Twice in the Arena. Twice first place.

There was a World Cup match on.

At halftime, Moshik Vaknin opened Instagram and tapped into AdArena's stories. The winners' countdown for the Baba Casino competition had just gone up.

Place after place. Number 10. Number 9. Next story. Number 7. Number 6.

His name is nowhere.

Moshik had already told himself: well, alright, doesn't look like it.

He kept watching. One more story. And then:

"Suddenly I see first place. I said — wow."

He genuinely wasn't expecting it. As far as he was concerned, he saw a competition, thought he had an interesting angle and gave it a shot. The attitude was: fine, I'll send it and see. I'll put my angle out there.

Except there's one small detail that makes this story far more interesting.

This wasn't only his first win. It was his first submission, ever.

On July 8, 2026 he took first place in the Baba Casino competition out of 125 entries and collected $2,500. Less than two months later he entered another one. Snips. 84 entries. First place again. Another $1,000.

As of today, Moshik's stats on AdArena are pretty simple: 2 submissions. 2 first places. $3,500 in prizes. A 100% hit rate.

The obvious question is how.

And the answer probably started long before AI existed at all.

Cinema was there first

Moshik grew up with two things he loved: computers and cinema. His father used to show him films at home. Classics, westerns, entire worlds he absorbed without knowing that one day all of it would come in useful.

"Cinema was always in our house. And my dad was always showing me all kinds of films, classics and westerns and everything."

Some people watch a film and remember whether they liked it. Moshik remembered other things.

"I was always a champion at that. All kinds of unimportant film details."

Scenes. Relationships between characters. How a character is built. What happens between the lines.

The way he tells it, those things simply lodged in his head.

"Picking up scenes. Relationships between characters, character building."

And today, looking back, he can't really separate it from himself.

"It's always been in my blood, and I don't think there's any escaping it."

There was just one problem.

All that cinema lived in his head. He didn't have a hand that could get it out.

He just couldn't draw

This is maybe the part that explains Moshik's story best. He always wanted to be able to draw. It just never worked.

"I never knew how to draw. I always wanted to, but every time I tried it didn't work. For me, drawing a person means a circle, plus two circles for the arms and two for the legs. That was the maximum I could manage."

Imagination wasn't the problem. The hand was the problem.

So life took him down a completely different track. He studied at the College of Management in Rishon LeZion, went into programming, and figured out fairly quickly that it simply wasn't him.

"Programming itself bores me. I don't connect to it, and I'm not good enough at it either."

From there he moved into project management in medical underwriting, adapting systems for the Israeli market. He lived in Germany for three years and worked with a German insurance company. He still works in the field part-time today. Over the years he accumulated enough knowledge there that people even consult him on medical matters.

But it's a completely different world from the one living in his head.

"The medical field and the insurance field are just a little one-dimensional. Creativity isn't the name of the game there."

He found a side door back into film

In 2019 Moshik started translating subtitles for Netflix series and films through Israeli localization companies. He still does it today.

On paper, it's translation work. In practice, doing it well takes far more than words.

"To be a good subtitle translator you have to understand the timing of the scene, understand what's happening in it, understand the nuances."

Day after day he sits in front of scenes. Trying to work out why a line is said at exactly that moment. What it means inside the scene. How it sits on the character. And how you carry it into another language without destroying the rhythm, the joke or the situation along the way.

Without planning it, he had gone back to the thing he always loved. Just from the side.

"It was a link in a chain of rebuilding creativity. Of rolling back toward cinema."

Not making films yet. But getting closer.

And then DALL·E came out

"And when DALL·E came out, it blew my mind. You realize you really can create an image with words."

Read that sentence again now that you know Moshik spent his whole life wanting to draw and failing.

Suddenly words became hands.

He started explaining it to the people around him at a time when some of them didn't even understand what he was talking about.

"I explained it to all kinds of people who had no idea what it was. They didn't get what I wanted."

From there he found the "Mechanical Brush" community on Facebook. Then Midjourney, back when everything ran through Discord. And then came video. Pika. Kling. More models. More capabilities.

Moshik loves that pace.

