One of Polish painter Jakub Rozalski 's favorite subjects is the Polish-Soviet War, a 1919-21 conflict in between Poland and Russia on the often-frozen ground of Eastern Europe. He just likes to add a little something to the scenes: hulking killer robots. Rozalski painted this series, called 1920+, in which he inserts giant mechanical walkers, steampunk Soviet exoskeletons, and bizarre retro-futuristic weaponry into otherwise ordinary scenes of war and suffering set in that year. In an interview with Vice , the artist said that the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back helped to spark the idea of mech warfare on snow—he was always a fan of sci-fi and fantasy movies on VHS. He tells PM, though, that "history inspires me much more - the first steam machines, armored trains, first tanks from WWI." He also cites inspiration from Jules Verne and Stanisław Lem, a Polish science fiction writer. He then combined that aesthetic with something that displayed his Polish patriotism.