It’s been quite a year for artist Jakub Różalski. First came critical praise for the hit board game Scythe, followed by the first trailer for a video game called Iron Harvest, which is set in the same world. Now comes a short movie based on one of his paintings by Neill Blomkamp’s experimental film studio.
Called Gdansk, Blomkamp’s short film is the latest effort from Oats Studios, which was recently profiled by our sister site The Verge. The writer-director of Elysium and District 9 created the group to quickly bring creative projects to life without waiting for the traditional, years-long Hollywood cycle. It works primarily with the Unity game engine.
'1410' - my painting commemorating the Battle of Grunwald, cheers! http://t.co/7EJzVEZfnh pic.twitter.com/6mT29v3pbz
— Jakub Rozalski (@mr_werewolf_art) September 7, 2015
Gdansk is based on Jakub Różalski’s painting, entitled 1410, a fantastical reinterpretation of the famous Battle of Grunwald.
Blomkamp’s studio says that Gdansk is just the beginning of an entire series of short films, focusing on a similar time period. Whether that will include more pieces based on Różalski’s work is not clear.
Różalski is primarily known for his World of 1920+, an alternately history based on the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, one of the last great cavalry battles in modern times. He describes it as a "period when tradition clashed with modernity," when the world was "still full of mysteries and secrets" and "mankind [was] fascinated by engines, iron and steel, [and] began to experiment and try to build a huge walking machine."
1920+ is the setting for Stonemaier Games’ Scythe, a worker-placement game that has taken the board-gaming world by storm. It is also the same world in which a new video game, called Iron Harvest, is set. You can see that title’s latest trailer below.