"Give me as much new stuff as possible, as much development and innovation as possible — and I swallow it. For me that's life."

But video, of all things, stopped him.

"Video was slower for me, because I had this kind of phobia. It felt like something too big for me."

Which is interesting. Because images had already solved one problem for him. Video suddenly opened all the rest.

Time. Movement. Rhythm. Characters. Story.

All the cinema he had been holding in his head for years could suddenly come out. And that's exactly what scared him.

The first idea almost never wins

When I asked Moshik how he works, one thing stood out immediately. He doesn't fall in love with the first idea.

Not the second either. Sometimes the third doesn't survive.

Only while working — once you start sanding the direction down, testing it and running with the tools — does the idea worth continuing with show up.

That made me laugh, because in the previous Creator Spotlight, Netanel Abbou said almost exactly the same thing. Two very different creators. Netanel submitted again and again. Moshik submitted twice. But both arrived, separately, at the same conclusion:

The first idea is a start. Not the answer.

With Moshik there's one more stage in the process. The moment where everything breaks.

You read the brief. There's the pressure of the start. You begin working. Something moves forward.

And then comes that moment in the middle where your brain says: right, nothing.

The work isn't landing. The idea isn't good enough. Maybe this just isn't happening.

And he keeps going. Not because he knows for certain the ending will be good. But because he decided not to get disappointed too quickly and to stay in the doing.

And above all of it there's one rule:

"Storytelling is the most important thing. You need a beginning, a middle, an end. A plot."

Which is probably the best way to understand the two ads he won with.

He wants people to say one word

I asked Moshik what he wants someone to say after seeing his work.

Not "the best". Not "the most professional". Not "the fastest".

Original.

That's the word. Which is especially interesting when you hear how he describes himself:

"One of my problematic traits is perfectionism."

He isn't looking to make another pretty version of something he's already seen. He's looking for his angle.

Today he works with Claude, Fable, ChatGPT and the new video tools. As he sees it, those tools make the process far more manageable and free him up for the thing he actually cares about.

Idea. Scene. Story.

"I can do that too"

When he talks about AdArena, Moshik doesn't talk about winning first. He talks about a place to develop in. He saw other creators uploading videos, looked at what they were doing and told himself: okay. I can do that too.

He talks about a community where people help each other, give feedback and make each other better. About that aliveness that appears when people create, try, learn from one another and want to be better next time.

And to him, when the brands themselves step into it, the circle closes.

"You've got an AI scene with so many tools, and so many people who can express themselves. And when you bring in the brand itself — what could be better? You're genuinely creating the connection between the brand and the creators."

And that's maybe the part of his story I love most.

Moshik didn't quit his life to become an "AI creator". He still works part-time in another field. He still translates Netflix series and films. He didn't come from a career in advertising. He didn't spend twenty years building an ad reel.

He saw the arena. He told himself he could do it too.

He entered once. First out of 125. He entered again. First out of 84.

And this is exactly the place where I don't feel like wrapping his story up. Because it really doesn't feel finished.

Today, September 10, 2026, Moshik turns 50.

And if there's one thing I loved about talking to him, it's the sense that he's still curious. Still excited by a new tool. Still wants to learn. Still looking for the idea he hasn't done yet. And still wants the next thing he makes to feel, above all, original.

I hope he keeps trying things that feel a little too big for him at first. Keeps reaching that moment in the middle where everything breaks, and keeps going anyway. Keeps seeing other people's work and telling himself "I can do that too". And keeps feeling that aliveness he talks about.

Because in the end, maybe that's the most beautiful thing in this whole story.

Not the 100%. Not the two first places. Not even the $3,500.

But that at 50, Moshik found one more place inside himself he could open. One more side to develop. One more thing to create.

Keep being original.

Keep the humor, keep the cinema, and keep all those "unimportant" film details that stayed in your head all these years.

So Moshik — happy birthday 🎉❤️

Moshik Vaknin

50 · Tel Aviv

50. Subtitle translator for Netflix series and films, part-time in medical underwriting, and an AI ad creator. Two submissions on AdArena, two first places.

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