BossLogic's Kode Abdo Is Building a Studio in the UAE — and Bringing His Own IP

Kode Abdo built one of the most recognizable portfolios in digital art without ever showing his face. The Syrian-Australian illustrator, who works under the name BossLogic, spent years as an anonymous presence online before revealing his identity in 2018 — a decision he calls the toughest of his career. It took him 12 hours to publish the post. "I feared the world," he said.

He now keeps close to two million followers on Instagram and just over half a million on X. The professional attention arrived before the exposure did.

From fan art to official commissions

In 2019, an unofficial Avengers piece he made drew the notice of Joe and Anthony Russo, the brothers who directed the Captain America films and the final two Avengers instalments. They commissioned work for their social channels, and Joe Russo introduced Abdo to Disney's creative team. That introduction produced official artwork for Avengers: Endgame.

Other commissions followed from Dwayne Johnson, whose project led to a collaboration with comic-book artist Jim Lee, and from Ryan Reynolds, including official artwork for the film 6 Underground. Abdo's work has been acknowledged publicly by Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal. His client list has grown to include Disney, Warner Bros., Netflix, Paramount and Sony Pictures, with comic credits at Marvel, DC, BOOM! Studios and IDW Publishing.

He started drawing at six. Social media, he says, did not create the habit; it put the work in front of new eyes and eventually turned it into a business. His advice to young artists is to publish relentlessly and avoid locking themselves into a single publisher. "If monetization is your only motivation, it's never going to work out," he said.

If monetization is your only motivation, it's never going to work out,

A studio in the UAE

Abdo's next step is geographic. He is working to build a studio in the Middle East, with the UAE as the focus, and describes the shift from Australia as harder than expected despite his own roots in the region. He relocated a few months before appearing at this year's Middle East Film and Comic Con in Abu Dhabi, where Simu Liu was a guest.

At the centre of the plan is Frequency, an intellectual property he owns, set in 2175. Society in that world is divided by sound, with musical genres forming the factions that survive among neon ruins; law, order and chaos are, in his description, "a mirrored image only justified by perspective." He wants to release it in the Middle East and put it alongside the Marvel franchise rather than arrive once the groundwork is finished. "I would love to be part of it on the foundation floor," he said.

In February he posted that his first chapter had been about entering worlds other people created, and the next would be about building one of his own — spaces and platforms, not just visuals, and something larger than his own art.

On generative AI, Abdo draws a line. Images produced by those tools carry no feeling, he argues, even when they imitate one. Human creators, he says, should work from heart and mind, and leave machine-made art to the machines.