This book is one of my prized possessions: The First Book of Fashion by Matthaus and Veit Konrad Schwarts of Augsburg. Unlike other examples from that period and afterward, this one includes a beautifully documented account of changes in fashion along with a diary like notes attached to each illustration.

Created by my friend ahah

When I first played Elden Ring back in 2022, I fondly remember that time. I had just returned home from an internship in Ireland, feeling exhausted and burned out. The game provided a perfect escape into another world. I would read all the item descriptions and think about the Lands Between, often after the long play sessions that lasted into the early morning hours. It was a simpler time.

Elden Ring gave me the final push to start my Columnea worldbuilding project. Both Elden Ring and Columnea are deeply influenced by alchemy and its principles. Since my academy years, I have been fascinated by and obsessed with hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Saturn personality and the symbolism of the late Renaissance and Mannerism periods. It's a comfort subject for me that I keep returning to it.

I love the chaotic, distorted, and melancholic yet highly artistic approach of that era. I admire Michelangelo's late works and the distorted skull in Holbein’s painting “The Ambassadors”. I am drawn to the obsession with death, similar to the plague period of quarantacento… All this means a lot to me. And the existence of games like Elden Ring has finally inspired me to create a world where I can incorporate Neoplatonic ideas and late Renaissance perspectives.

I am not sure what to do with my setting yet, but I want to continue exploring and developing it. My partner suggested that I start by making a comic with it.

Commission for a friend

I enjoy creating fictitious signatures and descriptions, similar to those seen in museums. Therefore, this latest artwork receives its own description:

A rite of bloodletting by Toricetto, Copper engraving, 183mm × 190mm

How do you guys add and figure out adding decorations to your characters clothes?

Each time I think of designing characters, I struggle with adding decorations and details to them. Must be my animator brain being like "this will be pain in ass to animate". Yet I want to get better at it because I'm all about this late renaissance, pre-baroque period when they were really going wild with details, materials and exaggerated silhouettes. I need to pamper my bois.

Sorry for being quiet lately, work has really drained my social energy?