Wersja polskaSpeakersNewsOPEN DAY

Speakers

Even Mehl Amundsen

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, Games Workshop, Blizzard Entertainment, and Wizards of the Coast. Some of the projects he was involved in include Lord of the Rings Online, and titles from the Warhammer and Magic: The Gathering series.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Richard Arroyo

Richard
Arroyo

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 Cry series), Obsidian Entertainment (cancelled RPG set in the Aliens universe), Liquid Entertainment (Thor: God of Thunder, Karateka), and Frima Studio (Oddworld: Soulstorm, developed by Oddworld Inhabitants).

 

In 2012, his expertise and achievements in the field of visual effects, animation, and video game development have been recognized by VES, the Visual Effects Society.

 

He is also devoted to sharing his knowledge and helping the younger generation working in the gaming industry. He currently holds the titles of program director and consultant at Pixel Québec, animation instructor at Dawson College, as well as head of games at iAnimate.net, where he created the games program.  

Brad Auty

Brad
Auty

Brad Auty is lead animator on GWENT: The Witcher Card Game at CD PROJEKT RED.

He has been working as an animator in the games industry for over 7 years on franchises such as Runescape, Transformers, and The Witcher. Over that time he's gained a passion for all aspects of game development and always strives to go above and beyond to make a project he’s working on shine.


Brad will be at Promised Land to talk about how the talented team of artists at CD PROJEKT RED bring GWENT's card illustrations to life through animation.

Mike Azevedo

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 Legend of the Cryptids, the Warhammer franchise, Force of Elements, HEX, Hearthstone, and more.
 

Apart from being a game developer, he’s also a digital art teacher at the Innovation Creative Space in Brazil and frequently visits art festivals to give lectures.

 

At last year’s Promised Land, Mike spoke about balancing lights and colors and had a workshop on character design. This year he returns to Łódź with a masterclass in the art of digital painting.

 

ArtStation portfolio

 

Tomasz Bagiński

Tomasz
Bagiński

Tomasz Bagiński is an Academy Award-nominated, BAFTA-winning filmmaker, visualist and storyteller.

 

For the wide audience Tomek is known as the director whose short films have won BAFTA and LIA awards, were shortlisted for the Academy Awards, with an Oscar nomination for The Cathedral, and received nominations for Emmy and VES.

 

Although within the animation industry, his name is associated with some extraordinary commercials Bagiński was also responsible for directing the now-iconic game cinematics for CD PROJEKT RED’s The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077, as well as Microsoft and Ubisoft’s productions. As a director of commercials, having made nearly 150 of them, he has worked with BBC, EA Sports, Coca-Cola, Nike, and History Channel, among others.

The advertising part of Tomek’s portfolio includes some unusual projects such as Ambition, a promotional film for the European Space Agency, featuring Aidan Gillen and Allegro Polish Legends — a series of short fantasy films based on Polish folklore.
 

Currently he is set to direct a live-action adaptation of The Witcher, produced by Netflix in co-operation with Platige Image, and the Saint Seiya anime — a feature movie based on a popular Japanese manga and anime.

Sylwia Bomba

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, as well as on TV. She also won several prestigious illustration competitions.

In past Bomba had the opportunity to work for studios including Disney and Pixar, as well as with brands like Coca-Cola, Barbie, and Looney Tunes.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Jason Brown

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 with Tomek Bagiński and Platige Image, the recently announced The Witcher Netflix series.

 

Brown joined the company in 2009 and rose to become a partner in 2015. He now oversees the company's entire film and television slate and is also a producer developing a number of projects. Among them are Agent 13 for Universal with Charlize Theron starring and producing; Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, based on the acclaimed children’s horror book series, with Guillermo Del Toro directing for CBS Films/Lionsgate; as well as acclaimed director Park Chan-Wook’s next English language film, which is slated to shoot in 2018. He’s also developing an adaptation for television of the groundbreaking augmented-reality game Ingress from Niantic Labs, the makers of Pokémon Go and an offshoot of Google.

 

He spent his early professional years working in gaming as a critic and writer for GameSpot and Computer Gaming World magazine, and has made the intersection of linear and interactive stories a focus of his work. Prior to joining Sean Daniel at SDC, Brown worked for producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, as well as Scott Rudin at his home office in New York.

