Conversation is based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Baby, a short story about a group of astronauts who join a mission to terraform a seemingly sterile planet in order to populate it with a race of intelligent beings. However, the planet turns out to be inhabited by beings of no particular shape or size who live within its bowels, only occasionally revealing themselves in the form of huge antennae that emerge over the mountains.
Near their campsite at the pole of the planet, the group meets a human child who crash-landed on the planet and has been raised from infancy by the planet's intelligent inhabitants. The child's body has been altered and endowed with abilities to make its survival possible.
The illustration depicts the first conversation between the Baby and the head of the group, Gennady Komov.
Nikolay Persikov is a 2D artist who does both digital and traditional painting and whose concepts and illustrations often explore character driven moments in science fiction and fantasy stories. He graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and while he's been working digitally for the past 3 years, he still very much enjoys traditional drawing and often combines both digital and traditional elements in his compositions.
