Present Technology and New Horizons blog post

Camilla D’Errico is an Italian-Canadian illustrator who was born on September 30, 1980. Camilla was born in Ottawa and her parents are Italian immigrants. At a young age, Camilla became interested in cartoons, comics, manga, doodling, and of course, Japanese anime which had a significant influence on her art style. The anime Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask would be inspiration for her art style. Other inspirations also include artists such as Range Murata, Masashi Kishimoto, Maki Minami, Bobby Chui, Alberto Ponticelli, and Ben Templesmith. Camilla later attended Okanagan University College in Kelowna BC and later received her degree in design and illustration at Capilano University(what a surprise!) where she learned Adobe Photoshop. Her training helped her learn fine art, illustration, animation, and design however she is mostly self taught. Her first career in comics was at the 1998 San Diego Comic Con where she had a 9 to 5 job. Since 2001, she started to draw comics and her first professional comic book project was for a company based in New York and in Seattle called Committed Comics and their comic, Thread. She later did work as the lead penciller for a series called Zevon-7. She later on illustrated her own comics such as Burn, a comic about singer Avril Lavigne called “Make 5 Wishes”, and Tanpopo, a story about an intelligent but emotionless girl who makes a deal with the devil in order to gain happiness. She has worked with multiple different companies and clients which include: Tokyopop, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, Walt Disney, Hasbro, Random House, different video game companies, and Neil Gaiman. Camilla has also done exhibitions since 2007 where she shows off her work to the public throughout cities Canada in the US. She has shown her work in famous galleries such as Thinkspace, Roq La Rue, G1988. Camilla has also designed her own toys. She currently lives in Vancouver BC.

Camilla uses water soluble oil paints, acrylics, and ink pens on wooden panels or canvases, although in some cases she will colour digitally. Camilla has described her work as “Pop Surrealist” for using characters and elements from movies and cartoons and combining them into surreal compositions. She also likes to incorporate animals into her illustrations due to the influence of her mother being an animal lover. I absolutely love Camilla’s work. The way she puts her own western twist on the Japanese style while also putting very beautiful colours and dream-like elements into her own work. It’s almost like West meets East type of vibe and the way she draws her characters is very doll like. Her style is so recognizable and I don’t think there’s anyone else that can replicate that surrealist pop style.