News
Select Promised Land 2017 lectures now available on YouTube
For those of you who couldn’t join us this September in Łódz, or are looking for a taste of what Promised Land is all about, we’ve just released a selection of lectures from this year’s event online. The videos are available on the official Promised Land YouTube channel. You can check out what’s on the menu, as well as tune in directly below. Listen more
Looking back at Promised Land 2017
This September, hundreds of artists and creative industry professionals from all around the world came to Łódź, Poland to celebrate digital and traditional arts at Promised Land Art Festival 2017. This year, the halls of EC1 Łódź welcomed nearly 500 participants and played host to: ● 50 hours of lectures, discussion panels, and Meet the Artist sessions; ● 30 hours more
Converse's Bryan Cioffi closes this year’s Promised Land speaker lineup
Bryan Cioffi is the VP / Creative Director of Global Footwear for Converse Inc. He’s responsible for inspiring and developing the footwear design team, setting long term and seasonal creative strategy, and shaping the vision for some of the world’s most iconic footwear. Bryan joined Converse in 2004 to build the rapid footwear prototyping group that brought new and emerging digital (2D more
Sculptor Tomasz Radziewicz returns to Promised Land
Tomasz Radziewicz is a sculptor, concept artist and character designer. He graduated with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk under prof. Stanisław Radwański. He was also a scholar in the atelier of Stephan Balkenhol at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. For the past few years he’s been working on video game and film related projects. In 2014, along with UDock more
Promised Land welcomes Jason Brown!
Jason Brown is a film and television producer, as well as one of the partners in the Sean Daniel Company (SDC) — an independent production company developing some of the biggest television and film projects for a wide range of studios and networks. Among other, SDC is currently in production on the third season of the Syfy/Netflix co-production The Expanse. The company also helped set up, together more
Aris Kolokontes joins this year's Promised Land speaker lineup
Aris Kolokontes is a freelance sculptor and creature designer based in Athens, Greece. His fascination with monsters, make-up, and creature FX began with films he saw in his childhood such as Alien, King Kong, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings. At the age of 16, he started experimenting with clay, while working non-art related day jobs for a living. In 2008, Aris decided to more
Presenting Promised Land speakers from Platige Image
Promised Land welcomes Platige Image — a creative studio specializing in computer graphics, 3D animation, and digital special effects for advertising, film, and the video game industries. Some of their best — Tomek Bagiński, Olga Szablewicz-Pisuk, Jakub Jabłoński, Maciej Jackiewicz, and Piotr Żyła — are joining this year's speaker lineup. Tomasz Bagiński is an Academy more
Niek Neervens is the next speaker to join Promised Land lineup
Niek Neervens is a senior animator at Guerrilla Games, where he’s responsible for the in-game animations of Aloy in Horizon: Zero Dawn. He also worked on the studio’s previous title, Killzone: Shadowfall. For a long time Niek couldn’t decide what he wanted to do professionally, but the love for movies, videogames, and drawing were a constant presence in his life. He eventually more
Please welcome Kyle Bunk, our next Promised Land speaker
Kyle Bunk is an animator at Firaxis Games, the studio responsible for recent installments of the Civilization and XCOM franchises. After attending Delaware College of Art and Design, and later the online animation school Animation Mentor, Bunk joined the games industry. Throughout his career he’s worked on a number of mobile and console games, animating for studios including Gameloft, more
Introducing Promised Land technical partner — Luxion
Luxion is a leading developer of advanced rendering, animation, and lighting technology. The company’s flagship product is KeyShot — a 3D rendering and animation software for creative industry professionals. 100% CPU based and built on Luxion's real-time ray tracing and global illumination technology, KeyShot breaks down the complexity of creating photographic images, animations and more
Next Promised Land speaker is Mike Azevedo
Mike Azevedo is an illustrator and concept artist based in São Paulo, Brazil. He’s currently working as a splash art illustrator for League of Legends at Riot Games. Throughout his career, Mike freelanced for clients such as VOLTA, Applibot, Guerrilla Games, Games Workshop, Wicked Fun, Cryptozoic Entertainment, Blizzard Entertainment. Among the projects he worked on are more
This year’s Promised Land programme is here!