 

Raised in a globetrotting family, Brown is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, studied at FAMU in Prague, grew up San Francisco and Berlin, and spends as much time as he can with his family who now live in Asia.

Kyle Bunk

Kyle
Bunk

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, as well as freelancing for a number of clients from the industry such as Urthworx and Aquatic Moon.

 

He’s also known for creating elaborate pixel art animated gifs, both original, as well as showcasing characters and scenes from a variety of games and animated series, that have become very popular throughout social media sites such as tumblr and twitter.

 

He’s currently working on XCOM 2: War of the Chosen — the upcoming expansion to 2016’s XCOM 2.

Nivanh Chanthara

Nivanh
Chanthara

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 (animated series), before relocating to Canada to work at Beenox on video games — Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2.

Chanthara also works for movie and TV industries as a freelance artist.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Zeen Chin

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 his career towards his true passion — illustration.

 

Some of the projects he worked on include the tabletop horror game Kingdom Death, mobile games Legend of the Cryptids and Galaxy Saga for developer Applibot, as well as Mad Head’s Chronos Gate. Zeen also debuted his first personal art book, titled Re-Child, in 2016.

 

He is currently freelancing for Square Enix on the mobile and PC game Mobius Final Fantasy.

 

ArtStation portfolio 

Bryan Cioffi

Bryan
Cioffi

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 and 3D) printing technologies and processes to Converse. While researching 2D digital printing in 2008, Bryan created the system and techniques that would become Converse Ink, the first of its kind ‘customization at retail’ experience. In 2010 Bryan served as Director, Innovation where he partnered with all areas of the company to help create and unlock a new product creation offense called Global Prototype Culture. In this role, he led the efforts to rebuild the team itself and install the first brand wide Innovation pipeline.

Prior to joining Converse, Bryan spent 4 years at Medica Corporation, a biotech manufacturer, designing and helping bring to market high-end medical laboratory equ

Jeremy Collins

Jeremy
Collins

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 animated films, VFX films and TV projects for a number of companies including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Disney Feature Animation, and Naughty Dog.

 

His animation can be seen in films like Tangled, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Arthur Christmas, and video games like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, to name a few.

 

His exuberance and passion for bringing animated characters to life is matched only by his line-by-line memorization of the 1986 movie Labyrinth, starring David Bowie. His true loves in life are his family, punk rock, and sword & sorcery.

 

Last year at Promised Land, Jeremy led an animation workshop and discussed the process of creating epic animated cycles in World of Warcraft. He’s coming back to Łódź this September to talk about the differences between feature animation and being an animator in the games industry, as well as the many lessons he learned along the way.

Magdalena Dadela

Magdalena
Dadela

Magdalena Dadela is a senior character artist with over 10 years of experience in game and film industries.

In 2004, inspired by Pixar's Finding Nemo, Magdalena decided to pursue a career in 3D animation and visual effects, and entered a year-long intensive course at Vancouver Film School.

Her portfolio includes work for companies like Ubisoft, Industrial Light & Magic and Guerilla Games, and brands like: Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell and Warcraft: The Beginning.

In January 2016 she joined Eidos Montreal on an unannounced project.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Vlad Derhachov

Vlad
Derhachov

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 One, all the way to VR.

 

Throughout the years, Vlad cooperated with Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Eidos, and Ubisoft among other. His skills helped create games from such AAA franchises as Need for Speed, Splinter Cell, Far Cry, Rainbow Six, and Thief.  

 

Vlad's works have been featured on 3D art websites like gameartisans.org and level-design.org, as well as in 3DTotal's book The Unreal Game Engine: A Comprehensive Guide to Creating Playable Levels. He has also taught several workshops and courses about creating video game environment for Syn Studio and GameArtisans Montreal.

 

Having educational background in architecture and fine arts, Vlad believes in fundamental aspects of art creation such as composition, structure, color, and contrast.

Jerzy Drozda Jr

Jerzy
Drozda Jr

Jerzy Drozda Jr is an IT and media specialist, currently working as technical director and head of R&D department at digital animation studio Human Ark. He works closely with a number of Polish-based and global companies from the film industry.

