Christina is a professional illustrator based in Greece, Europe. Her skills at digital paintings are excellent and her latest project 'Goop' proves that all. Goop is an iPhone/iPod Touch game which is extremely addictive. It has some really unique adorable characters and of course the designing is beautiful. The game is produced by Fine & Dandy Games.

"Ever since before I could read, I fell in love with the illustration world. When I discovered videogames, it was almost magical how simple pixels, lines and colors could become more than the sum of their parts", shares Christina.

She is still studying Arts and has already worked on so many wonderful projects. Christina is a blessed artist and it is an honor for us to feature her as 'Artist of the Week':


Christina, please introduce yourself to E-junkies. Tell us a bit about your background.

I was on my fifth year of med school, when I dropped out to become a full-time professional illustrator. I've been at it for 8 years now. I'm also an art student at the time, at the prestigious Athens School of Fine Arts, in Athens, Greece. I love the visual arts with all my heart. That's about it.


Enlighten us with your latest project 'Goop'.

It's a casual game for iOS devices. You help the cute monsters called Eeeps to evade certain death by keeping them from getting wet. It's an easy to learn but hard to master time-management puzzler, and pretty engaging actually.


























How long did it take you to complete 'Goop'? Share with us your experience while creating it.

It took me and Patrick of Fine and Dandy one year. Patrick approached me with a proposition for his game idea, having seen my work online. I provided some drafts, and we fine-tuned the look of the game to get something cutting-edge but cute at the same time. I did the walk cycles for the characters early, so we could test in-game. And after a lot of coding on Patrick's side, we had a game!
















































Tell us a bit about the design and development of a game. How one should go about designing and developing it?

I prefer to get the most vital assets of the game ready early on, so the coders can incorporate it. Creating a game with placeholder sprites and images is fine, but in my experience it always helps if you can visualize the end result early on. I know for a fact that the whole Lemmings game was based on nothing but a walk cycle of an 8x8 pixel character.

According to you, what we can call a "good" design?

Design that has been tweaked as far as it can be. I'm turning more and more towards minimalism and stylized graphics myself. I like the process and the result of gleaning the essence of a character or a background, making them as sleek and actually, purposefully *designed* as possible. But that's just me.

I am sure there must be a difference in creating game for a mobile and a desktop. Being a game developer, tell us how they differ from each other?

One has to be wary of monitor resolutions, and especially aspect ratio. You've got to design for the screen size and processing power of your intended platform. Other than that, no huge differences.

What are your views about women in graphic designing? What attracted you the most about this field?


I've been a gamer since the early days of computing. My parents got me a Commodore 128, and I was always trying to create robots and heroes and spaceships using the C128 sprite definition tool. I never stopped gaming *or* drawing ever since, so it was natural for me to combine the two passions and dawdle in game development. Illustration is fantastic, I still can't believe that I'm getting paid to paint stuff, but game development is even more rewarding. I've met amazing artists and illustrators who are women. I do not like to differentiate women artists from men artists, because I don't see that there's a difference in skill. Being a feminist, however, I do see a difference in motivation *and* reception. I have a friend who paints under a male nickname, so she doesn't risk not being taken seriously. And she's not wrong. People come up to me, or email me to say "wow you're a girl? But your work is so good!". Some serious double standards there, unfortunately.

Share your fondest memory through this journey of creating Goop.


I think it would have to be the evening I was sitting at a cafe with my tablet pc and I had an epiphany. I started working like mad for a few hours, and I had the walk cycle for the baby Eeep. It's just so adorable, it even surprised me.

'Goop' has been recently released. What kind of response it has received so far?

It's been good. Ashli and Patrick of Fine and Dandy have worked hard on it, and I think it's beginning to get recognition.























Would you like to share your future goals/plans with us?


I'm working on a few games at the moment. My career path has very suddenly gone from magazine/ads illustrator to game illustration and animation. It feels fantastic, and I'm planning to keep it up.

What message do you have for other budding game developers? 

Work hard, read a lot and study everything. Inspiration strikes where you least expect it. If your ideas are good, recognition will come.

And a final word for our readers..?

Thank you for bearing with me!

Have a look at the trailer this adorable game: