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By the late eighties, his books were an international success, with strong sales in the UK, Europe, America and Japan. Chris was even receiving mail from as far away as South America and Australia. But the expected level of royalties never materialised, which left him wondering why. Chris soon found out that he was not alone in this. After speaking to some of Dragon’s World’s major artists, their suspicions were aroused. Together, they confronted the publisher, but to little effect, and that’s when Chris decided never to publish another book with the company. This resulted in no further new books until Amazona, sixteen years later.
One of the many young artists using Chris’s books as reference material happened to be working in the production office of Lucasfilm Ltd. At that time, George Lucas was producing a new fantasy film, Willow, to be directed by Ron Howard, and the artist showed Chris’s book to his employers. Lucas called Chris to ask if he would work on Willow as a conceptual artist, designing costumes and developing the look of lead characters. Chris accepted, and found both the work and his relationship with director Ron Howard to be a real joy.
With his career and life back on track, Chris was approached in 1991 by American publisher Michael Friedlander and his company FPG. Initially interested in publishing a new Achilléos book, Michael quickly realised there was a better opportunity in the burgeoning trading card market. A card series of the fantasy art of Christos Achilléos proved to be a big hit and exposed him to a different group of fans. This single decision was to change his life and lead Chris to where he is today.
Trading card paintings made up the bulk of Chris’s work in the early nineties. His favourite subject was detailed, figurative paintings of strong, beautiful females epitomised in pieces such as ‘Chain of Fools’ and ‘Paws & Claws’.
Altogether Michael Friedlander published two ninety-card sets and one ‘colossal’ (large format) set of fifty, whilst Chris made a couple of contributions to other sets.
For the first time, with all his images under the same banner, Chris’s fans were able to fully appreciate the diversity of his artistic output, and could put a name to his distinctive trademark logo, the ‘A’ in a circle, which appears on all his paintings instead of his signature.
The sudden income from the FPG trading cards now gave Chris the confidence to take legal action against Dragon’s World. This was not going to be easy, as others had tried and failed, but he was determined. After a lot of difficulties, he was eventually vindicated and a settlement was made out of court, returning to Chris the rights to his previous books, which had been his original aim. “I am as proud of having achieved this as anything else I have done in my life,” he claims.
Since then, Sirens and Medusa have been reprinted, although there are no plans to do the same for Beauty and the Beast. Medusa was published by another good friend, Neal Mather, under the aegis of publishers Iconia, who also handle Chris’s range of merchandising.
This includes posters, cards, postcards, fridge magnets, coffee mugs and a selection of fabulous limited edition figurines.
Chris was also creating new erotic art, with work appearing in a number of publications, including the German fetish magazine Marquis. And he produced a new wraparound cover painting of Taarna, the celebrated heroine that he had designed some fifteen years earlier, for Heavy Metal magazine.