Matte Painting is Back! (in the VES's eyes anyway)

Really, matte painting has never taken a hiatus. The growing number of matte painting jobs in VFX houses is a true testament to this fact. 

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:

Jonathan Harb

Yanick Dusseault

Brett Northcutt

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:

Chris Stoski

Susumu Yukuhiro

(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

Richard Bluff, Barry Williams, Yanick Dusseault, Yusei Uesugi

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!

Vast Improvements

I've been using custom brushes to try to create matte paintings and environments, instead of using photos, textures, and 3d generated content.  This piece was alot of fun and I can hardly turn away from it to post it here. 

This is still a work in progress but I feel that it's a vast improvement on my previous painted works and things seem to be starting to click in my brushstrokes. 

Approaching Army DS Sketch

Click here to see how this was painted

ice planet sketch

Doing this one just for fun. I'll be updating it more in the coming weeks.  I felt really good about the concepts in this and the shapes so I think I can take this one really far. 

Shadow Bot

Decided to test out al.chemy and do the first thing that almost everyone does. Create a robot. When I was pleased enough I took it into photoshop and did some painting over. I'm pretty pleased with the result. Lots of happy accidents

Edit: forgot to mention that I did this right before bed so I could have cool robot dreams.

Sketch before bed

LOLPainters? a new internet meme? Sketched this one before bed. Saving as JPEG and save for web F's with my colors though. Gotta get a color calibrator.

I Miss Kauai DS Sketch

Ok. So there's a little behind this one. My wife and I went to Kauai about 2 years ago and fell in love with Hawaii. Cecil Kim stirred up some up some of the feelings I have for the islands when he mentioned that he worked in Hawaii at Square. THEN I went to a massage therapist for a get-away that my wife bought for me awhile ago. So this is where I went when she was working out the knots out of my neck and shoulder blades. The image stuck in my head so vividly that I subsequently painted this right afterwords. 

Click here to see how this was painted

The Chase DS Sketch

Halfway through this one I realized that the greyscale studies needed to end and that I need to move on and "man up". This will be the last greyscale for a while. Time to have some fun with color. 

Click here to see how this was painted

Arch DS Sketch

Click here to see how this was painted

Misty Mountains DS sketch

Saw these while at lunch one cloudy. The clouds were trying to hide the peaks of  the mountains. Very cool to see in Arizona.

Click here to see how this was painted

Africa DS sketch

Painted while watching 24: Redemption.

Click here to see how this was painted.

Tired Magician 2 DS Sketch

Just painted this one as fast as possible. Decided to make it into another tired magician painting. What is with me and this tired magician wearing the big hat?

Click here to see how this was painted.

Where am I now.

I thought I would take just a second to outline some of the things that I've learned or how I changed artistically, so that other beginning artists who might be a few years behind me can use some of these lessons.

When you draw/paint/create everyday,  great artwork is more of a by-product than a goal. You should enjoy the process. Doing it everyday is more about teaching your eyes to see, your mind to let go, and your heart to feel. 

With each new day, I can see a composition in my mind's-eye much clearer and I'm able to paint these with much better accuracy.

"Photoshop is just a tool" has become sort of a  cliche' but it's true. Alot of beginning artists wait until they can afford software, hardware, or classes to create what's in their hearts. No matter what the tool or medium, you should never wait to create. If you can't afford a computer it shouldn't stop you from finding a paper and a pencil. Practice as much as you can and it WILL make a difference. 

Stop making excuses, especially to yourself.  I used to think that because some of my favorite painters use both Photoshop and Painter, than I had to as well. However, there are other painters I admire that only use Photoshop. The point is, I currently don't own Painter so I shouldn't make excuses for why my art isn't as good as someone elses. However, hardware does tend to make a difference. Painting on a Wacom Intuos vs a Graphire is like painting with a whole set of paintbrushes instead of the jagged end of twig. The Intuos has already made a huge difference in my work. 

If you really care about what you do then you'll find a way to afford the hardware/software that you absolutely need. For a while all I could afford was an ibook 700mhz, and a wacom graphire 4x6.  I did some of my first paintings on it. I scratched and saved and was able to finally afford a macbook 2.2ghz, a wacom 6x11, Photoshop cs4 extended, and a Nintendo DS with an R4 card so I can run colors!. It's not the perfect setup. But it is my dream setup. It's the setup I knew I wanted so I focused on it and I did what I could to make my dream happen. 

If you are just a beginner, don't post a message to mattepainting.org or conceptart.org etc etc with the subject "My first mattepainting/vehicle render/whatever whatever. No-one cares. The typical reason for posting this is that you think people will reply with something like "woah! first time? you're good", or something like that. It's not going to happen Unless you're an accomplished concept artist or other parallel artists that wants to dabble in something that you're already pretty good at anyway. Sometimes beginners cheat. They practice for months before posting something. Don't do this either. Other beginners will find a way to composite images together that were easy to composite anyway. I always hate this. If you really want to be good. Do the hard work. More about this next. Start posting on forums by just asking questions that haven't been asked (search !) and post something in the sketch threads. Post some WIPS but don't expect people to be amazed.

When you're a beginner, (painting for 1-5 years. yes years.) Do the hard work. For example, Paint rock textures instead of using photography. When you're a professional you'll need to do things efficiently and use photography as much as possible, but there will certainly come a time when you'll need to paint something you might not be able to find photography for. Paint from scratch. You'll be surprised how much faster you can paint some things than taking the time to look for a photo of it. 

Mattepainting and conceptart isn't your teenage fad. No-one cares how much better you are than the other guy. Matte painting and art in general is a career. Please treat it with respect. 

To my two best friends.

I know you guys would do the same for me. 

Junk World DS sketch

I was inspired by Raxus Prime from the game "The Force Unleashed". Painted on my DS.

Click here to see how it was painted.

Nintendo hates artists

Ok. So maybe Nintendo has come out-right and said that they hate artists, but they certainly aren't sending the right message when they crack down on Flash carts.

http://kotaku.com/5086747/mother-and-son-arrested-in-r4-piracy-bust

Without a flash cart you can't run Colors! on a Nintendo DS. 

I purchased my R4 card when I heard that Nintendo was starting to crack down on Flash carts. THEN I bought my DS. I bought my DS for the sole purpose of running Colors! on it. If I wouldn't have been able to run Colors! on my DS then I would have never purchased this handheld gaming system. I have never pirated a game. Hell, I don't even know how to. I've run a few homebrew apps  on it besides Colors! but that's it. That's all. 

If Nintendo continues to send this sort of message then they better be ready to give us cartridges with Colors! on it (for free) and give us access to get the colors files off the DS so we can send them to the Colors! website. Otherwise, Nintendo will lose a small amount of sales to Colors! users who will pay for the application to be used on their Apple touch or iphone.

Landing site is 2 clicks away DS sketch

Click here to see how this was painted.

Another beam DS sketch

Click here to see how this was painted.

Cliche Beam at Gates DS sketch

Click here to see how this was painted.

Tired Magician DS Sketch

Click here to see how this was painted.