Versality”, “Βρώμικες Ιστορίες της Πόλης”, “Ενός Κακού Μύρια Έπονται” and “Όπου και να ταξιδέψω η Ελλάδα με πληγώνει”.

She has attended physical theatre and direction seminars, where she took part in theatrical performances both as an actress and assistant director. In May 2015, she wrote and directed the 3D Comic Performance tiled “Πορεία στο αδιέξοδο” that was presented at Τρένο στο Ρούφ as part of the festival “Τα 12 Κουπέ”.

Lastly, she has collaborated with literary associations for the organising of events, seminars and literary competitions, as well as with the Women’s Counseling Support Center for the Municipality of Keratsini-Drapetsona for the interactive social action “Πνίξε την Βία” (“Choke the Violence”) which informed and raised public awareness of the fight against all forms of violence.

Artist Profile: Kyprianos Demosthenous


We are pleased to welcome back 3-D artist, Kyprianos Demosthenous to our Artists’ Alley!

Kyprianos attended art lessons when he was younger, but feels that he was only able to expand his horizons further when he started self-learning, experimenting with different materials and creating his own techniques. As a young boy, he was inspired by many monster and dinosaur movies, such as Godzilla, Jurassic Park, King Kong and many others. He loves creating sculptures of life-size dinosaurs, as well as making paper guns with real working parts, using materials such as paper and cardboard. He also likes to paint and sketch, to create his own characters and also does a bit of animation.

In 2014, he won the international award for A level art for having the best grade in the world and also participated in the worldwide F1 school competition, for which his team won first place in Cyprus and travelled to Austin Texas, where they competed with the rest of the first-place winning teams from other countries. In the finals, his team received 13th place out of the 32 teams that took part in the competition. A number of Kyprianos’ sculptures and paintings were displayed in the Saatchi gallery in the UK. Currently he is studying Fine Arts in the University of Creative Arts. His future goals include to work in the film industry as a special effects director, to create his own film and animation series and also to work as an art teacher!

Visit Kyprianos’ online gallery to see more photos of his work.

Artist Profile: Andreani Soupashi


Illustrator and concept artist Andreani Soupashi is returning to Cyprus Comic Con’s Artists’ Alley!

Andreani Soupashi was born in Nicosia on the 27th of April 1998. She grew up with a pencil in her hand, drawing whatever interested her at any given moment, mostly horses and comic book heroes. At the age of four, she enrolled in art classes where she was taught the basic disciplines of drawing, painting, and sketching. These classes lasted for eight years and helped spark her passion for design, illustration, and comics. In elementary and high school, she took small design jobs such as creating posters and illustrations for various school events and selling artwork for charity. She also designed costumes, props and sets for school plays.

Her lifetime dream is to become a video game designer and she set this dream in motion while working for her GCSE exams. For her projects, she delved into character design, scriptwriting, concept art and animation, getting a taste of the industry in the process. During this time, her love for the craft was cemented. Her work is largely influenced by fantasy artwork, comics and movies. She taught herself several programs including Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and Zbrush to take her work to another level. Today, Andreani is a full-time Computer Science student while working as a freelance illustrator whenever the opportunity arises.

To see more of Andreani’s concept art, visit her website.

Artist Profile: Charalampos Ioannides (Colto Comics)


Meet our next Featured Artist, Charalampos Ioannides from Colto Comics!

Charalampos, also known as Colto, was beamed down to Thessaloniki sometime during the glorious golden decade of the 80’s. Right after kindergarten (!), he studied Economics and Tibetan zoography in Hannover. He worked abroad and in Greece, both in the private and public sectors. His relationship to comics and books in general, had always been tight – almost an addiction. Besides his Hellenic mother language, he can read and write in English, French and German. Moreover, he speaks proficient Caribbean, occasionally Farsi and the language of dolphins!

Caribuenos – Tales of the legendary Captain Mugbeard” is his primal attempt at his comic book art debut, which will soon be available for a broader audience, other than his usual, imaginary friends and the kind neighbour on the 3rd floor.

You can have a glance at his work at the following websites: ColtoComics and ArcTheOriginal.

Artist Profile: Gregory Santorineos


Cyprus Comic Con welcomes illustrator and comics creator Gregory Santorineos, who will be showcasing his work at this year’s Artists’ Alley!

Gregory was born in Athens on 16/07/1971. He attended free-hand drawing lessons at Veloudakis art school under the guidance of Thodoris Pantos. He graduated from AKTO with a degree in Graphic Design, in 1995. In 2012, he participated in GC fanzine #3. Subsequently, he also contributed in the issues #4 and #5. His first personal project took form in 2014 and was called “Το ριζίτικο των Ανωγείων“, published by Comicon-Shop Renieri. Furthermore, he participated in “ΡΙΓΗ” issues #3 and #4, as well as in issues #2, #3 and #4 of “ΤΣΟΦΛΙ“, by the same publishing house.

He collaborated with the Editor’s Journal at KARE KARE with “Η Μέρα της κρίσης” (Judgement Day). In 2016, he began working with the Canadian online games company VESUVIUS MEDIA, that aimed to promote their games through comics. He has participated in various group exhibitions, including “ΚΟΜΙΚΟΜΑΝΙΑ”, “ME ΠΕΝΑΚΙ ΚΑΙ ΣΚΑΠΑΝΗ” and “CIVIL WAR”. In the second Athens Con, he participated in an exhibition titled “ΕΝΟΣ ΚΑΚΟΥ ΜΥΡΙΑ ΕΠΟΝΤΑΙ”.

To see more of Gregory’s work, visit his personal artist page on Facebook.