 

He’s an ambassador of Adobe, with an expert-level knowledge of their software — he created a great deal of proprietary solutions for them. His technical skills, creativity and problem-solving abilities helped him execute a lot of projects for both creative and IT industries.

 

For many years now, Jerzy has been leading animation, post production and film art workshops and lectures. Thanks to his approachable teaching methods he’s one of the most frequently watched Adobe instructors in the world. With IT Media, he provides specialized Adobe training.

Ilya Golitsyn

Ilya
Golitsyn

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 art and games professionally. That path took him on a 10 year long journey, from slot machine games, through outsourcing for several big titles like Star Wars: The Old Republic, to a senior role in AAA game development.

Currently an integral part of Guerrilla Games’ team, Golitsyn is responsible for the visual language and style of various tribes, as well as several main character designs for Horizon: Zero Dawn.

 

ArtStation portfolio

John Grello

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 environment work.

 

During his career he worked with a number of game development studios, including Xaviant (Lichdom Battlemage), Telltale Games (The Walking Dead: Michonne, Batman: The Telltale Series, and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series), as well as Cold Iron Studios, where he’s been involved in a yet unannounced project.

 

When not on the job, John devotes his time to gaming and can be found streaming his feats online.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Peter Han

Peter
Han

Peter Han is a freelance concept artist and teacher with over 13 years of professional experience.

Han graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, in 2004. He then started working as a concept artist in the game industry, creating work for studios including Sony Interactive Entertainment San Diego and Trion Worlds.

In 2010, Han took up teaching in design fundamentals at several schools based in Los Angeles, CA, including Art Center College of Design, Concept Design Academy and CG Master Academy.

Now, with over 7 years of teaching experience and having worn many hats working in the design industry, Han balances a freelance career and teaching as his primary focus.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Alex Horst

Alex
Horst

Alex’s extensive experience with 3ds Max dates right the way back to high school where he gave his first demo of 3D Studio R3 in 1993. Since then, Alex has worked with a huge amount of customers mainly in the games and design visualization industry. Along the way he has produced real-time projects for Volkswagen, event agencies and medical institutes.

 

Today Alex focuses on the optimal use of 3ds Max and Autodesk Media & Entertainment software. He supports companies to optimize their creative processes and helps to get the best out of the Autodesk solutions.

Jakub Jabłoński

Jakub
Jabłoński

Jakub Jabłoński is an illustrator, concept artist, art director and director behind hundreds of designs for both artistic and commercial initiatives.

 

He joined Platige Image in 2008, where he currently heads the Art & Design department. Jakub creates concept art, posters, book illustrations, as well as set designs for commercials, films, and video games. He has designed characters for commercials for both global and national brands.

 

Jabłoński took part in the production of cinematics for video games such as Ryse: Son of Rome, Total War: Warhammer 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Watch Dogs 2 and Skull & Bones, among others. He also designed all of the visual elements for Bagiński’s short animation The Kinematograph and created the illustrations for Jacek Dukaj’s novel The Crowe.

 

In 2008, Jakub started his collaboration with Bartek Kik, with whom he directed his first animated short Teaching Infinity. The duo also directed the short movie Culture — a part of Poland’s promotional campaign at the ITB tourism trade fair in Berlin. Jakub served as the artistic director for the entire campaign.

Maciej Jackiewicz

Maciej
Jackiewicz

Maciej Jackiewicz is an art director and CG supervisor at Platige Image.

 

He has started his cooperation with the studio by creating the animated short Nocna zmiana in 2001. Since then, he's been involved in production of many commercial and artistic animations, becoming the supervisor of some of the most challenging works done at Platige Image.

 

Maciej supervised the work on cinematics for games from The Witcher franchise. In 2008 he was co-nominated for the VES Awards for special effects in the cinematic intro for The Witcher. He was also the CG supervisor for the teaser of CD PROJEKT RED’s upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game.

 

He supervised animation for other special projects produced by Platige Image. These include Grunwald. Battle of Sescentenary, which was a spot for the social campaign organised by the National Centre of Culture, and the animated stereoscopic set design for dancing short Move Your Imagination, produced for Polish Tourist Organisation.

 

Szymon Jaskuła

Szymon
Jaskuła

As a lead compositing artist at Juice, Szymon is responsible for developing compositing strategies and helping with the final look of all of the studio's undertakings.

