Rising Stars: Meet Ali Bilal of Santa Monica

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ali Bilal.

Hi Ali, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Born in New York city in 1999. I’ve been drawing and painting before I fully knew how to read and write. I’ve always been an artist.

2004 is when my mother and I moved to Southern California where I spent most of my upbringing in Venice Beach where I was absorbed in the culture of skateboarding. In elementary school, I drew a lot of comic books and draw my favorite skate brand graphic logos.

In middle school, Mark Twain Venice, I got really heavy into skateboarding and graffiti. I even started a crew of my rowdy friends where we go out on adventures in the city with 20 – 30 of us to skate different spots, harass security guards, rough house each other and spray paint are crew name, which is Venice OutKast.

In high school I returned back into my art craft where I pursued ways to make a living off of my art professionally. I first was finding it difficult to get someone to pay me to create art for them so I decided to put my art on clothing and start my own Clothing brand called Cosmic Demise. Starting off with selling it to my friends in school then grew into selling to people that I didn’t know outside of school. Shortly after I started my brand, I had the opportunity to have my brand sold in a surf and skate shop called Bay Street boards because one of my skateboard friends family owns the shop.

At this time, my skateboard crew that I was hanging out with at the time was making music at this free studio that was across the street from our school called the Pico youth and family center. I had heard about this free resource center before because during one of my classes one of the members of the Pico youth family center spoke to our class to explain that it’s a nonprofit that gives free resources to the youth. At this time I didn’t have a computer to do graphic design for my brand, but this nonprofit said that they had the software for that. So I began to be a frequent visitor in this nonprofit building to design graphics for my brand and to make music with my skate friends in the studio. Being rough skate beach kids that we were, we was really into heavy rock and rap music, so the type of music that I was creating was screamo type of rap that combines aggressive vocals of rock, but on rap instrumentals. Which made me stand out as weird because most of the other recording artist who would visit the studio to make music created traditional, boom bop, hip-hop music, so my genre was very strange to them.

My senior year I created my first ever event for my brand Cosmic Demise at the Picoyouth and family center’s building, where my friends would perform in their rock bands and rap songs as well. For this being my first ever event, it was extremely chaotic in a good way because even though I wasn’t popular in school and I charged tickets for people to enter, there was so many people who showed up at the event and so much high energy from people moshpitting and crowd surfing that we had to shut down the event in under an hour of it open.

Also, during my high school years, I was introduced to my first Clothing brand mentor named Bam Barcena, who put me under his wings and sponsored me as one of the skaters and his clothing brand called Rokit. After I graduated high school I chose to do an internship with Bam Barcena instead of going to college because the information that I learned from him was extremely valuable to me in being a creative entrepreneur.

I also purchased my first video camera, after saving up money from working ant the Active Ride shop skate shop in Santa Monica as a sales associate. This camera was then used to begin the journey of creating skateboard short films with my skate crew while they’re wearing my Cosmic Demise clothing. The style of videos we created was different then most traditional skate videos because I added heavy visual effects and theatrical cutscenes that were thriller and suspenseful. I would create events where we would premiere the skate films and have local rock bands perform and also rappers, while my mother would sell my clothing at these events. The name Cosmic Demise began to spread all across the local underground music scene in Southern California. One of the family members of the band Metallica, Robert Trujillo’s son was a fan of Cosmic Demise. His name is Tye Trujillo, I then created a music video for his band called OTTTO called “My Pain” and I had them to perform at my Cosmic Demise music event and became good friends with their family. We then grew into creating skateboard contest events, which introduced us to the city Council of Los Angeles Traci Park, who has grown to support us by having us Collab on a skate events called Go Skate Day in Venice Beach with one of the biggest skateboarders in the world named Paul Rodriguez P-Rod.

In 2022, the next chapter of my life was quitting my 9 to 5 job at the VANS skate shop that I was working at doing sales to fully pursue my creative freelance career as a videographer and graphic designer. The beginning years of this period was extremely tough financially and mentally because of the uncertainty of the financial realities of my situation, still living with my single mother where majority of the income to pay the rent in Santa Monica relied on me. This path contained a lot of negotiating with people trying to take advantage of me by having me work for free or they ask me for a lot but in return would pay very little.

All of these experiences compounded overtime when I met the popstar musician, Desi G, who later in life became my first ever retainer Client, who has given us continuous projects to work on and how transition does from survival mode to finally being stable.

Early 2026, One of the biggest highlights of working with Desi G was flying to Greece to be her creative Director during her journey of competing in one of the biggest singing contest called Sing for Greece Eurovision, where I created the 3-D animation visuals for the big stage of her “Aphrodite” performance.

Late 2026, my mother and I gave away most of our belongings and officially moved out of United States to begin our journey of living abroad as digital nomads. For the first four months, we lived with Desi G in Canada and in October. My mother and I moved to a country in Europe, called Albania, a country that has recently got out of a Dictator ran communism in the late 90s and is now a open country, where American citizens can live here for one year without a visa, which we are living in now. The type of work that I do does it rely me to be in a physical location. While being abroad, I was able to recently create a 3-D animation for digital billboard for the new SANTA MONICA Promenade digital billboard screens where I was commissioned by Orange Barrel Media.

The first few weeks of living in Albania was a bit bumpy, getting used to the new languages and different currencies. Plus, we moved here ( Tirana, Albania) in the middle of the big protest in Tirana against the corruption of the government, so we had to move Location couple times to avoid the chaos. Now we found a peaceful hotel that we’re staying at in Durres, Albania, which is a beach city where I’m able to focus on the development of my Cosmic Demise Studio’s video games, my client work, take my Santa Monica College computer science classes and also continuing to pursue my clothing brand Cosmic Demise.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Different chapters of my life contained different struggles, like the chapter of my life, where I just left my 9 to 5 job to pursue my creative freelance career had the financial struggle where I had to rely on faith and self motivation to continue pushing through, even though on face with uncertainty. What kept me going was that at the end of the month where rent was due, there was always a last-minute miracle that would happen to allow us to continue moving forward.

The chapter that I’m in now is more about overcoming distractions from the doomscrolling entertainment content and developing the sharp focus and mental fortitude of dealing with the troubleshooting that comes along with my work and also life in general, especially being a new foreigner to a new country

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a specialized generalist, where instead of leashing down in specializing in one skill, I am multi disciplined in drawing, graphic design, filming, video editing, 3-D animation, coding, and whatever else is necessary to build a brand worth paying attention to

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
My advice as a visual artist who spends most time creating while sitting down indoors on the computer and solitude, prioritizing health and relationships are crucial, because having a routine routine where you exercise is needed to blow steam from the mental fog and putting effort into your relationships, Will, not only return a more happy life from the serotonin, but also will lead to financial opportunities down the road. So all that being said, instead of only focusing on developing your hard technical skills but also developing your soft communication skills and develop as a overall solid character, because people like to work with people even if you’re the best at what you do if people don’t enjoy having your company around, they won’t hire you and vice versa. Most of the people who have given me opportunities first like me as a person. The last and most important advice I would give is the ability to have faith in the middle of uncertainty because in every story, the hero always ends up winning.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cosmicdemisestudio.com
• Instagram: https://Instagram.com/ali.cosmicdemise
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-bilal-cosmic-demise
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/@cosmicdemise?ra=m

Image Credits
VLADIMIR VON KLAN @v_is_surf
DIEGO MOLINA @facemanners