Annibale Siconolfi, also known as Inward, is an Italian 3D artist who fills his imagination with architectural, cinematic, literary and musical references to create some of the most poignantly beautiful and painstakingly detailed images of a dystopian future that you will find online.

Dariusz Kuźma spoke with Siconolfi about his artistic methods, real-life inspirations, and the potential of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Dariusz Kuźma: Your work is highly evocative and thematically multi-layered. When I come back to some of my favourites, I still notice new things. Tell me about your creative process – I bet there are dozens of ideas and inspirations that underlay it.

Annibale Siconolfi: Oh, you’re right, there are too many to mention, or even for me to remember. My lifelong romance with the world of art started in my early years. As a child and teenager, I really liked to draw and play the guitar, I loved to listen to futuristic stories, watch science fiction films, read books by Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. I experimented a lot with converging different images and sounds. To an extent, my 3D art is a sum of all the influences and inspirations I absorbed over the years. But the most important is definitely architecture. I studied in Rome, learned the rules of composition and many other useful practical and visual skills, including seeing the world in terms of what’s hidden beneath all those shapes and linear or non-linear structures. I