 

His interests in cinematography helped him develop a unique attention to detail needed to create a distinct balanced aesthetics — and exceptional work — for each project.

 

For the past 4 years his creative vision and skill helped produce work for many Juice clients, past and present, including Mercedes-AMG, Opel, Holsten, IMG/Marvel, and Toyota.

 

Ben Jelter

Ben
Jelter

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 Apple, Madefire, Armor Games, Autofuss and Boostr. His work has been featured by CMYK magazine and the Society of Illustrators. 

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, together with Stefan Schmitt, former Blizzard Entertainment developer, Jelter co-created the 4X mobile strategy game Sidius Nova. He later successfully funded two more comic kickstarters; one in 2013 and the other in 2016. 

He is currently working on an ongoing biopunk comic called Heliosphere, with the first book already published and second book underway.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Grzegorz Jonkajtys

Grzegorz
Jonkajtys

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 artist for such films as Sin City, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Mist, Rango, Pacific Rim, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Warcraft, Doctor Strange, and The Revenant to name a few.

He directed his first animated short Mantis in 2000, which won several awards at international festivals, including Best Film at Bradford Animation Festival and Imagina New Independent Talent Award. He is most noted for writing and directing his second film, Ark, which was nominated for a Golden Palm at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, and won the prestigious Best of Show award at SIGGRAPH festival the same year.

In 2010 Jonkajtys completed work on The 3rd Letter, a live-action sci-fi drama starring Rodrigo Lopresti, which won him Best Director award at the 2010 HollyShorts Film Festival.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Mike Jungbluth

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 Productions, Snowblind Studios, and Raven Software.

Jungbluth has been a speaker at GDC and several international conferences, where he talked about the overlap of art, design, and technology to drive a character’s in-game performance. His writing has been featured on Gamasutra and GameIndustry.biz. He is also a co-creator of the AnimState network.

More than anything, he believes in the need for open sharing and democratization of knowledge to drive the industry and the craft forward.

Łukasz Juszczyk

Łukasz
Juszczyk

Łukasz Juszczyk is the lead graphic artist at 11 bit studios.

 

Initially responsible for environmental design and lighting, he currently helps to maintain the artistic direction of Frostpunk, the studio’s upcoming title, and coordinates the art teams working on the game.

 

Before he joined 11 bit’s ranks, Łukasz co-founded Crunching Koalas — an indie game development studio known for the puzzle game MouseCraft, as well as publisher for Lichtspeer (PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita) and BUTCHER (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One).

 

His original artistic background in street-art gives his work original and unconventional style. His favourite games are Shadow of the Colossus, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Marcin Klicki

Marcin
Klicki

Marcin Klicki is a senior character artist at CD PROJEKT RED. He joined the studio in 2012 to work on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

 

He has over 13 years of experience working in the creative industry. He got his first serious commissions in 2004 and 3 years later started working for Tomasz Bagiński and Platige Image.

 

Throughout his career he helped create many commercials, animations, feature films, and game cinematics for such companies as Human Ark, Ars Thanea, and Platige Image.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Piotr Koczan

Piotr
Koczan

Piotr Koczan is a 3D generalist currently leading the Assets Department at Juice. Since he joined the company in 2012, he’s been effectively overseeing his team, streamlining production of world-class work for clients around the globe.

 

His passion for automotive industry directly translates into most of the projects he's involved in. Over the years he helped develop successful campaigns for Toyota, Audi, Opel, Mitsubishi, and Mercedes, among others.

 

He's an active supporter of Unreal Engine 4 and is always looking for possibilities to employ it into his postproduction workflow.

Nicholas Kole

Nicholas
Kole

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 the world of Kingdoms of Amalur.

 

Nowadays, he draws dragons and wizards, but not exclusively, for companies from all around the industry. These include Disney (The Curse of Maleficent, Pete's Dragon: The Lost Years), Hasbro (Play-Doh Touch), Mattel, Warner Bros., Riot Games (League of Legends), Spiritwalk Games (Shardbound), Dark Horse Comics, Electronic Arts (Dawngate, The Dawngate Chronicles). He also worked with Kazu Kibuishi on the Flight anthology.

 

He is currently lead production designer at Shining Isle Productions on the animated show The Wingfeather Saga, as well as running his personal art project, The World of Jellybots, on Patreon.  