With Promised Land set to begin in just over a week from today, it is time to reveal the event's programme, jam-packed with things to do and see for creative industry professionals attending the festival. Taking place over the course of 4 days, Promised Land features a variety of lectures and workshops on 2D and 3D art, animation, VFX, production of AAA games and blockbuster films, as more
Vlad Derhachov joins this year's Promised Land speaker lineup
Vlad Derhachov is a senior environment artist at Infinity Ward, where his most recent project was Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. He has been working in the games industry for over 11 years, developing titles for a variety of platforms — from handheld devices like the Nintendo Gameboy and DS, and iPhone, through home consoles like the Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox more
Promised Land welcomes Richard Arroyo to this year's speaker lineup!
Richard Arroyo is an animation studio director at Gameloft, where he’s currently working on multiple different projects. From TV projects and feature films, all the way to video games, Richard has over 18 years of experience as an animator in the entertainment industry. Among others, he worked with Ubisoft (Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, and Far more
Presenting next Promised Land technical partner — Dell
Dell Inc., a part of Dell Technologies, provides customers of all sizes — including 98 percent of the Fortune 500 — with a broad, innovative portfolio from edge to core to cloud. Dell Inc. comprises Dell client as well as Dell EMC infrastructure offerings that enable organizations to modernize, automate and transform their data center while providing today’s workforce and consumers more
Announcing the next Promised Land speaker — Daniel Schmid
Daniel Schmid is an environment supervisor for VFX studio Industrial Light & Magic Vancouver. Daniel comes from an early industrial engineering background, which he decided to put aside to pursue a career in visual effects. He joined Industrial Light & Magic in 2013, bringing with him over 10 years of experience in the advertisement industry, as lighting and CG supervisor. At ILM more
Mike Sanders is the latest speaker to join this year’s Promised Land lineup!
Mike Sanders is the senior visual director for Activision’s Central Studios, where he’s overseeing innovation in art, animation and production across Activision’s game franchises, most notably Call of Duty. He’s is also focusing on bringing film quality VFX to game development and emerging AR/VR markets. Sanders is one of the entertainment industry’s leading more
Promised Land veteran, Jeremy Collins, returns this year
Jeremy Collins is currently a senior animator on an unannounced project at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine, California, as well as a mentor at the online animation school iAnimate. Prior to his current project, Jeremy was a senior animator on the World of Warcraft team, helping to ship expansions from Cataclysm through Legion. In the last 13 years, Jeremy has worked on video games, feature more
Welcome our next Promised Land speaker — Zeen Chin
Zeen Chin is a Malaysian illustrator and concept artist specializing in character illustration and 2D animation. Zeen loved drawing and painting ever since he was a child. He chose to follow his dreams to become a professional artist and started his career in 2006 as a clean-up in 2D animation. He eventually worked his way up to became a keyframe artist and after 5 years decided to shift more
Introducing IT Media, Wacom and Pixologic — Promised Land technical partners
IT Media is an authorized service, software and hardware provider for the creative sector. The company has the highest level of competence in Adobe partnership, the Adobe Platinum Reseller, and high status of partnerships with Wacom, Corel, Maxon, Pixologic, and more. IT Media Academy is one of the most prestigious training centers specializing in 2D and 3D computer graphics, film post-production, more
Nicholas Kole is the next speaker to join Promised Land lineup
Nicholas Kole is a freelance character designer, comic artist, and illustrator with 8 years of experience in bringing fantasy worlds to life through animated shows, comics, video games and children's books. Kole started his career as a character designer at MIT’s GAMBIT Games Lab. He later joined 38 Studios to work on the cancelled Project Copernicus — an MMO title set in more
Furio Tedeschi returns to Promised Land!
