Teffi Traversi

01. What this is

Teffi is an illustration experiment. I wanted to create a character, but more than that I wanted to see what happens when you let the process stay open — really open — and don't decide in advance which tool is in charge.

So it went back and forth. I drew him by hand. I put him through AI. I rendered him, vectorised him, animated him, took him back to paper. I used AI a lot for colour — colorimetry, colour studies, seeing how far the palette could go before he stopped being him. I did expression studies, the same face over and over: surprised, distracted, looking sideways, smiling. None of it was planned as a pipeline. Each step just opened the next one.

The character came out of that. Not from one drawing, but from all of them at once.

02. About his name

Honestly, the hardest part was the name.

I knew early what the surname had to mean. Something like traverso — transversal, crossed, something that cuts across a direction. He is that kind of guy: he enters the scene sideways, a bit against the flow. But how to say it? We went through a lot of versions. Teffi Travessi. Teffo di Traverso. Teffi Traverse. Every one sounded right for a day and a little off the day after.

So I stopped trying. The character exists — he has a face, a way of standing, his clothes, his mood. That's the important part. Now I'm leaving room for him to find his own name, the way some people end up with a nickname nobody actually chose. For now we call him Teffi Traversi. There's no rush to baptise him. When the name comes, it will come.

03. What you'll see

Teffi doesn't have a story. He has moments.

What I'm making with him are very short scripts — tiny shorts, a few seconds each. Someone crosses him on a bike in Zürich. A mailbox he opens on two different days. A small concert where he walks in from the side and greets the band like it's nothing. Almost always you see him through someone else's eyes, for a few seconds, and then the moment is gone.

I like that we never get to be him. We just get to watch.

The videos are added here as they come out.

04. Where, when, with whom

Zürich, Switzerland. 2026. A personal project.