Featured Interview: Pawel Lyczkowski

Featured Interview: Pawel Lyczkowski

Game artist Paweł Łyczkowski recently sat down with us (figuratively) to answer a few questions. Make sure to pay his store a visit!

Q. What were you doing before you started working as a game artist?

A. I was studying! I finished the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Among all of the things I learned, I think traditional drawing and painting were the most beneficial. Not only mastering the human form, color theory and how materials and light work were important though - it was also learning the patience it takes to make art. Game art is a complex field, with many steps it takes to do a piece from start to finish, so patience really helps.

Belt Leather material

Q. What led you to start selling and sharing your content online?

A. I think it was the way Substance Designer works - it is a bit like writing software, but for artists. You connect nodes together for a while, then you start reusing some nodes you made before, and suddenly you have your own little toolset that you made yourself, and which is also perfect for sharing.

I thought - I'm creating materials for texturing my own pieces. If I also could sell them, I could create some just for the sake of creating them. Then that would be a perfect practice, and I would be expanding my own set of materials. Everybody wins.

I don't like to see game artist competing with each other and keeping their techniques to themselves. Instead, I like to see it like this - we, game artist, are competing with every other type of entertainment. The more we share with each other, the more great game art we can create.

Fortunately, the spirit of sharing is spreading, and more and more artist create tutorials or post their tools on sites like Cubebrush or Gumroad.

Q. If you could master a skill instantly, which one would it be, why?

A. It would be something unrelated to game art, to widen my skill set as much as I can. I think I'd choose writing. No matter what medium you choose, a game, a movie, a comic, it all taps into the primal need of experiencing stories. I'd like to be good at storytelling, and writing is the purest form of it.

Painted Metal material

Q. What is the best tip you have for younger artists looking to do what you do for a living.

A. I think that would be not to rush, and take small steps. There is nothing more disheartening that attempting something and failing miserably. Some say that failure is a natural part of learning. Maybe so, but if you can minimize it, then the learning process will go much smoother. Treat yourself as your own employee with his own morale - each time you assign this employee a task, and he fails, his morale and productivity goes down. If the task is appropriate for his current skill and he will succeed, he will become more eager to continue.

Q. If you could sum it down to one sentence, what is the main rule you live by?

A. I would say - try to have fun. And the entertainment industry is just that - you make things that are literally meant to be fun.

Q. Light side or dark side?

A. Only by mastering all the manifestations of the Force can one become truly powerful - so both.

Model by Michael Pavlovich, texturing using the Bare Metal material

Check out this model built using all the featured materials in Pawel's Cubebrush store here.