Hi there!

My name is Paulina and my everyday work focuses on creating immersive, virtual game environments.

I still clearly remember the day, when my parents bought our first Dell computer. I’ve felt super privileged that they decided to set it up in my room. Overtime I’ve learnt that everything comes with a price, which in this case meant, that my dad would stay in room in order to play PC games. For someone aged 8, who was amazed even by the good old Windows 3D maze screensaver, playing the first Tomb Raider was a total blast. The world that I saw on my screen was so beautiful and inviting. I just loved the Croft manor, so sometimes instead of playing the actual game, I would hang out in the gym and do those silly looking handstands. In the late 90’s, the games from the TR series came out around November and so each year, I would ask Santa for the next new game. For a pretty long time Lara Croft remained my number one heroine.

The Sims was a classic, which back in the days, everyone played. It sure prepared me well, for what I decided to study 10 years later. I remember downloading tons of assets from the Internet and constantly typing in “rosebud” (or once I got sneaker “motherlode”), so that I could afford everything. I would then build and decorate all those fancy looking houses. Sure, I’ve also taken away ladders from the swimming pools, but I never actually wanted any of my favorite Sims to die.

So much for being sentimental. From the more recent titles, I really like all of the story-driven games, for example: Life is Strange, Firewatch, Dishonored and - to make me sound a bit more patriotic - the whole Witcher series.

As a kid I never actually thought that one day game development might be something that I could potentially make a living out of. In high school it still seemed way out of my scope. Nobody, where I came from, studied “making games”. Due to this, I thought more and more about architecture and interior design. I ended up studying the second one and by looking at how it shaped my overall career, I think it was a really good choice and I have no regrets. Studying at the Academy of Fine Arts gave me a solid foundation when it comes to topics such composition, proportion, negative and positive space, color and history of art in general. But most of all it taught me a way of looking at things with curiosity, sensitivity and perceptivity, that I believe, I would never have learned just by studying from books. Those five years also sparked my interest in photography and for the Polish porcelain from the 1950s and the 1960s (overtime I’ve been slowly growing my little private collection).

Come to think of it, now that I don’t have to work on my Master’s at 3 am in the morning, sipping on energy drinks and trying not to stick the blade of a X-Acto knife in my hand, while working on a model, I actually think that those five years were not only hard work, but also a lot of fun! Let’s be honest, how many people get a chance to gain experience in so many diverse fields of design – product and furniture design, graphics, exhibition design, sculpture, responsive web design, or get to work with different materials – steel, wood, epoxy resin, clay and acrylic, just to name a few? During that time, I was also lucky enough to participate in a couple of group exhibitions such as Coming Out Best Degree Pieces Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2013), DMY Berlin (2012) and 8th and 10th Night of Museums in Warsaw (2011, 2013), but the most honorable moment was when I’ve received my Master's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, graduating with honours in 2013.

I started off my career working as an interior designer at a small company. I slowly made my way through an advertising agency and an animation and post-production studio, where I was doing all the 3D and rendering related stuff. I won’t deny, it was really hard to get a foot in the door when it comes to finding a job in game development, as the game industry in Poland didn't seem that inclusive at the time. But I had a big goal set for myself and I was striving to reach it. I landed my first job as a game developer in 2015 at CI Games, where I worked as a 3D Artist on “Sniper Ghost Warrior 3”. After we’ve shipped in 2017, I set off on another adventure, that took me all the way up North, to Sweden, where I worked as an Environment Artist at Ubisoft Massive on "Tom Clancy's The Division 2". In May 2019 I moved back to my hometown, where for a little over a year, I worked on both Techland's new IP and "Dying Light 2 Stay Human". Next, once again, I decided to join CI Games to work as a Senior Level Artist on "Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2". Currently I'm working as a Senior Environment Artist on a dark fantasy RPG at Rebel Wolves. I truly believe, that these experiences – even the non-gamedev related ones – and all the hurdles, that I overcome, shape who I am today.

And today, although I don’t play as many games, as I used to as a teenager, and it’s not only because the fun is partially ruined by seeing all of the bugs, I’m still really stoked about making games for a living. There are though, a couple of non-game-related-things, that I love doing. Currently the top three on my radar being: improv, contemporary dance and sewing. In my extra time, I also like travelling, as I believe that we all can learn from visiting new places and getting to know different cultures. That’s probably where I get a lot of my inspiration from, that later echoes in my work. Sometimes the process of actively looking and actually noticing things, that we’re being surrounded with, can be a bit challenging, especially if you happen to live in a large city. Speaking of big cities, a couple of years ago, NYC totally stole my heart on day 1, which somehow doesn’t prevent the more organised part of me to admire the simplicity and balance of Scandinavian design and the Swedish concept of “Lagom”.

So now that you know a little bit more about me, feel free to stay on my website, explore and hopefully enjoy!