News

Christis Christoforou (Reddo)


Christis Christoforou, also known as Reddo, will be joining this year’s Artists Alley!

Christis is a self taught artist that learned how to draw by experimenting with various manga and anime styles, inspired by titles such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, Bleach and BAKUMAN. He gets inspired not only by the drawing skills of his favourite artists but also by the unique and cool stories that each respective manga artist produces. He says that stories and character developments inspire him the most, rather than the drawings themselves. In the past, he had worked on short films, animating, drawing key frames and other various things that require good hand-drawing skills. He also experimented with tattoo design and graffiti, although nowadays he avoids that kind of work.

To see more of Christis’ illustrations, visit his art page on Facebook!

He spent one and a half years in Japan, learning the language while simultaneously getting as much feedback as he could from magazine and manga professors, in order to improve on his mistakes or bad habits. More specifically, he showed his draft manga to a manga teacher in Japan and an editor of Shonen Jump SQ magazine and was praised for his unique characters that were layered with deep personalities, while his art style was indistinguishable from native Japanese manga artists. The results and feedback he received made him confident that he is on the right track when it comes to manga.

Currently Christis is working his way up in the social media since he believes it is the best source to get attention and publicity nowadays. Furthermore, he is working on a concept for a mobile game, as well as polishing his manga stories. His future goals include to become someone that can produce any kind of project successfully and to live a life where everything he does is equally enjoyable as it is challenging.

 

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.

 

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.

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.

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.