With Welcome to Iltopia incomes finalist recognition at the Oregon Book Awards, Steven Christian stands at a uncommon intersection of storytelling, expertise, and analysis. What started as a private response to transition and uncertainty has developed into a totally immersive Afrofuturist universe—one which blends illustration, augmented actuality, and speculative creativeness. Through tasks spanning Iltopia Studios and his MD/PhD work in neuroscience at the University of Nevada, Reno, Christian is redefining how tales are skilled, insisting that the way forward for narrative isn’t simply learn or watched—it’s inhabited.
Steven, for readers who’re simply discovering your work, you put on many hats as a creator, researcher, and innovator. How did your journey lead you to create Welcome to Iltopia, and what does it imply to you to see the e book acknowledged as a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards?
My journey to creating Welcome to Iltopia wasn’t linear in any respect. In some ways, it was formed extra by circumstance than cautious planning. A variety of the pivotal shifts in my life occurred as a result of doorways closed, not as a result of I strategically selected new ones.
After retiring from Division I school soccer, I discovered myself in unfamiliar territory. As an athlete, your path is structured. You prepare, you compete, you execute. But getting into maturity with out that framework felt disorienting. I had ambition, self-discipline, and abilities — however I didn’t see clear alternatives in entrance of me. That frustration grew to become gasoline.
Iltopia started as a strategy to course of that transition. I needed to inform quirky, layered tales about navigating uncertainty — about making an attempt to construct one thing significant when the world doesn’t hand you a blueprint. Initially, the e book was meant to be a portfolio piece — one thing I might use to get employed, to create alternative for myself the method I as soon as needed to create alternatives on the subject.
Ironically, it developed into one thing a lot larger. Instead of being the venture that helped me discover a group, it grew to become the venture that required me to construct one. It grew to become one thing I needed to rent and collaborate round.
When I entered medical college, the thought expanded once more. During the pandemic, I started growing abilities in augmented actuality, which allowed me to experiment with embedding animation straight into books. I grew to become fascinated with the thought of making an animated present inside a bodily textual content — merging storytelling, illustration, and expertise in a method that felt immersive and new.
While finding out for my last board examination, I dedicated to growing the venture persistently. What began from necessity — from eager to create my very own alternative — was a deeply private and revolutionary physique of labor.
Seeing Welcome to Iltopia acknowledged as a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards is extremely humbling. It appears like validation not simply of the artistic dangers I took, however of the uncertainty I pushed by means of. There had been moments after I questioned the unconventional decisions I made with the e book — mixing mediums, experimenting with type, constructing a world that felt emotionally weak.
To have it obtained on this method provides me a way of peace. It permits me to look again and really feel that even when the path felt unclear, I used to be transferring in the proper course.
Welcome to Iltopia blends speculative journey, Afrofuturist worldbuilding, and immersive expertise. What attracts you to Afrofuturism as a artistic lens, and how do you assume immersive instruments are reshaping how tales are skilled?
At its core, Afrofuturism feels pure to me as a result of I expertise America by means of the lens of Black tradition and Black id. Afrofuturism takes speculative fiction — which already asks “what if?” — and reframes it by means of cultural reminiscence, resilience, and creativeness formed by traditionally marginalized communities.
When you have a look at historical past, communities which have been displaced or disenfranchised usually survive by imagining past their current circumstances. Hope turns into a method. Optimism turns into resistance. Afrofuturism embodies that impulse. It doesn’t ignore actuality, but it surely refuses to be confined by it.
On a private stage, that framework has been grounding. There have been moments in my life the place outcomes didn’t match effort. Things didn’t at all times work out in my favor. Leaning into Afrofuturism allowed me to take care of resilience — to see setbacks not as endpoints, however as half of a bigger speculative arc. It’s a worldview that claims the future continues to be open.
Worldbuilding, in that sense, turns into therapeutic. As a researcher, technologist, and future clinician, I’m continually fascinated about programs — organic programs, social programs, technological programs. Storytelling provides me area to reimagine these programs. It permits me to create environments the place chance is expanded somewhat than restricted.
