Tomasz Strzałkowsk Analysis

Tomasz Strzałkowsk  (www.tomstrzal.com)

works as a Lead Artist for games company "Flying Wild Hog" (Shadow Warrior, Hard Reset) and previously worked for "People Can Fly" (Painkiller, Bulletstorm), both of which seem to focus on making old school FPS experiences. He reveals in an interview with Evermotion that he worked primarily as an environment artist, making meshes and lighting the levels. http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/8046/creator-of-surreal-worlds-an-interview-with-tomasz-strzalkowski

In "Painkiller" a classic style FPS, with doom-esque health bars and weapons, its interesting to see the horror and surrealist style work its way into the environments and characters. It can seem a bit eclectic at times, with witches on brooms, skeletons,zombies, samurai, mutated world war 2 soldiers and giant winged demons. The environments also vary wildly from cathedrals to ball rooms, graveyards, medieval villages, modern shipping docks. Despite this it keeps the dark over tones consistent throughout the game. Its re assuring to see that an artist can be influenced by the dark and macabre tones present in his work and still find jobs working in the games industry, on games as well known as "Bullet Storm"

"Mysterious Sculpture" - http://www.tomstrzal.com/index.php?p=show_image&id=40

This is a digital sculpture done in ZBrush. There was a making of link available from his website but sadly it isn't up any more, but i have managed to get a few of the images from his site and in "3D Artist" Magazine issue 51 he says that he used Brush entirely for the sculpture texturing and rendering process, then simply used photoshop for some colour correction.

The tranquil colour palette of light blues and greys makes this otherworldly creature seem calm and serene, giving it a sense of menace. The many fossil like ridges over the body and head make it very visually appealing, and by making the forehead and eyes comparatively smooth it draws the eye. 

The image is framed like a portrait lending it a sense of realism, but making the background relatively unimportant. Still the background is made of multiple hues, in an irregular pattern, meaning despite its blandness, combined with the blur it looks like the creature belongs there, that there is some land scape behind it.

"Secret Place" - http://www.tomstrzal.com/index.php?p=show_image&id=41

This is a landscape sculpture, still done entirely in ZBrush, using Photoshop for composition and colour balance. This also has an accompanying tutorial but the site is down, ill include the link incase it comes back up though I'm not hopeful  http://itsartm.ag/10J65xv

The image shows a huge cathedral shrouded in mists, with the figures of tiny, bright white figures walking around the base. Stairs lead up to the entrance amid thick root like growths sprouting from the base. The building is decayed and is asymmetrical, making it more visually appealing and giving the image a bit of a story behind it, what caused the collapse, what was its purpose. The background obscures the horizon leaving it in an ambiguous but menacing environment.

"Dark Place" - http://www.tomstrzal.com/index.php?p=show_image&id=52

This is another landscape, something id not really considered making in ZBrush, but after seeing Tomasz's work its definitely inspired me. It also uses a muted colour palette, with distorted architecture and illogical designs that some how feel right. The way the crane connects to the buildings below , the sheer scale of it, the deep rings cut into the ground around the buildings, none of it makes architectural sense but is very interesting to look at. Tomasz claims he used only ZBrush for the image, aside from composition and colour balance in photoshop, but I would think the thin spindly connections between the crane and the ground were painted in photoshop as i think it would be far easier than modelling such tiny strands.