With a mostly steampunk style, Antonov has been in the video game industry since 1996. He holds a transportation design degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and has also designed for commercials, animation and film in the USA and Europe. Antonov has been living in Paris (France), where he immigrated at 17, Montreaux (Switzerland), Los Angeles and Seattle.[1]
He has founded the entertainment design studio "The Building" in Paris, France. The firm provides design services and consulting for multiple platforms, ranging from video games, feature films, commercials to television series. He is also a visiting design instructor at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Film Academy.[2]
Antonov was art director and conceptual artist for Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. For Half-Life 2, he designed most of the City 17 style and the Combine architecture and technology.[2][3] As it is commonly done during a video game's development, most of his concept art for Half-Life 2 was done with Photoshop on existing screenshots of work-in-progress maps.[3] Some of these maps can be found in the WC mappack (see a comparison example). At Valve, he also worked on Counter-Strike: Source.
Antonov can be seen credited across the web as the composer of cut Half-Life 2 music. This is incorrect, as Antonov is not a composer and most of this miscredited music is actually credited to Kelly Bailey or is most of the time totally unrelated to Half-Life 2.