Hi! I’m Alexi, and I’m a passionate storyteller who creates these experiences with graphic design, animation, and illustration. Below are some of my previous work:
THE GATES OF IRKALLA
DATE(S) 2025
MEDIUM Animation
LOCATION Emagine Royal Oak, Royal Oak, MI, United States
:::OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2025 HORROR FILM ROULETTE:::
WINNER: Best Original Score & Best Use of Genre
A team of mercenaries is hired by a regional governor to rescue his daughter from a cult worshiping an ancient deity in the temple, and must survive the dead coming back to life…
Created, Edited, and Animated by Alexi Tsitlakidis
Story by Alexi Tsitlakidis and Grace Huebner
Original Music by Grace Huebner
Special Thanks to The Royal Starr Film Festival
Design Process
The Gates of Irkalla is an animated short created for the 2025 Horror Film Roulette, where contestants are tasked with producing a sub-5-minute horror short based on the selected theme within four weeks or less. As this was my second year, my theme was Zombie.
Upon getting the theme, the thoughts that immediately came to my mind were:
- “I will animate it”
- “I will make it a silent film”
- The epitaph from Ishtar (Inanna)’s descent into the Underworld:
“If you do not open the gate, that I may enter, I will break down the door, I will smash the bolt, I will break down the frame, I will topple the doors and tear off the knob, I will raise up the dead so that they devour the living, and the dead will outnumber the living!“
Visually, The Gates of Irkalla was inspired by Lotte Reiniger’s animated classic The Adventures of Prince Achmed. I selected this style because I thought the visual style was the most time-efficient, and it provided a good challenge in “how can I make these characters express emotion as silhouettes?”
I set the film in Uruk, during the Hellenistic Era, following the death of Alexander the Great. I selected this setting because it was one with which I was comfortable, it was still a plausible time when people worshiped Mesopotamian deities, and I thought it was an underutilized setting in historical fiction.
The film itself took the entire four weeks to complete—mostly spent on animation. The programs used were:
- Photoshop for the character design and backgrounds
- After Effects for the character animation (with the Duik add-on installed) and filter effects to replicate the look of silent films
- Premiere Pro for editing, intertitles, and the occasional music tinkering
Grace Huebner composed the music for the film. Initially made for another project, her music defined the tone and atmosphere of the Gates of Irkalla.
Two versions of the film exist: a “rough” version with a rough silent film filter, and a “restored” version with a subdued filter, created out of concern for triggering epilepsy in certain audience members. The one submitted to Horror Film Roulette 2025 was the “restored” version.
When the film was being rendered before submission, I created the poster with Grace’s input, inspired by Ancient Greek Pottery, Ancient Sumerian Artwork, and the iconic poster for George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead.
The Gates of Irkalla
(Directed by Alexi Tsitlakidis)
Animated Short Film
THE TOWER
DATE(S) 2017, 2023
MEDIUM Animation
LOCATION Birmingham 8, Birmingham, MI, United States
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2023 Royal Starr Film Festival
A reconnaissance ranger finds a derelict tower during a routine mission in a forsaken desert simply known as “The Redlands”…
The Tower is an animatic/motion storyboard that aims to tell a story without any text or dialogue, taking place in a world that combines the aesthetics of the Hellenistic period and post-apocalyptic media with Cyberpunk technology.
Original music composed by Josh Mackey.
Design Process
Originally titled The Red Necropolis, The Tower began as a week-long college homework assignment from 2017 before it expanded into a dedicated short film later in 2023.
The motive behind the “Cyberpunk-Hellenistic” setting is to create a unique world aesthetically distinct from others within the genre. The weapons depicted are based off late 20th-century weaponry, with visual modifications to match the aesthetic.
When it entered the 2023 Royal Starr Film Festival, the programmer told me it literally broke all of the entry rules (specifically, how it was the opening of a longer film to be developed), but was submitted anyway due to its length and visual style.
Visually and thematically, The Tower is inspired by Luc Besson’s debut Le Dernier Combat, Mamoru Oshii’s Avalon, the Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, and Ghost in the Shell.
