Introduction
My name is Gabriel Nagypal. I’m a Senior Environment Concept Artist based in Slovakia. I have been working on games and movies for more than 7 years. I was privileged to work on titles like World of Warcraft: The War Within, Diablo Immortal, V Rising, Wonder Woman, Project LAX, and many more titles that haven’t been announced yet.
I love the craft of designing unique and magical places. My favourite genre is fantasy, I love nature from my heart, and nothing can be better for me than designing new and original landscapes or interiors with a strong emphasis on storytelling. I cannot describe how grateful I am for the place I was born in. I was privileged to grow up near the deep forests where I spent from dusk to dawn playing in the wild.
I can vividly remember building wooden tree houses, small underground shelters where I could sleep over with friends, or how we created a dam to raise the water level so we could jump into the water from bigger heights. For a child like me, it was a great playground to have no limitations to be creative. I also played a lot of video games during winter times.
During my studies at art school, I have rekindled my passion for environments. Originally, I wanted to work as a character animator, but after experiencing The Last of Us and seeing the trailer for Uncharted 4, I found a path to follow. From that time, I was always captivated by the breathtaking Interiors and exteriors in real life or video games.
From the start of the autumn of 2025, I’m trying to find a way to create personal paintings after client work. Basically, how to find time and resilience to create instead of watching TV shows, movies, or playing games with friends. For the last few years, I was able to create portfolio pieces only when I dedicated some time off from work to do something useful.
I tried several techniques, but one of them stuck with me the most. Set up a limitation on what kind of mythology I will do, list interesting podcasts, read books about mythology, get inspired by it, and create a board of various ideas I would like to explore with my sketches. Then, during the evening, take one of the ideas and start creating whatever could fit the brief.
My goal is to have a lot of room to be creative, so in this example of doing Frozen Chalet, my idea was to explore myths and legends of Morena slavic god of death, winter, and harvest. I love winter hikes, so I wanted to use a deep snow setting with freezing temperatures. I started creating.
My goal was to just do something, not to create a masterpiece or something breathtaking, just to have fun, listen to some Slavic folk music, and get into the zone. The first few pieces were a failure, but after two, I was really happy with one I created.
It happened to be my most liked image on Instagram, so I said to myself, okay, people like it, why not go deeper and explore the focal point? The Frozen Chalet, and create an image with more thoughts, and spend not just one night on it, but a few weeks.