This is very hard to relate to you. I'll try to do it as factually as I can, but that will be difficult, as Nikos was a friend, as he was to many here at WinCustomize and Stardock.
I should say that I haven't found a public document concerning his passing, so I'm relying on emails I received from his widow.
I sent an inquiry and learned through his widow, Mrs. Adamamas, that he passed away suddenly and unexpectedly about a month ago.
I don't know what took our friend and honestly, it really doesn't matter, in the end. All that really matters is that he's gone. So, let's concentrate on his life, and not on that fraction of an instant in which life departed from his talented hands...the hands of a reconstructive, cosmetic Dentist who practiced his art for many years in his home town, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and a digital artist of note who received awards and prizes...among them Master Skinner here at WinCustomize.
Nikos Adamamas, aka adni18, has studied at Universities in Rome and Thessaloniki, in Medicine, Dentistry and in Design Arts.
Our CEO Brad Wardell, said back in 2003 that: “…his downloads, rank him in the Top 15 most popular computer company’s worldwide, among them Microsoft, Yahoo etc with 8,000 to 15,000 persons downloading his work from the internet, on daily basis”. That was 22 years ago. Today, Nikos takes first and second place in downloads with Vista Plus having 966,239 downloads and XP Professional III having 794,737. That doesn't even begin to touch his site's (adni18.com) downloads and his downloads from many other sites such as deviantArt, Art Majeur, etc. It has been estimated, that more than 120.000.000 people from the entire cyberworld accessed and use his artwork, over the past 17 years, counting only some Internet statistics." - Art Majeur.
None of this begins to pay tribute to Nikos as a person and as a friend...a good, kind, funny and sensitive man.
His art brought beauty to so many and more beautiful smiles to so many faces.
Bless you, Nikos. Rest well, fine man, great artist and good friend.
Please take the time to visit his sites here:
https://www.adni18.com/
here:
https://www.adni18.com/paintings.php
and his 45 pages of submissions here, at WC:
https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/all/search/adni18
The huge volume of his artwork is simply...superb.
Νίκο, παλιέ μου φίλε, αναπαύσου καλά. Ελπίζω να μπορέσουμε να συναντηθούμε για ένα ποτήρι ρετσίνα κάποια μέρα. Αυτό θα ήταν υπέροχο...