The Polish artist Krystof Gawronkiewicz was born in 1969. The draft version of Essence won the first European Comic Book Competition, hosted by the television company Arte and Glénat publishing, beating six hundred other drafts from all over Europe. Essence (Glénat, 2005; Mandragora, 2006) is the first volume of Les Extravagantes Enquêtes d'Otto et Watson. The second volume, Romantisme, was published in 2007.