 

ArtStation portfolio

Aris Kolokontes

Aris
Kolokontes

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 focus exclusively on his hobby and become a professional sculptor.

 

Initially he published his works on internet forums and in social networks. His first commercial job was for the UK based Millennium FX on Doctor Who and Torchwood TV series. Since then, he worked as a sculptor on such film projects as Spanish horror Blind Alley at Plan 9 FX, The Hobbit trilogy at Weta Workshop in New Zealand, as well as Victor Frankenstein and latest installment of the Alien franchise — Alien Covenant, for 20th Century Fox.

 

In 2012 he ran a first live-action sculpting course at Zero SFX in Barcelona, Spain. In his free time, he works on his own original sculptures.

 

Raphael Lacoste

Raphael
Lacoste

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 he won the Visual Effects Society Award (Outstanding Pre-Rendered Visuals in a Video Game) for his work on the Two Thrones cutscene from Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.

 

Wanting to challenge himself in the film industry, Lacoste stepped away from game development to work as a matte painter and senior concept artist on such feature films as Terminator Salvation, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Death Race, Immortals, Repo Men, and Jupiter Ascending, among others.

 

In 2009, Lacoste returned to work on video games, joining Electronic Arts Montreal first, and later rejoining Ubisoft to work at the company’s studio in Montreal.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Łukasz Mackiewicz

Łukasz
Mackiewicz

Łukasz Mackiewicz is a compositor and animator, as well as comic and animation enthusiast, which continue to fuel him in his work.

 

In the years 2013-2016 he’s been developing the Motion Control Camera System technology at the Audiovisual Technology Center in Wrocław. Among other projects, he worked on Loving Vincent — the first fully painted feature film. Łukasz was the VFX Supervisor on the film and was responsible for the technical side of image quality.

 

He’s currently working on unique 2D animations with Grupa Smacznego animation studio in Gdańsk.

Adrian Majkrzak

Adrian
Majkrzak

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 contributions to projects like Destiny, Destiny 2, Magic: The Gathering and EVE Online.

He joined Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends, in March of 2017.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Przemysław Marszał

Przemysław
Marszał

Przemysław Marszał is an art director and co-founder of 11 bit studios. He’s responsible for the art direction of all company titles, as well as leading, supervising and managing the studio’s development teams together with Michał Drozdowski.

 

With almost 20 years of experience in game development and a number of games shipped under his belt, he always tries to work on titles never imagined before. His key projects for 11 bit studios include the Anomaly series, This War of Mine, and the studio’s upcoming title —  Frostpunk.

 

If you’d like to ask him about his favorite game, the answer you’ll get will be Vib Ribbon.

 

Michał Misiński

Michał
Misiński

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 to Ghost in the Shell — a non-commercial project directed by Ash Thorp, which stands as a respectful tribute to Shirow Masamune’s manga and Mamoru Oshii’s film Ghost in the Shell. This was not only one of the biggest challenges in his professional life, but also an important lesson in design.

Among others, Misiński worked on the trailer for History Channel’s popular series Vikings. He also art directed the Ares: Our Greatest Adventure short for the Oscar nominated movie The Martian, as well as BAFTA award-winning videos for the BBC campaign promoting the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

Since 2007 Misiński has worked on over one hundred commercial and non-commercial campaigns and films for international clients including Ubisoft, Gaijin Entertainment, Nike, BMW, Toyota, and Audi.

Niek Neervens

Niek
Neervens

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 realized his passion and talent for animation, and decided to join the game industry to help create memorable interactive experiences for gamers around the world.


Before joining Guerrilla Games, Niek worked with Shosho — the Amsterdam-based animation studio, where he did VFX work on a number of projects, including Kauwboy and Kill Zombie!

Toniko Pantoja

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 2TrollsVeggie Tales) and TV productions (The Adventures of Puss in Boots), Strange Weather Film and Base FX (Wish Dragon), and Chavvo Animation Studios. He has also worked as a 2D character animator for Tonko House (PIG: The Dam Keeper Poems), Studio La Cachette (League of Legends Worlds 2016 opening cinematic), Cartoon Network (Clarence: Tails of Mardrynia), and Picnic Productions.

