Hello,

My name is Karol. Yes, I can assure you that there where I come from it's a male name. So, where am I from? I was born, raised and spent most of my life in Poland. However, three years ago, for many different reasons, one of which was a desire to study abroad, I decided to move to the UK. Now, after three years of living in Milton Keynes, where I was working and trying to improve my English, I moved to Leicester to undertake the study of Game Art Design at De Montfort University.

Why this particular course?

Well... first of all I have to confess that I'm not a big gamer. I'd rather call myself a casual gamer. I enjoy games, but don't spend entire nights on playing them, I don't look forward for any specific titles to be released, I've never played Halo, World of Warcraft and many others... But I've always admired them and people who created those fantastic worlds and creatures that inhabit them. And since I was a child I have known that this is what I want to do in my life - I want to draw monsters for money. My dream became closer to reality when I learned that there is a course, accredited by Creative Skillset, which really helps people to get into the industry. I signed for the course straightaway even though I’ve never had any opportunity to be a part of art schools and haven’t had any formal art education. When I got the place I started to believe that if I am stubborn and work hard enough, some day I will make my dream come true.

Drawing, drawing, drawing.. but what else?

Movies have always been among my interests. Since I can remember I have been watching everything that contains robots/spaceships/dragons/aliens/mutants... Now, when I think about it, it makes me a little bit concerned that when my peers where watching Pokémon I was allowed to watch movies like Aliens and Terminator... However I appreciate that because movies like these had magnificent influence on my imagination, creativity and helped me to build my visual library. Still, my interests don't only focus on watching films - I love watching how they are being made. I buy extended DVD versions to watch videos from sets, listen directors' commentary and I collect art books to check how particular designs were developed. Apart from drawing and watching movies I enjoy reading. On my bookshelves you can find books written by J.R.R. Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, Neil Gaiman and my favourite Philip K. Dick (movies such as Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall were based on his books!).

That's enough about pleasures, now I have to focus on work!

What are my ambitions for this course? I want to improve my drawing skills and learn how to efficiently use 3d software. As a person who has never used a 3d asset before I guess it would be reasonable to focus on that second bit, still, I don't even think about neglecting 2d. After all, my dream job would be drawing monsters.