The visuals were created by drawing the assets with a pencil and brush marker. Later, these illustrations would be scanned and retouched in Photoshop and manipulated in AfterEffects. In addition, “sprites” would be created for a few scenes to accentuate an action.
The Tower
(Directed by Alexi Tsitlakidis)
Motion Storyboard/Animatic
DIMACHAERUS
DATE(S) 2024
MEDIUM Animation
LOCATION Emagine Royal Oak, Royal Oak, MI, United States
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2024 Horror Film Roulette
At the governor’s request, a provincial architect must inspect a haunted bathhouse, only to encounter a gladiator cursed to roam…
Original music composed by Josh Mackey, featuring the song “Pompa Circensis” by Musica Romana from the album Pugnate.
Design Process
Dimachaerus is an animated short made for the 2024 Horror Film Roulette, where each contestant is to make a sub-5-minute horror short based off what theme is selected.
My theme was “Urban Legend”, with a modifier where I had to put in at least two jump scares. I then decided to challenge myself even further: animate it and have it take place in Ancient Rome.
Everyone had four week to make it before the deadline. Due to a week-long military training exercise I partook in, I had three. Despite a full-time job to the point where I thought I couldn’t make it. Somehow, I did, and I made the Top 25 that premiered at the Emagine Royal Oak that year (despite not having voice acting!)
The visual style is a simplistic ink style partially inspired by the work of Alex Toth and the painting series Rachiș Ali by Nicholae Tonitza
The graffiti seen is based off the Alexamenos graffiti and graffiti found in Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Ancient Roman Graffiti Samples
Rachiș Ali by Nicholae Tonitza
Dimachaerus
(di-ma-kHAÏ-rus)
Animated Short Film
YOUR SCRIPT PRODUCED! STUDIOS
DATE(S) 2020
MEDIUM Mixed (Print and Digital)
LOCATION Various
“The Entertainment Industry’s Unparalleled Event!”
I created the brand identity for Your Script Produced! Studios and its subsidiaries; as well as provided motion graphics, print marketing material, promotional advertisements as seen in digital editions of The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Screen Daily, and video editing for YouTube content.
Additionally, I created the brand design for Doval Bacall Entertainment, the production company behind Your Script Produced! Studios and its subsidiaries; including the opening logo and the website.
Your Script Produced! Studios
(+ Doval Bacall Entertainment)
Multimedia Branding and Advertising
TYPOGOJI
DATE(S) 2019
MEDIUM Print, Augmented Reality
LOCATION None
In celebration Godzilla’s 65th anniversary, I created a living poster made to embody the “spirit” of the eponymous juggernaut with futurist-inspired motion typography enhanced with epithets and visual representations of sounds that only he would produce. A T-Shirt variant (dubbed Shin TypoGoji) was later created.
Both Poster and T-shirt are available in the shop—link is in the header.
This project is Augmented Reality (AR) compatible with ARIA: The AR Platform and WordCast.
Godzilla is a trademark of Toho Co., Ltd.—No copyright infringement is intended.
Design Process
The driving force behind creating this poster was wanting to make another augmented reality (AR) poster, a futurist-themed poster, and watching Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) in theaters.
All of the Japanese text that appears in the posters are either onomatopoeia (i.e. “ドカン/Dokan”, “Boom”) or official nicknames given to Godzilla (i.e. “怪獣王/Kaiju-O”, “King of the Monsters”). Godzilla himself is made out of the Katakana characters that spell his name (ゴジラ)
The audio used in the poster originates from the original Godzilla from 1954 (save for the last roar, which came from Godzilla 1985/The Return of Godzilla), and the initial roar is a homage to his first roar in Shin Godzilla.
TypoGoji
(タイポゴジ)
Augmented Reality Poster and T-Shirt
THE MIME POSTER
DATE(S) 2023
MEDIUM Print, Augmented Reality
LOCATION None
Director Ted E. Dee asked me to create a poster for his short film—his submission for the 2023 Horror Film Roulette. I designed the poster in under an hour, based off a still within the film, inspired by the promotional poster for Marcel Marceau’s showing at the New York City Center.