Pantoja has created a number of animated short films, such as Serenade to MietteCrayon DragonWolfsong, and the Annie Award-nominated Tiny Nomad. He has also mentored and taught at the Concept Design Academy in Pasadena, CA.

He is currently teaching animation online, producing educational videos for independent animation, and developing intellectual properties for Brushtale Works Studios Inc. He is also working on a new short animated film.

Adriana Pucciano

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, and who understands the importance of mentoring a strong team.

Pucciano has given talks at various universities and expos, and loves to inspire young new talent to get into the art and games industries. She also recently won a spot in Develop's 30 Under 30 2017, is a BAFTA Games Crew Member, and was a finalist for the Women in Games 2017 Awards.

She is passionate about growing her skill set and sharing her knowledge to drive the industry forward.

Tomasz Radziewicz

Tomasz
Radziewicz

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 creative studio, he designed the Collector’s Edition figure for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, as well as a 2,5 meters high sculpture depicting the witcher Geralt fighting a Noonwraith, with the latter currently on display at the CD PROJEKT RED headquarters in Warsaw.

 

His classical background allows him to sculpt freely in any scale, material or theme. He created many monumental statues including the Józef Piłsudski Monument in Gdańsk, The Monument of the Pope John Paul II in Przemyśl and Kazimierz Deyna Monument in Warsaw.

 

Tomek is an active member of the international sculpting scene, with his works featured at a variety of events worldwide.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Katarzyna Redesiuk

Katarzyna
Redesiuk

Katarzyna Redesiuk is an associate art director at CD PROJEKT RED, where she is currently working on GWENT: The Witcher Card Game.

Before joining the GWENT team, she worked as a concept artist on other CD PROJEKT RED titles including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Blood and Wine expansion, The Witcher Battle Arena, and Cyberpunk 2077.

She studied architecture and urban design, but in the end decided to pursue a career in game development. Ever since, she's been looking for young talents and encouraging and helping them to pursue their dreams of working in the film and game industries regardless of educational backgrounds.

Roland Reyer

Roland
Reyer

Roland Reyer has started in 1992 as an application engineer at Wavefront Technologies GmbH in Germany. He became an industry expert for the entire product portfolio of Wavefront Technologies, later Alias | Wavefront, Alias and finally Autodesk Media & Entertainment. In his role as an application specialist he tested, showcased and trained Maya from its very first version.

 

With 25 years product and market experience, Roland now works at Autodesk as a solutions engineer for Maya, Shotgun, Stingray, Mudbox, and Motionbuilder throughout Europe.

Mike Sanders

Mike
Sanders

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 experts in advanced technologies for realism in computer graphics for films and games. He has over 20 years of experience in creating cutting edge imagery for more than 85 major motion pictures and AAA game titles.

 

Previously director of virtual production for Industrial Light & Magic, Sanders was collaborating with Disney divisions such as Lucasfilm, Pixar, Marvel and Imagineering, and built much of the foundational creative technology of the ILMxLAB.  

 

Sanders has worked with most top directors and every major studio, including such memorable projects as the digital cast in Titanic, many of the effects in recent Star Wars films, the behind-the-scenes tech that launched Avatar, and the believable characters in Pirates of the Caribbean.

 

He has many patents awarded for digital production and virtual cinematography. In 2009, Sanders was recognized by the Producer’s Guild of America as a member of their inaugural Digital 25 list for the most notable contributors to digital storytelling.

Daniel Schmid

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 Vancouver, he has contributed his skills to such Hollywood blockbuster productions as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, and Tomorrowland. He was also lead for the environment department for projects like Jurassic World, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

Nick Slough

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, to name a few.

 

He later moved on to focus on the gaming industry and joined Blizzard Entertainment, where he worked as principal UI artist on several household titles, including StarCraft II, Diablo III, and Heroes of the Storm.

 

From there, Nick has helped with developing brands and UI for studios and companies around the world, such as CD PROJEKT RED, Oculus, and Wargaming.net, before co-founding BEHOLDER.

Olga Szablewicz-Pisuk

Olga
Szablewicz-Pisuk

Olga Szablewicz-Pisuk is an animation director and CG supervisor at Platige Image.

