Skazki 2026: Ivan Bilibin's Russian

Skazki 2026: Ivan Bilibin's Russian fairy tales, retold with the gadgets of 2026.

Between 1899 and 1902 Ivan Bilibin illustrated a series of Russian fairy-tale booklets: flat ink outlines, watercolour fills and an ornamental folk border around every page. I took ten of his plates from Wikimedia Commons, where they are in the public domain, and built a Recraft V4 Style from them, borders and all. Skazki 2026 keeps his heroes and hands them the gadgets that would get them through the same stories today: Baba Yaga rides a robot vacuum instead of a mortar, Vasilisa lights the dark forest with her phone's flashlight instead of a glowing skull, the Firebird turns out to be a delivery drone, the hut on chicken legs has wifi and a doorbell camera, and Emelya's magic stove simply drives itself. Three plates come to life with Recraft's video tools. The tales are older than the gadgets, and they fit them perfectly.