Furio Tedeschi is a concept artist, currently freelancing at Paramount Pictures on a yet unannounced film project. Tedeschi has more than 15 years of professional experience in the entertainment industry. Throughout the years he worked for studios including Blitz Games, Krome Studios, and award-winning visual effects company Mr. X Inc. He also freelanced for a wide range of clients, such more
HTC joins Promised Land as the event’s technical partner
HTC is a consumer electronics company specializing in smart mobile device and experience design. As one of the pioneers of the evolution from palm PC to smartphone, the company focuses on breaking down barriers, delivering innovation, engineering breakthroughs, and designing the future of human communications. Among the company’s products is HTC VIVE™, offering users an immersive virtual more
Presenting next Promised Land speaker — John Grello
John Grello is a self-taught concept artist currently working for Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco, CA. John has been professionally involved in the art industry for the past 10 years, 7 of which he spent in game development. As a concept artist, he focuses mainly on character and creature design, but is no stranger to other areas of art, lately finding himself drawn towards more
Introducing PROCAD, Autodesk, and 3DGence — technical partners of Promised Land
PROCAD is one of the largest IT companies operating on the Polish CAD market and the biggest Autodesk partner in Poland. The company offers a variety of solutions for design and manufacturing firms: professional hardware, various specialized software and applications. PROCAD’s expertise also lies in the implementation of CAD solutions and full IT infrastructure. On top of that, PROCAD has the more
Please welcome Simon Unger, our next Promised Land speaker
Simon Unger has been animating in the entertainment industry since 2001, spending most of his career in video games. He was a cinematic lead for Electronic Arts, animation director at Square Enix, lead animator and art director for Robotoki. Now he’s a senior animator for Phoenix Labs in Vancouver, working on Dauntless. Outside of game development, Simon has also taught the more
Introducing Vicon — Promised Land technical partner
Vicon delivers highly accurate motion capture systems for use in films, games and broadcast. When combined with the unbreakable solving power of Shōgun, the company’s latest VFX software platform, Vicon technology delivers even cleaner data, faster results and full quality real-time, whether you use the latest generation Vero camera or Vicon’s flagship camera, Vantage. Some of more
Announcing the next Promised Land speaker — Nick Slough!
Nick Slough is an experienced UI artist and designer, as well as the co-founder and creative director of BEHOLDER — a premium UI/UX studio for AAA games. With humble beginnings as an animator and illustrator, Nick began his journey into UI art and design at the advertising company Leo Burnett. There he worked on interactive marketing for clients such as Citibank, ESPN, and Nintendo, more
Raphael Lacoste is the latest speaker to join this year’s Promised Land lineup!
Raphael Lacoste is the brand art director of the Assassin’s Creed franchise at Ubisoft. He’s also senior artistic director on the series’ latest major instalment — Assassin's Creed Origins. His career in the video game industry took off in 2002, when he joined Ubisoft to work as art director on the Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed series. During this time more
Joining this year’s Promised Land speaker lineup is Creative Assembly’s Adriana Pucciano
Adriana Pucciano is a lead animator at Creative Assembly, where she is currently working on the next unannounced historical Total War title. After graduating from classical animation at Sheridan College, Adriana joined Creative Assembly and went from junior to lead in only two short years. She is a talented animator who continues to drive the quality and workflows of animation in games, more
Introducing Procreate — technical partner of this year's Promised Land
Procreate is a powerful sketching, painting and illustration toolbox designed for mobile devices, letting artists create beautiful and inspiring works of art, anywhere and anytime. Procreate features ground-breaking canvas resolution, 128 diverse brushes, and an advanced layer system among others, all of which is powered by Silica — the fastest 64-bit painting engine for mobile devices. More more
There’s a new Promised Land speaker in town — please welcome Toniko Pantoja
Toniko Pantoja is a director, story artist, teacher, and animator specializing in hand-drawn animation. He was born and raised in Southeast Asia. In 2014 Pantoja graduated from the California Institute of Arts with a degree in character animation. He has worked as a full-time story artist for Dreamworks Animation SKG for both feature (Croods 2, Trolls, Veggie Tales) and TV productions (The more
Promised Land welcomes back Even Mehl Amundsen!
Even Mehl Amundsen is a freelance illustrator and concept artist working out of Copenhagen, Denmark. From his early years, Amundsen has been fascinated and inspired by fantasy. It continues to drive him in his career as an artist, as he focuses primarily on fantasy illustration and character design. Over the years he has worked for a number of clients all over the world, including VOLTA, Riot Games, more
Announcing the next Promised Land speaker — Sylwia Bomba
Sylwia Bomba is a digital artist and art supervisor at Neko Productions, where she is currently working on MARVEL Avengers Academy. After graduating from the Academy of Digital Arts in Florence in 2014, she became an Instructor of Drawing at the AnimSchool Academy, Utah. Her art has been featured in several 3dtotal books, publications including 2dmagazine, GRAPHITE, {slow}, Trendy magazine, more
Promised Land ticket sales closing June 30th
It’s the last chance to get your ticket for this year’s Promised Land. Sales will be closing Friday, June 30th at 23:59 CEST. Don’t miss out — join us in celebrating digital and traditional arts this September in Łódź, Poland! more
ArtStation is the official media partner for this year’s Promised Land
ArtStation is the showcase platform for games, film, media and entertainment artists. It enables artists to display their portfolios in a slick way, discover, stay inspired, and connect with new opportunities. More information regarding ArtStation is available on the official website. more
Michał Misiński joins this year’s Promised Land speaker lineup
Michał Misiński is a director, art director, and designer at the animation and postproduction studio, Juice. He started working there in 2006 as a visual language, interface, and key visual artist. As the studio’s focus expanded to include animation projects, his interest in motion design became a fascination that continues to drive his career. He is the co-creator of Project 2501: Homage more
Ilya Golitsyn from Guerrilla Games joins Promised Land
Ilya Golitsyn is a senior concept artist at Guerrilla Games. His specialty is character design, with illustration and storyboarding also part of his proficiency. Born in 1984 in Saint Petersburg, Golitsyn grew up loving drawing and sculpting. Being a self-learned artist, he didn’t consider his hobby a potential career at first. After graduating university, he decided to pursue his passion for more
Presenting this year’s next Promised Land speaker — Mike Jungbluth
Mike Jungbluth is the lead animator at Deep Silver Volition, where he is currently working on studio’s latest title — Agents of Mayhem. His previous projects include The Elder Scrolls Online, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Singularity. Throughout his career in game development he worked for studios like ZeniMax Online Studios, Monolith more
Promised Land Art Festival Open Day announced!
