However, in recent years matte painting has lost favor because it's become popular to lump matte paintings in with "environment design". Environment design is a blanket term to mean procedural terrain, 3d environments, HDR panoramic photography, and many other cool techniques.
Even the VES (Visual Effects Society), has grouped matte painting in with "Created Environments" for the past 4 years . At the 4th annual VES awards Star Wars Episode III was nominated for this award yet 3 out of four of the recieving members were matte painters:
And the next year the same thing happened with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, with 2 out of 4 of the artists working as matte painters:
(my apologies if I missed anyone's names)
This year the VES has decided to do the RAD thing and bring back the awards for Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Feature Motion Picture and Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Broadcast Program or Commercial. Here's the full list (with links to the matte painters portfolios! :D Sorry compositors. This is about us for now) :
Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Feature Motion Picture
CHANGELING - 1928 Downtown L.A.
Romain Bayle, Abel Milanes, Allan Lee, Debora Dunphy
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK - Matte Paintings
Brett Miller, Garrett Eaton, Matthew Conner
SPEED RACER - Overall Matte Painting Presentation
Lubo Hristov, Dennis Martin, Ron Crabb
Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
DOCTOR WHO - SERIES 4 - Silence in the Library
Simon Wicker, Charlie Bennett, Tim Barter, Arianna Lago
GENERATION KILL - Episode 2
Christian Irles, Yannick Bourgie
MERLIN THE MARK OF NIMUEH SERIES 1 - The Mark of Nimueh
Dave Early, Simon Wickers, Bryan Bartlett, Sara Bennet
Awesome job everyone!
Thank you VES for bringing back the matte painting award!