As for immersive expertise, I believe we’re dwelling by means of a shift the place worth is more and more tied to expertise. Post-COVID particularly, individuals care deeply about what feels actual and embodied. We don’t simply need content material — we wish presence.
Immersive instruments like augmented actuality and blended actuality change storytelling as a result of they collapse distance. When you placed on a headset or activate AR inside a e book, you’re not passively consuming a narrative. You’re collaborating in it. You can’t exchange that with somebody describing it to you, and it’s basically totally different from watching a video. The expertise turns into private and speedy.
For me, combining Afrofuturist worldbuilding with immersive expertise is highly effective as a result of each heart company. Afrofuturism asks us to think about ourselves in the future with energy and complexity. Immersive tech invitations the viewers to step inside that imagined future. Together, they rework storytelling from one thing you observe into one thing you inhabit.
Through Iltopia Studios, you’re increasing storytelling past the web page into augmented actuality, merchandise, and interactive experiences. What excites you most about constructing a story universe somewhat than a single standalone venture?
What excites me most about constructing a story universe somewhat than a standalone venture is freedom. A universe provides me room to completely discover concepts as an alternative of compressing them to suit a single format.
Early in my artistic journey, I struggled to search out alternatives inside established programs. I needed to work with companies and contribute to tasks with outlined scopes, however these doorways didn’t open. At the time, that felt irritating.
In hindsight, it was formative. Because I didn’t have a lane to step into, I needed to construct my very own.
That meant carrying each hat — illustrator, animator, artistic director, technologist. Every venture grew to become a mirrored image of my full vary of abilities. Instead of making one-off items, I used to be constructing ecosystems round concepts, usually out of necessity. I wasn’t simply making an attempt to inform a narrative — I used to be making an attempt to show that I might execute throughout disciplines.
Before I found augmented actuality, I felt boxed in by format. If I animated a narrative and launched it on-line, I couldn’t bodily share or promote that have at conventions. If I turned a narrative right into a e book, I might convey it into bodily areas, however I misplaced the movement and interactivity that animation supplied. I continually felt like I had to decide on between mediums.
Augmented actuality modified that for me. It allowed me to position digital experiences straight inside bodily books. Suddenly, I didn’t need to compromise. The illustration, the animation, the interactivity — they may coexist. That opened the door to merchandise and interactive merchandise that reach the narrative in significant methods somewhat than feeling like afterthoughts.
At that time, I ended considering when it comes to tasks and began considering when it comes to experiences. I’m not simply releasing tales — I’m curating environments individuals can step into.
And there’s one thing highly effective about witnessing that in actual time. When I demo the work and see somebody’s face gentle up as a personality animates of their palms, that response reinforces why I construct this fashion. Once you introduce audiences to a layered, immersive expertise, it turns into the normal. It raises expectations — together with my very own.
Building a universe means I’m not restricted by a single web page or a single launch. It means the story can evolve, develop, and adapt alongside the instruments I’m utilizing and the individuals partaking with it. That’s what retains it thrilling.
Your newly launched graphic novel Cütie Catcherz turns microbiology and dermatology into an AR-driven comedian expertise. Why was it vital so that you can make well being schooling extra accessible by means of popular culture and storytelling?
No matter what title I’ve held — medical pupil, researcher, entrepreneur, animator — the fixed in my life has been storytelling. At the finish of the day, storytelling is how we join. It’s how we make sense of expertise. It’s how we course of resilience, failure, development, and id.
When I entered medication, I used to be struck by how binary and inflexible the communication usually felt. The info is highly effective. It’s life-changing. But it’s steadily delivered in dense, jargon-heavy ways in which create distance somewhat than connection.
And that stunned me, particularly in a world the place individuals stroll round catching Pokémon in augmented actuality, construct relationships by means of digital avatars, and bond over cinematic universes. We already stay inside tales. So why isn’t well being schooling utilizing the identical instruments?
As a future doctor, I’m coaching to serve a era that grew up immersed in interactive media. If I need to talk successfully with that inhabitants, I can’t rely solely on pamphlets and lectures. I’ve to fulfill them the place they’re.
