Mateusz Skutnik is a Polish comic artist and Flash Architect, as he would call himself. Having a big interest in comics and illustration, he wrote his first comic at the age of 8. When he studied at Gdańsk University of Technology he also began publishing his own comics in 1997. He’s well known all over Poland and his works have been featured several times.
Mateusz have also created a lot of games, the most well known called Submachine; a point and click game in a science fantasy setting.
His art style is very unique, it doesn’t seem to vary between games, comics and books, but is a rather stable way for him to express himself. He mainly uses very fine but stylized line art, drawn with ink. The most impressive part of his line art is how he has mastered the way to illustrate texture. In many of his pieces he has portrayed texture in such a great way, you can feel it with your own eyes.
Take this illustration for example. There are several different types of fine details in the background to portray the environment.
You can see how he did the details on the buildings to make them seem more old, rough and ready to fall apart. The sand dunes are illustrated with lines rather than several dots to capture the wind sculpting it. Looking at his pictures, he’s very good at capturing a very deserted look in his illustrations.
Mateusz works both traditionally and digitally. When he designs his flash games they’re done digitally. The line art and colouring is done with a computer and gives more of an opaque look. Since it’s a solid colour, rather than when he colours traditionally, which he does with aquarelle.
His colouring techniques seem to be no different than the usual, what’s interesting with his colouring is the colour scheme he works with.
He’s working vibrant and dull colours together creating an unusual but pleasant balance between the two opposite.
With the tiny details and the colouring technique he uses, he has a style that’s a mix of everything. It’s perfect for a children’s book as well as a horror game.