In 2019, Xavier Gallego (Xevi) sent hand-drawn monster illustrations to his friend Taras Wayner during cancer treatment—visual medicine embodying the resilience hiding inside us all. They planned to turn the series into a book, but the project plateaued. Six years later, Taras sent something back: those same monsters, reawakened using Runway.
Xevi is a multidisciplinary creative who works across illustration, experience design, product design, and even tattooing. His whimsical, flat-style drawings carry a childlike wonder that belies their emotional depth. Taras Wayner, a writer and creative director, first noticed Xevi's work when they both worked at R/GA.
The two eventually collaborated on Monster Medicine, a project born during Taras's cancer treatments in 2019. The concept came from a simple observation:
If this treatment is hard for me, it's gotta be crushing for a kid that doesn't understand what is going on. I wanted them to know that all of these things that you think you're looking for someone else to help you with, you actually have a lot of them inside of you already. So when you suddenly have more strength than you realized, that's your monster.
Taras would send Xevi sentences—thoughts about finding strength, about the calm you need when everything feels chaotic. Xevi would respond with monsters. Not scary ones. Gentle giants representing strength, rest, peace: the small dignities of survival.
They planned to turn the series into a book about the monsters we carry that carry us. Vectors were ready for print. But the momentum faded. The monsters crawled back into their caves.
Then Taras discovered Runway.
The Monsters Rumble
Years had passed. Out of nowhere, Taras sent Xevi a message: "I have something to show you."
What Xevi saw were his monsters, unmistakably. The same style, the same spacing of the eyes, the same gentle presence. But now they had dimension. Taras had rendered XeviКјs flat sketches in 3D style on Runway. Silky fur caught the light. Cheeks had flush. Eyes looked back at you, alive.
It was very emotional. It was a beautiful reawakening of a project that I think is one of the best things I've worked on in my life.
The therapeutic project that began during treatment, offered as medicine when energy was lowest, has become medicine of a different kind—proof that the right tools, in the right hands, at the right time, can resurrect dormant dreams and make the impossible suddenly, beautifully possible.
Why Runway?
For Xevi, who'd tried other AI tools without success, the difference was immediate.
AI tools always melt your work down to something recognizable. But Runway keeps the composition, keeps the style. What blows my mind is how easy it is to do something very contextual.
It feels like it was designed by someone who understands a creative workflow. It's not hard because it's not built to be hard.
The speed of iteration allows them to flesh out the project in new ways.
Early on the illustrations were just against white. Xevi's saying no, they need to be somewhere. So we started building environments around the monsters, and they were rendered in the same style too.
Beyond Monster Medicine
The project has opened new creative possibilities for both artists. Xevi recently used Runway to create product photography for a handmade shoe brand he's launching.
Iʼm producing it with my own money. I made the shoe, which took me five days—it's not easy. Then I took a couple of regular photos with okay lighting. I put them into Runway with simple descriptions of what I wanted—studio light melting into black, a technological look. I got amazing outputs to launch a very elevated brand.
For Taras, a writer by training, the visual tools align perfectly with how he thinks.
Words help me to create the important guardrails when we're making these things. Writing helps me process. I can tell the model what I want by writing it, then find myself having to be more specific because I wasn't specific enough. I can go back and read my prompt and see “oh yeah, I was too general hereˮ
The Future of Monster Medicine
Runway has allowed the artists to build out Monster Medicine in phases. What started as a single book concept has become something larger— they're exploring formats: a printed book series to start, potentially animation shorts, maybe submissions to Runway's annual film festival in June.
The beauty is no one's expecting this. No one has a schedule. It goes away and comes back.
But this time, it's different. This time, the monsters are alive.
The beauty is no one's expecting this. No one has a schedule. It goes away and comes back.
These tools are getting to a point, with Runway allowing you to have a lot of control over the image, where they bring us back to a time of storytelling rather than just putting a bunch of stuff out that looks impressive at speed... That's what excites me—using AI in service of something meaningful.
About the Artists
Xevi Gallego is an artist known as @eyesores and former VP of Marketing of MycoWorks. His illustrations have been featured on skateboards, shoes, and walls at companies from Nike to Airbnb.
Taras Wayner is a writer and Executive Creative Director at Havas New York. His work focuses on the intersection of narrative and visual storytelling.
