A look at how worldbuilding, storytelling, and AI-assisted filmmaking converge in the rebirth of Utherworlds — a mythic universe reimagined for 2025.

But as I experimented, something unexpected happened. The tools began to grow more powerful, and so did my understanding of how to use them. Each test led to a new question, and each question pulled me closer to something that felt like story. What began as a visual poem started to hint at characters, emotion, and the structure of a film.

I started expanding my toolkit to see how far I could push both myself and the technology. Kling 1.6 and later 2.1 quickly stood out — incredible for visual effects, atmosphere, and the kind of light energy I’d only been able to paint before. Flux Kontext became my new go-to for image generation, especially when I needed character consistency across scenes. Wan 2.1, another Chinese video model, offered unique stylistic motion — something more cinematic, more unpredictable.

Architecture, to me, is one of the purest portrait of civilization. It reflects belief, ambition, and fear. I’ve spent years studying how architectural movements rise from culture and politics—how a cathedral or a megastructure tells us exactly who we were at that moment in time. Lately, I’ve been drawn to the next chapter of that story: futuristic architecture and how evolving materials and technologies might reshape the cities of tomorrow.

After experimenting with landscapes and still paintings, I wanted to see if the same sense of motion could exist inside the faces I’ve painted over the years. The surreal, the mythic, the familiar — each portrait already carried its own quiet pulse. The question was: how much life could I draw out of them?

This week I’ve been taking a range of my existing paintings — from personal works to Utherworlds pieces — and testing how they respond to animation. I’m working with Runway Gen-4, Seedance, and Veo 3, trying to find the balance between painterly integrity and cinematic energy. Each tool has its own voice: Runway offers control and polish, Seedance lends dreamlike rhythm, and Veo surprises me with moments of realism that feel almost alive.

The goal for the Utherworlds cinematic is to create a sense of epic scale and dark fantasy realism, where every frame tells a story of a world both grand and ravaged. This vision begins with foundational concept art. Below is an environment I conceived and painted, capturing the raw, apocalyptic majesty of one of Utherworlds' key locales. Every brushstroke in this painting was laid down to evoke a specific mood and foreshadow the dramatic events unfolding within it. This is our starting point.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: Artificial Intelligence and the palpable sense of change rippling through the creative industries. For those of us who have dedicated our lives to this field, seeing the landscape shift so dramatically, with entire departments contracting, can be unsettling. The fear is real, and it’s important to acknowledge.

For more than two decades, I've had the honor of walking the halls of giants in the entertainment industry. My journey as an artist and creative director has been a privilege, allowing me to contribute to vast, beloved universes. But every artist knows there is a world within, a personal map of places and characters that wait patiently in sketchbooks and daydreams.