 

She is a graduate of the Design Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Before joining Platige Image, Olga worked for Orka Film Studio as 3D animator and supervisor, and graphics artist at Canal+ Poland. She also freelanced for Gazeta Wyborcza and Discovery Channel.

 

She was the VFX supervisor for films like Everything I Love and Lullaby. She also worked on VFX for feature films How Much Does the Trojan Horse Weigh, Snow White and Russian Red, and Trick. Together with Adam Torczyński, she directed the animation side and was CG supervisor on Suicide Room.

 

In 2007 she received the Promax/BDA award for “Best Made For TV Movie Promo”.

Furio Tedeschi

Furio
Tedeschi

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 as 343 Industries, WB Games, Gameloft, Blur Studio, McFarlane Toys, and Sapphire Technology.

 

More recently, he was senior concept and character artist at BioWare Montreal on Mass Effect: Andromeda, and later started freelancing at Paramount Pictures as concept artist on the recently released Transformers: The Last Knight.

 

When he’s not working or playing games, he enjoys developing personal projects, learning to use his skills in new and exciting ways.

 

Tedeschi is a Promised Land veteran and was one of last year’s speakers in Łódź. Back then he discussed, among other, visualizing concepts for games and film. This September he’ll be taking his involvement in Promised Land to the next level, leading a masterclass in digital art.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Johnson Ting

Johnson
Ting

Born in Malaysia, Johnson Ting is a concept artist with several years of experience in the entertainment industry. He’s been a huge fan of video games since early childhood, which had a very big impact on his career.

He’s currently working for Project Triforce LLC, where he’s involved in the design, pre-production and development of collectibles for AAA titles. His past experiences include creating collectibles for Gears of War 4, Mortal Kombat X, Paragon, the Call of Duty franchise, Halo 5, Resident Evil 7, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Ting is also developing his own IPs: Neo Japan 2202 and Frontier Buccaneers. He is currently releasing a series of figurines based on the Neo Japan 2202 universe with Hong Kong toy company, Devil Toys.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Simon Unger

Simon
Unger

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 art of animation at some of the top schools, including Gnomon, iAnimate, and Vancouver Film School. He has also been a speaker at several conferences on animation and game development, including GDC 2013 (performance capture in games), GDC 2014 (cameras and cinematography), GDC 2016 (animation bootcamp microtalks), and GDC 2017 (animation pipelines and workflows).

Romain Van den Bogaert

Romain
Van den Bogaert

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, Nutsplanet, MuMi — Museum of Miniatures, Black Crow Miniatures and Knight Models. His work has also been featured in publications such as Spectrum and 3Dtotal.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Ovidiu Voica

Ovidiu
Voica

Ovidiu Voica is a senior character artist at the game development studio CD PROJEKT RED.

 

He has a degree in fine arts from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, which he finished in 2005. He spent more than 3 years at Ubisoft Romania, working on titles from the Silent Hunter, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., Red Steel and Rayman: Raving Rabbids series.

 

Before joining CD PROJEKT RED, Ovidiu also worked as a modeler in advertising and 3D movie making with companies including MediaPro Pictures and Family Film.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Rafał Wojtunik

Rafał
Wojtunik

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 a number of opening sequences for TV series, and directed several commercials and openings of world’s fairs.

Some of the projects he worked on include The Witcher and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Halo 3, Hitman, Might & Magic X: Legacy,Ryse: Son of Rome, von Trier’s Antichrist, the Polish version of HBO’s In Treatment and EXPO 2010 in Shanghai.


Currently Wojtunik is working on the upcoming RPG from CD PROJEKT RED — Cyberpunk 2077. He is also involved in art directing Another Day of Life — a full-feature, comic-stylised animation directed by Raul de la Fuente and Damian Nenow.

 

ArtStation portfolio

Piotr Żyła

Piotr
Żyła

Piotr Żyła is the lead animator at Platige Image, where he’s working on the animated feature film Fatima.

 

He graduated from the Polish-Japanese School of Computer Science at the Faculty of New Media Art and has been working on computer graphics since 2002. In 2006 he joined CD PROJEKT RED to work on The Witcher.

 

Following this, he worked as an animator in the production of many commercials, the animated short film Świteź and animated children series Kacperiada.

 

At Platige Image Piotr participated in such projects as: Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, Attraction, as well as Another Day of Life, which is currently in production.