CURRICULUM VITAE
Ken Yasue
Engineer · Founder · Generative AI creator · Astrophotographer
A computer person ever since I got a PC-9821 at twelve. Between Tokyo and Croatia I started a development company, grew it, and sold it.
Based in Croatia
Download PDFPrintable CV (A4)AI product imagery & video portfolioWork for thirteen brands- Working as an engineer since
- 2000
- Companies founded
- 3
- Peak headcount
- 30
- Clover Studio’s annual revenue
- €1M
- Peak Instagram followers
- 100K
- Countries with clients
- 7
- Languages spoken
- 3
This CV as a one-minute motion-graphics film, set to minimal techno. The music starts off.
Life track
From 1981 to today. The bottom band is where I lived; the bands above are what I was doing at the time.
- Learning
- Employed
- Founded
- Generative AI
- Tokyo
- Croatia
- Self-taught (BASIC → C/C++)1993–2000
- UEC Tokyo2000–2004
- Freelance2000–2004
- Student dev service2002–2004
- Engineer in Croatia2004–2007
- VC CTO2007–2008
- C-Studio2008–2010
- Clover Studio2010–2024
- Generative AI creator2022–Now
- Cats AI2024–Now
- TokyoCroatia
Early life
- 1981
Born in Tokyo
Born on 22 August 1981 in Tokyo, half Japanese and half Croatian.
- 1993
A PC-9821 at twelve
Got an NEC PC-9821 and taught myself BASIC.
- 1994
C and C++ in junior high
Moved on to C and C++ before leaving junior high, and spent my school years as a computer fanatic through and through.
- 2004
Moved to Croatia
After graduating, moved to Croatia together with my wife.
- Today
Father of two
Living in Croatia, father of two children.
Chapter two: generative AI
- 2022
Blown away by Midjourney
Watched words turn into pictures, and started making work with generative AI.
- 2024
100K followers on Instagram
An AI influencer, made entirely with generative AI, reached 100,000 followers.
- Then
Then the ban
One day the 100K account was banned without warning. The making did not stop.
Education
2000 – 2004
The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo
Major in quantum physics
Entered in 2000 to study quantum physics and graduated in 2004 — already working as an engineer alongside.
Career
- 2000Tokyo
Freelance engineer
Started working as a freelance engineer the same year I entered university.
- 2002Tokyo
Launched a low-cost development service run by students
Rode the internet boom, building for all kinds of startups. The network grew to about 20 registered engineers.
- 2004Croatia
Handed over the company and moved to Croatia
Moved to Croatia with my wife and worked as an engineer at a local company, building .NET and PHP systems.
- 2007Tokyo
Back to Japan alone as a venture capital CTO
Spent a year as CTO of a venture capital firm, looking after a range of its startups.
- 2008Croatia
Founded C-Studio in Croatia
The forerunner of Clover Studio, doing contract development mainly of mobile systems for Japan.
- 2010Croatia
Incorporated as Clover Studio
Hired a team and offered iOS and Android app development by Croatian engineers, growing to 30 people and €1M in revenue.
- 2024Croatia
Sold Clover Studio to Pontis Technologies
The company I had grown for sixteen years, since 2008, joined Pontis Technologies.
- 2024Croatia✦ Generative AI
Founded Cats AI d.o.o.
Searching — some would say wandering — for interesting things to do with AI.
- 2024Croatia✦ Generative AI
An AI influencer reaches 100K on Instagram
Every image and every video generated with AI — and 100,000 people followed along.
- 2025Croatia✦ Generative AI
Launched product imagery and AI video production
Advertising images generated without a photo shoot, and commercials made from them.
Made with AI
From the idea to delivery — images, video, music and voice, all generated.
- Idea & prompt
- Image generation
- Animation
- Music & voice
- Edit & deliver
Music videos
The song and the pictures, both from AI: a generated track, a generated scene for every part of it, cut into one video.
Learning videos
Generated slides, a presenter character and narration, put together into lessons that are easy to follow.
Product images
One product photo in, dozens of advertising images out — for every season and every setting.
Product commercials
The product images set in motion, with music and a voice-over, finished as short ads for social media.
Generative AI for art
The open-source models I have actually worked with, hands on.
- 14
Image
Generating and editing stills
- Stable Diffusion 1.5
- SDXL
- Stable Diffusion 3.5
- FLUX.1
- FLUX.1 Kontext
- FLUX.2
- HiDream-I1
- Qwen-Image
- Qwen-Image-Edit
- HunyuanImage
- Z-Image
- Chroma
- PixArt-Σ
- Kolors
- 12
Video
Video from text and images
- AnimateDiff
- Stable Video Diffusion
- CogVideoX
- LTX-Video
- LTX-2
- HunyuanVideo
- Wan 2.1
- Wan 2.2
- Mochi 1
- SkyReels
- FramePack
- Open-Sora
- 2
Music
Songs, vocals included
- ACE-Step 1.5
- YuE 2
- 1
Sound
Sound effects and ambience
- Stable Audio
- 1
Voice
Narration and TTS
- Higgs Audio
I have used every model listed here myself.
Skills
More than 25 years on both sides — building things and selling them. Right now, generative AI is the most fun.
Hard skills
Senior
- Application development
- Desktop applications
- Mobile applications
- UI/UX design
- Linux server administration
- AWS
Mid-level
- Modernising legacy COBOL and Visual Basic applications
- Azure
Soft skills
Senior
- Technical and business documentation
- Agile / Scrum project management
- Proposals, B2B sales and client negotiation
Mid-level
- Marketing automation
Generative AI
- Harness design for Claude and Codex
- Short-form video generation for TikTok and Instagram
- Video generation for YouTube
- Planning and building systems on LLMs
- Image generation with open-source models
- Text-to-speech with open-source models
Countries worked with
From our base in Croatia, we built products with clients in seven countries.
- Japan
- USA
- UK
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Nigeria
- Australia
Key clients
From major Japanese companies to startups around the world.
- Mitsubishi
- Dentsu
- JAXA
- Ganghoo Online
- Startups worldwide
Languages
- JapaneseNative
- CroatianNative
- EnglishFluent for business
Hobby
Astrophotography
I photograph the night sky over Croatia, and publish the pictures on astro.beer.
See the photos at astro.beer/@ken (opens in a new tab)Life achievements
- 2024
Sold Clover Studio to Pontis
A company I started alone in 2008 became a 30-person development studio, and in 2024 it joined Pontis Technologies.
Forbes Croatia article (opens in a new tab)BridgeWest news (opens in a new tab)
- 2024
100K Instagram followers as an AI influencer
An AI influencer whose every image and video was generated with AI reached 100,000 followers on Instagram in 2024.
- ZWO
Featured as an astrophotographer
ZWO, the astronomy camera maker, told my story as an astrophotographer in its Astro Bios series.