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Mentorship Available Now!

You can now access premium online and in-person mentorship, and live drawing workshops with Chris Solarski via Patreon and Meetup. Click on the links to learn more.

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What I do…

  • 15+ years teaching, mentoring and speaking on art and design around the world.

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  • Game design and cultural heritage expert for video games, VR, the metaverse, etc.

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  • Internationally acclaimed books on art, storytelling and design for interactive media.

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  • Character design and world-building in all media from oil paint to digital.

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Next events:
Animal & Figure Sketching
w/ Chris Solarski

Saturdays @ Natural History Museum & Archaeology Institute, Zurich

Click here for more info…

Art & Design Academy

abloom is a forward-looking education hub with roots reaching back to the ancient past. Based in Zurich, Switzerland, we offer boutique workshops celebrating game design, game art, illustration and comics, with a strong grounding in traditional practices.

Our broad artisanal approach to art and design literacy means that we prioritise screen-free teaching methods and analog media, as a means of deepening each student’s physical and emotional understanding of artistic expression.

Endorsements

  • The convergence of narrative in film, video games, and virtual reality will fundamentally change the entertainment industry in coming years. Chris Solarski's book gives content creators crucial insights into interactive story composition and how to adapt these concepts for transmedia storytelling.

    MARC FORSTER, Film Director and Producer incl. Monster's Ball, The Kite Runner and World War Z
  • The concepts presented in 'Interactive Stories and Video Game Art' remind me of Joseph Campbell's powerful demonstration of a universal storytelling structure. This book creates that wonderful feeling of learning new letters, which soon prove useful to form new sentences for bringing new poetry to the world.

    STÉPHANE ASSADOURIAN, Veteran Game Production Consultant and Assassin's Creed founding member
  • Chris’ work and writings brought me a deep insight and perspective about game design and art. His thorough research on storytelling in games, and how that translates to shape languages in game art that evokes certain emotions to the players, makes me look at visual art very differently today.

    KSHIRAJ TELANG, Art Director at Moon Active, formerly Studio Art Director at Rovio and Principal Visual Development Artist at King
  • 'Interactive Stories and Video Game Art' is a great game design resource, as it breaks down shape theory in all aspects of design.

    MAX PEARS, Level Designer incl. Cyberpunk 2077 and The Division
  • The clever thing about this book is that it bridges the worlds of game design and storytelling. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to get into game design and understand what's going on beneath the surface. It reminds me of Robert McKee's 'Story,' the classic book on screenwriting. You read it and you think: Aha, this is how storytelling works in film, it really can be explained! And you can see this book as a companion volume that is essentially doing the same thing for games.

    TOM STANDAGE, Deputy Editor and Digital Strategist of The Economist and a New York Times Bestselling Author
  • Chris Solarski's book is extremely ambitious; from the smallest detail to broad concepts that encompass an immense scale, its truly applied methodology serves as a catalyst that enriches the reader's heart and promotes the creation of pure art.

    ERIK ANZI, Producer, Screenwriter, and Concept Artist on films incl. Ridley Scott's Alien and Blade Runner

Past speaking venues…

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