The artistic world excels at communication. Artists know easy methods to take complicated feelings and make them accessible. Medicine excels at info. But usually, it struggles with supply. When you mix these two strengths — rigorous information and compelling storytelling — you create one thing transformative.
That’s what Cütie Catcherz represents for me.
On the floor, it’s a playful journey a couple of stuffed animal making an attempt to avoid wasting his greatest buddy. Underneath, it’s a microbiology and dermatology lesson about Cutibacterium acnes — the micro organism that contributes to zits. The “cooties” in the story are metaphors for actual organic processes. The methods the characters use to struggle outbreaks mirror real-world approaches to pores and skin well being.
Instead of handing somebody a pamphlet or overwhelming them with terminology, I invite them on a journey. The mechanisms develop into plot factors. The science turns into stakes. The therapy turns into motion.
We all have private experiences with zits. It’s common, emotional, and usually tied to id and confidence. If we’re already dwelling in a tradition formed by epic narratives and immersive worlds, why not use that very same narrative energy to show one thing sensible and empowering?
For me, making well being schooling accessible by means of popular culture isn’t about simplifying science. It’s about respecting the viewers sufficient to speak it effectively.
Alongside your artistic work, you’re pursuing an MD/PhD in integrative neuroscience at the University of Nevada, Reno and growing VR instruments for early neurological diagnostics. How do your scientific analysis and artistic tasks inform one another, and the place do you hope this intersection leads subsequent?
It’s attention-grabbing to look again and understand that the issues I as soon as needed to clarify defensively are actually the basis of my day by day work. When I used to be a pre-med pupil animating, making comics, and tabling at conventions, I’d inform individuals about the future I imagined — mixing medication, expertise, and immersive storytelling — and most of them didn’t fairly see how it will join.
Now I’m dwelling inside that intersection.
As an MD/PhD pupil in integrative neuroscience, my day-to-day work facilities on understanding how rising applied sciences — particularly digital and augmented actuality — can enhance neurological diagnostics. I examine how spatial disorientation, concussions, and different types of traumatic mind harm have an effect on notion and cognition. Then I design instruments to measure these disruptions extra exactly.
The fascinating half is that the identical software program, animation pipelines, and growth frameworks I exploit to construct artistic tasks like Welcome to Iltopia or Cütie Catcherz are the precise instruments I exploit in my analysis. The distinction isn’t the basis — it’s the intent.
In my artistic work, the experiences are polished, expressive, and aesthetically immersive. In my analysis, they’re streamlined and environment friendly — constructed to gather high-quality knowledge. But beneath the hood, the structure is the identical. I write the code. I design the environments. I animate the interactions. I construct the programs that individuals step into.
I usually joke that my analysis includes designing video games that deliberately induce disorientation so we are able to higher perceive it. But that’s not removed from the fact. By utilizing VR to simulate spatial instability or visible perturbations, we are able to measure neurological operate in ways in which conventional scientific instruments can’t. And as headsets develop into extra transportable, reasonably priced, and exact, these instruments have the potential to maneuver past specialised labs and into broader scientific settings.
To construct that sort of future, you possibly can’t simply perceive the medication. You have to grasp software program growth. You have to grasp person expertise. You have to grasp easy methods to make one thing individuals are keen to interact with.
That’s the place my artistic work feeds my scientific work. If I can design immersive experiences that individuals are excited to obtain or work together with in a storytelling context, I can apply that very same engagement logic to scientific instruments. The higher I develop into at animating, coding, and constructing worlds, the extra subtle and versatile my analysis instruments develop into.
In some ways, getting into medication didn’t restrict my creativity — it amplified it. It gave it construction, urgency, and real-world stakes.
Looking forward, I hope this intersection results in a future the place neurological diagnostics are extra exact, extra accessible, and extra human-centered. Where immersive expertise doesn’t simply entertain us, however helps us perceive the mind, get well from harm, and enhance high quality of life.
If storytelling is about serving to individuals see themselves in another way, neuroscience is about understanding how notion itself works. Bringing these two collectively feels much less like juggling disciplines and extra like finishing a circuit.
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