Promised Land returns this September and so does Open Day — a one-day-only unique opportunity for game, film, and art lovers to dive into the world of creative industry professionals. Open Day will take place on September 2nd in the EC1 Łódź building complex, and will feature a series of discussion panels and lectures hosted by renowned industry artists. It’s a chance to go behind-the-scenes more
Ben Jelter joins the speaker lineup for this year’s Promised Land
Ben Jelter is an illustrator, comic artist, and art instructor with over 10 years of experience in the entertainment industry. He graduated from San Francisco's Academy of Art University in 2008 with a degree in Illustration. That same year he self-published his first graphic novel: The Tumor. Throughout his career, Jelter has done freelance work for many companies including more
New speaker announced — please welcome Rafał Wojtunik from CD PROJEKT RED
Rafał Wojtunik is a principal concept artist at CD PROJEKT RED with nearly 15 years of experience working in the entertainment industry. Wojtunik is mostly known for art directing the the BAFTA award-winning animation Fallen Art. During his 14-year stay at animation studio Platige Image he created concept art and matte paints for TV commercials, movies, games, and promotional artwork. He also created more
Promised Land welcomes Adrian Majkrzak as this year’s next speaker!
Adrian Majkrzak is a senior concept artist based out of Seattle, WA, who has been working in the entertainment industry for over 10 years. Inspired by speculative fiction and real-world design, he has sought to create work that helps fuel the imagination of others. With a primary focus on games, he has worked for companies such as Bungie, Wizards of the Coast and CCP Games. His portfolio includes more
Grzegorz Jonkajtys is this year’s next Promised Land speaker
Grzegorz Jonkajtys is a filmmaker, animator, and visual effects artist, who has worked in the advertisement, animation and feature film industries for the last 20 years. Born in Warsaw, 1972, Jonkajtys is an Academy of Fine Arts graduate. While working in studios including Industrial Light & Magic, Platige Image, Digital Kitchen, Cafe FX, Syndicate, Jonkajtys has contributed as a visual effects more
Nivanh Chanthara returns to Promised Land
Nivanh Chanthara is a self-educated senior concept artist currently employed at Eidos Montreal, where he designs characters, environments and props for the studio’s titles, including the Deus Ex license. Chanthara started out by doing street art, as well as working in urban sports and fashion design in France. He began his career as a concept designer at Method Films on Iron Man: Armored Adventures more
Romain Van den Bogaert joins this year’s lineup of Promised Land speakers!
Romain Van den Bogaert is an artist working in the miniatures and collectibles industry, as well as fine art. As a sculptor and designer, Van den Bogaert focuses on facial expression and emotions, character storytelling, as well as on creatures and bio-inspired designs. He also teaches anatomy, character design and storytelling. Some of the companies he’s worked for include Black Sun Miniatures, more
Announcing Promised Land 2017’s first speakers
Promised Land returns this September to once again unite creative industry professionals from around the world! The event will play host to a variety of activities ranging from hands-on workshops, talks and demos, to Q&A and networking sessions, all featuring renowned speakers from around the world. Today we’re pleased to announce this year’s first speakers. Opening the lineup is more
Organizers
The Promised Land Festival is held under the auspices of Łódź City Council as part of the "Łódź Creates" ("Łódź Kreuje") and "EC1 Łódź – The City of Culture" ("EC1 Łódź – Miasto Kultury") promotional programmes.
Media partner
Technical partners
Partners
