The pass revised

BTW this is concept art for an open source game. It's not a matte painting. But I'm using matte painter's techniques.

Are they really matte painting techniques? I would say yes because the techniques originated from digital matte painters way before even concept artists where using photoshop. I wanna raise a glass to concept artists of the pre-digital age. Some of the work they had to do with prismacolor pens is amazing. Kudos!

Anyway, I couldn't stay away from this one:

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The pass

When I haven't been working on freelance web work, I've done a few environment concepts for an open source game. Nothing's really set in stone yet so I've just been playing with mood, lighting, and shape.

When I don't know what I want to create, and I want to "sculpt" painted shapes into something that I can further refine, I use a digital version of a Grey PrismaColor marker. When I know what I want to create, when I have something fairly solid in my head, I like to use the mechanics of drawing and draw-through methods to create what's in my head.

Until this painting though, I haven't been able to apply typical drawing mechanics to a digital canvas. The size of your canvas has to be the right size relative to your brush. That can be hard to figure out.

I also had some preconceived notions about actually drawing when I thought I should be painting. I know differently now. No matter how much you paint, the mechanics of drawing are VERY important. You might be painting your heart out but if you don't have the drawing foundation to back it up you'll be lost.

When I say the "mechanics of drawing", I'm not talking about actually using a physical or digital pencil, I'm referring to the skills you learn from drawing. Seeing the right way, creating shape, and perspective.

I think I'm starting to get it, and can't wait to do more.I need to learn how to refine less though, and just use large brushes, value, and color to illustrate my ideas.

I really like the mountains in the background :P

applying new skills to old work

I felt like revisiting this piece the second I posted it to my blog a few months ago. I've learned some things and applied it to the painting. I know I've made some dramatic improvements.                                          



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BA Gun Challenge

Here's the final for my BA Gun challenge. The version I'm posting here is of course a fake ad for the conceptual gun, showing off it's various functions and parts

decisions decisions

Trying to figure out whether or not I should use the 3d model I've done (I'm no 3d guy but I think what I've got works pretty well) and paint off of that or if I should do just a side and front view.

• Did the thumbnail silhouettes first so that I wouldn't have to choose what I wanted, but rather, what I didn't want
• pulled what I liked and put it together into one gun
• created 3d model

Planet concept for possible matte

I'm not feeling very verbose at the moment (I'm working on a lot of things), so I'll just outline a few of my thoughts as bullet points:

• Always wanted to do a matte painting of a planet. The opening shot of The Thing is my favorite.
• I can't really consider this a full matte yet. The original painting is 4k, scaled to 2k, and then outputted here to my blog at 1k.
  
• I would really love to composite a spaceship flying in on this, so that's why I left it pretty bare on the left side

Assignment 2

In order to push myself and get out of my comfort zone, I've decided to take part in David Mattingly's matte painting course. He provides a lot of his info from his "brick and mortar" classroom in his mattepainting.org classes. Here's images I did from the 2nd assignment.

For this I tried to stay within the confines of the plate we were given.

I've seen quite a few matte paintings that are painted to match a full 2k res, so I figured that's what David was having us do. I don't agree with David's notion of having us design while painting. I seperate the two. And while I don't agree, I totally understand it. The design of the castle gives us our own original design, gets us to think about the process of designing while painting (which can be hard sometimes, but sometimes HAS to be done) I designed the castles as silhouettes first



Then I applied the silhouettes to the plate and painted on it.





On this one I went with more of a fantasy, LOTR feel to it. Tried to keep the castle classic though.

silhouettes while holding my son

Holding a baby, while you do your daily warm-up you are limited to what you can paint. I find these silhouettes to be very fun, and achievable while you only have one hand available.

I'm trying to get into the habit of painting in the mornings, when everyone's asleep, so that I am assured the time I need to paint everyday. 6 days a week hopefully.

Structures sillouettes

I recently received The Skillful Huntsman from my sister and her husband for Xmas. So when I haven't been working on freelance I've been reading that. It's seeped into my subconsciousness.

I just sat down to sketch in order to warm up to do some logo sketches for a client, and these just started to come out. I've circled my favorties.

Mass Effect 2 concept environments

I recently came across some of the new concept environments for Mass Effect 2 on IGN, and You know how I LOVE environments.

What really strikes me about these is that they have that "implied detail" about them where the artist/artists have used photographs and quick brushstrokes to make you think you're looking at something that is close to finaled or finished concept art. The artists at BioWare really know their stuff

When you zoom in (click the photos) you can see some of the fat brushstrokes and low-res photography stretched beyond recognition. Awesome use of atmospheric haze and depth as well.

The Art of Mass Effect has been on my wish list for quite some time so I may need to go out and grab it. I can only hope they do a book for Mass Effect 2.

A new space station image was just released so I've decided to post the art here. Big thanks to the folks at IGN .

Monster Commute Character Concepts

Recently Bobby Chiu commented on my "Unbridled Optimism" post (Oh snap! Bobby reads my blog?). It got me thinking about his Whaleboy painting. Bobby's painting was actually a "re-imagining" of Patrick Morgan's WhaleBoy.

This inspired me to do some free work for a friend. I've been reading/inspired by Daniel Davis's webcomic Monster Commute. It's about two characters, a red-goat like character named Beastio Wand, and a skull enclosed in a glass-dome-robot body named Chadworth Machine. The plot and suspense is REALLY starting to build on the comic so if you haven't checked-it-out, you should.

I looked at his characters and thought, "what would I do if I where creating concepts for a live-action film of Monster Commute?"

I approached this work with a Martin Laing flair. I love how his technique is approachable. Much like a great matte painter, when you really get up close you can see all the little brushstrokes and differences in image resolutions. But looking at it in its intended size, everything tightens up. You can't tell the difference between a piece of leather and a

brushstroke. I decided to work loose, but at a very large resolution , and just try to blend a bunch of different brushstrokes and photos together.

I started collecting the needed photos from sxc.hu (and used only royalty free non-attribution photos). For Chadworth I used a bunch of tractor parts, steam engines, and a grain silo. I painted the glass bubble myself because I know that you can never find good transparent glass that is even close to the shape you want. After I positioned these parts on the canvas I just started painting them together till I was happy with the result.

The same pretty much went for Beastio. He's made from several goats and bears. The funny thing about the smirk on his face is it wasn't there in the original white goat photo I swear. It sort of just emerged and I accentuated it.

The methods I used for matching photos and painting were really matte painting techniques.

Here's the final results:

I sent the results over to Daniel and he even liked them enough to post them to his blog.

This was a really great exercise and I really recommend supporting your friends by creating something inspired by their work.