I then decided to bring it to life with Augmented Reality
The Poster is available in the shop—link is in the header.
This project is Augmented Reality (AR) compatible with WordCast:
The Mime
(Directed by Ted E. Dee)
Augmented Reality Film Poster
AIGA DETROIT
DATE(S) 2020, 2023, 2024
MEDIUM Digital – Social Media
LOCATION Multiple
Back in 2020 (during the COVID-19 Lockdown), AIGA’s Detroit chapter asked me to create social media graphics and animation promoting their remote talks with local and global designers and agencies with the likes of Skidmore from Detroit, MI, United States, Communal of Monterrey, Mexico, and Beetroot of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Then, around September of 2023, I became a member of the AIGA Detroit Board. As their motion graphics expert, I leveraged my motion graphics skills to create Instagram and LinkedIn posts for their then-upcoming events.
AIGA Detroit
(Board Member Since 2020)
Promotional Social Media Content
2019 LTU HOLIDAY SPECIAL
DATE(S) 2019
MEDIUM Digital, Short Film
LOCATION Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI, United States
Bluey the Blue-Horned Devil finds his college is a holiday-themed short animation for Lawrence Technological University (LTU) and a loose remake of the Rankin/Bass holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer directed by Sharon MacDonell.
I provided additional animation that both captures the spirit of the short and matches the visual style that established by lead animator and fellow colleague Carina Taylor.
Design Process
Being a remake of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the short follows the plot of the Rankin/Bass classic—though with college-themed creative liberties. The visual style is a tribute to the aforementioned done in Adobe Animate.
When I came aboard to help out the project I was tasked to essentially finish what Carina had started as she was preoccupied with other projects.
One interesting challenge that came to light was for a visual gag near the end of the film, where three characters randomly bring out a holiday-themed gifts—the challenge being that said gifts are not exclusively Christmas themed. Sharon (the director) had suggested the (ingenious) idea of what one would bring to a holiday-themed office party and we decided on a crock pot, a wrapped gift (colored in an LTU-inspired theme), and a calendar.
In the establishing shot where Bluey enters campus and walks over to meet Dr. Moudgil, there is a cameo of Carina (talking to another person off-screen) and myself (pacing my way out of the scene).
2019 LTU Holiday Special
(Directed by Sharon MacDonell)
Promotional Animated Commercial
#DETROITSOUND3
DATE(S) 2016
MEDIUM Print, Augmented Reality
LOCATION Detroit Historical Museum, Detroit, MI, United States
Carleton Gholz, the founder of the Detroit Sound Conservancy (DSC), asked me to promote the conservancy’s third annual conference titled #detroitsound3. Being the first time my work will be published, this became an offer I couldn’t refuse.
The poster was designed to capture the “soul” of Detroit’s musical identity and served as a visual homage to the Graystone Ballroom that once stood where the event was to take place: the Detroit Center for Design + Technology (DCDT).
Later, the poster was put on display at the Detroit Historical Museum from January 19th to April 7th, as a part of the DSC’s Salvaging Sound Exhibition.
#DetroitSound3 is Augmented Reality (AR) compatible with ARIA: The AR Platform
(available on iOS and Android)
#DetroitSound3
(For the Detroit Sound Conservancy)
Promotional Poster and Exhibit Showpiece
About
Headshot by Grace Huebner
My name is Alexandros (Alexi) Tsitlakidis (gr. Αλέξανδρος (Αλέξη) Τσιτλακίδης), and I am a Metro Detroit-based graphic designer, animator, visual storyteller, and Michigan Army National Guard soldier with over five years of experience designing branded assets for local companies and organizations and animating prints to life with augmented reality (AR)…
…and a hobby for movies, gaming, bodybuilding, and martial arts.
Previously, I created the brand identity for Your Script Produced! Studios, Doval Bacall Entertainment, and ToDoolie, as well as promotional material for AIGA Detroit, the Detroit Sound Conservancy, and assets to local filmmakers such as movie posters, storyboards, and title cards.
Need a hand in design? I am Open to Work! Feel free to reach out to me below!