CONCEPT
This project started as a fun exercise to help me define my own style, but it soon escalated into a personal challenge to see how far I could take this character, the cactus, who has become my personal mascot. This character has gone through countless techniques and mediums, from classical drawing, to clay sculpture, vector illustration, animation to digital sculpture… and the journey is just beginning.
Below I will present all the stages I have completed so far. This project is an ongoing one, and I will update the status of the „journey” along the way, so fasten your seatbelts because it will be a long and diverse journey.
Since 2022 I wanted to get out of my comfort zone more and so I started to flirt with digital 3D modeling. Thus, I learned the basics of the Nomad Sculpt software and experimented with different simple shapes, until I got the courage and felt the need to design something more complex. And so I came to the 3D cactus series.
I also learned a little bit of video editing, and I fell in love with stop-motion in particular. That’s why the animations made with these cacti are not fluid but rather jerky. Each position of the cacti is rendered manually in Nomad Sculpt and then assembled in Procreate, precisely following that specific stop-motion effect.
El Pedro is the first cactus in the series, the inspiration for the entire collection and the artist’s favorite. Contrary to expectations, he suffers from globophobia, which is somewhat ironic considering that he is a cactus, the „natural predator” of balloons.
Juan the Mariachi is an accomplished musician. He doesn’t talk much, because he prefers to express himself through music.
Punkito seems like the toughest of all cacti, but what many people don’t know is that he actually has the heart of a child… he keeps it in a jar full of formaldehyde.
Count Spike is probably the oldest and most terrifying character in Cactus World… He is hundreds of years old and was once the most feared cactus… Parents used to threaten their children using his name. Today, he is no longer at the heights he once was. He is hunched over, from toothaches, his real teeth have long since fallen out, now he has a prosthesis that he puts in a glass of water every morning when he goes to bed. However, ambitious by nature, he still tries to inspire fear, but unfortunately only children are vaguely afraid of him.
Carlos is a character who does not obey rules and conventions. He is angry with the system, and because of this, his most burning desire is to start a revolution, and for that moment he has the Molotov cocktails ready.
Mr. Sting is the most colorful character you can meet on the city’s notorious streets. When you see him, it’s almost never good… About 10 years ago he won the gold medal at the Gambling Olympics, and won a lot of money that he spent on nothing. Since then I’ve heard that he does some more dubious business at night on the street corner.
Mr. Prickle is what we might call a modern philosopher, a Socrates of our time. Of course, he needs a few bottles of strength to be able to philosophize properly, but once he gets into the necessary state, he has an opinion and advice for absolutely any situation and topic. It’s useless to try to stop him. His kryptonite is water and his superpower is the fact that he can make (or at least know how to make) alcohol from absolutely anything.
Captain TheKilla is a big fan of rum, gambling and robbery. He says he is the captain of a ship, but in fact he has a small boat without a crew that he sometimes goes fishing with. He lost his left arm a few years ago, but, contrary to expectations, not in battle… but when he was trying to cut his fries… with an axe… yes, as you can see, he is not the brightest cactus..
Thornellia is a rather controversial character in this universe. She always dresses gaudy, speaks with a dubious accent, and can become quite aggressive if she doesn’t get what she wants. Although there are some suspicions, no one knows exactly what she does. It is only known that she often associates with Mr. Sting in shady dealings.
Prickleberry has a childlike spirit, always naive and gullible. He is one of the most optimistic cacti I know, and sees the glass half full, even when the glass is broken. It wasn’t always like that, but legend has it that he has changed a lot since the last time he was locked up in an asylum for troubled cacti. What happened there that marked him so deeply, even he doesn’t know.
Steve is a pretty unique character. A few years ago he had a serious scooter accident, and hit his head and hip pretty hard. Since then he’s been out on the streets a lot, often walking around with an ice cream cone on his head shouting at the top of his lungs: I AM A UNICORN! I AM THE LAST UNICORN!!
Santa Spine is an atypical Santa Claus, raised in the dry corners of the desert. He has no reindeer, because he scared them with his thorns, and no sleigh, because it wouldn’t have worked on the sand anyway. Instead, he travels on a floating rock and leaves clumsily wrapped presents, full of holes and scratches. Instead of „Ho-Ho-Ho”, he lets out more of an „Ai-ai-ai!”, but even so, the children eagerly await him – or at least with thick gloves.
Brainey is clear proof that even cacti are not immune to the apocalypse. He rose from the rocks with half his brain exposed and a bizarre appetite for synapses. Fortunately for the rest of the world, he moves so slowly that the only thing he can catch are his own thoughts – and he chews them with difficulty. Still, he’s scary enough that you don’t want to see him on the street at night, groping for a less… photosynthetic „snack”.
Haurel is a smart and enterprising cactus, always on the lookout for bargains. He buys anything from rusty iron to old stories, just to be able to negotiate a price. He boasts that he has made a fortune from scrap metal, but the truth is that he has more hats than money.
Nea Țapă was once a big trickster in the neighborhood – he sold CDs and floppy disks like hot cakes. The problem is that time has passed, but he’s stuck on the sidewalk, with his coat full of „originals for 10 lei”. He still thinks he’s doing well when he whispers „I have games too” on the corners, even though everyone has been streaming for a long time. In today’s digital universe, Nea Țapă is like a virus on a floppy disk: nostalgic, but completely useless.
Adam considers himself the great visionary of his time. One day, after „accidentally” tasting a colorful mushroom, he had a brilliant moment of inspiration: fire! Since then, he boasts that he changed the fate of cacti forever. Reality? He tried three times to roast a bone and only managed to burn his mustache.
Proiect developed by the Plant
