Art for Fallout - The Roleplaying game: Winter of Atom Book

Some of my illustrations for Modiphius' Fallout - The Roleplaying Game: Winter of Atom Book (https://www.modiphius.net/products/fallout-the-roleplaying-game-winter-of-atom-book). As some of you can imagine, this meant a lot to me so here is a gigantic text wall about it:

I only have two tattoos so far. A skull, inked at a time my old life was dying in a vortex of meaninglessness, and a new one was yet to be born: the life I have now as an artist, but I didn't know that at the time. A classic choice for a memento mori, a reminder of the impermanence of all things. Also, it was at a discount and I like skulls.

My other tattoo is a Vault Boy, from the Fallout games.

It's one of my favorite franchises, in part because Fallout 2 and 4 accompanied me through some hard times, and it has heavily influenced my work and tastes as an illustrator. It's one of the top 3 IPs I wanted to work with the most and for the longest, dating back to when I was a literal child; the other two being Conan and Diablo.

So you'll have to imagine how I feel having worked with MODIPHIUS creating many illustrations for Winter of Atom (https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_of_Atom), a supplement to the officially licensed Fallout TTRPG, because I can't bring myself to describe it.

All this crazy thing of abandoning a career in computer science to chase a random dream because nothing else felt real... Leading to this kind of moment. From tears of complete despair and uncertainty, to tears of the most surreal joy. Flowing from the grim skull of my life's apocalypse to a reassuring, although sarcastic, Vault Boy guiding me through the aftermath.

I wish that what I'm writing here brings hope to some, especially artists in earlier phases of their journey.

Because this first illustration shown here, in fact, was not made in a time of joy. There are dark clouds in the sky for artists and creators of all kinds as companies steal our legally protected works to build their plagiarism toys while trying to weaponize the general public against us. I'm talking about plagiography, cleptography, pseudography, or as some call it, "AI" "Art", while it's neither AI nor art. As the fires of this debate raged wildly by the end of last year, I was using my very little remaining mental energy to work on this piece.

This image wasn't meant to be happy anyway, so I was in the right mood for it. Tired travelers resting shortly in a post-nuclear setting, now with a stern winter on top of it. I was tired too, still am, witnessing a world where catastrophes also seem to only pile up. "War, war never changes", says the narrator at the beginning of most Fallout games.
But guess what, peace never changes either.

It can still be found in the coldest of places, in the darkest of hours. And it begins by believing another world is possible. Other ways of doing things. And like the survival of this weary group, peace is easier to build and keep... together.
I know an artistic carer seems impossible to many people. I know this deep in my heart because it seemed impossible to me until not many years ago, alone. Countless people have helped me in making it possible. With the winter of generative machines upon us, things only look harder, especially for beginners.

But, if this inspires someone, I eat impossible for breakfast these days.

I'm not infallible or anything, I even got rejected for an important conference just a few hours ago, and my unapproved or cancelled works that'll never see the light of day could fill an entire artbook by now. I just mean that I keep going, and that we should keep going, even in the face of a shining neon sign that says such a silly word as "impossible".

And, well, no winter lasts forever. You can count on that.

P.S: If you want to see more images that I worked on, and in higher resolution, you'll have to acquire the book: https://www.modiphius.net/products/fallout-the-roleplaying-game-winter-of-atom-book