Another revision of the Arrakis painting, will be submitting for feedback:
I’ve also been working on a concept painting for a comet striking the Earth, partial photo manipulation, with the impact painted over (and the ISS carefully removed from the base image). It’s still WIP. I’m not sure how to better integrate the glare and its clouds and shadows, and am not even sure about the shape of the glare itself, I just painted by hand from some references. I also want to go in an do some adjustments to the actual ejecta, but not entirely sure yet. I’ve been staring at it for too long.
Training ongoing. Started this course from DMP artist Garrett Fry, Camera Projection Boot Camp, and in the very baby steps of getting started using Nuke and Maya.
I addressed the feedback in my previous DMP post, and submitted this v2 for feedback:
Based on feedback from my lead, I’m working to:
flesh out the shape of the large rocks screen left. Breaking up the edge of the slabs on the left side, and adjusting the rubble along the ground at the bottom of the front slab to vary the flatness of the slab above.
Colour match the highlights of the rock formations and bring up their brightness in the distant ones.
Totally rethink light direction and the shadow composition. Changing the moons to a gibbous phase and varying the source imagery.
Some further progress on my matte painting training for the VFX industry. I’m on a training plan being mentored by a couple of senior DMP artists at the VFX company I work for. I’ve been making myself useful as an artist wherever I can volunteering for some design tasks and helping with crew t-shirt designs and even mentoring my mentor on print design and InDesign.
But the meat of it is me completing a finished DMP, then doing variations (day to night, summer to winter) once I lock down the original.
Here’s my first pass: (I got some substantial notes on it to address, which I’m working on now and will explain below)
I chose to do a desert scene from the planet Arrakis from Dune. I chose this idea from a bunch of random sketches and doodles and refined the idea from there.
Here are some images from my thumbnailing and brainstorming the composition:
Next, I picked one and did some small value studies:
After this step, I started to dive into the full painting, at (approximately as it varies from show to show) film resolution, sourcing hi-res source imagery and going from there.
I combined these and other elements to block in the first pass posted above. It still needs a lot of work, but I wanted to get all the elements in place, and now I’m going in and reworking each. I’ve learned tons in these first steps alone, and already know how I would have planned and structured it differently. I’m anxious to move on to the next exercises but this itself is great exercise in seeing something through.
Things to improve for the next version include:
-Texture the side faces of the big rock slabs in center frame
-Refine the edge of these
-Increase the atmospherics on the slabs to push each one farther and farther back in space
-Replace the foreground sreen right rock with a better source image. This one was a rock illuminated in full sun, but I need something in overcast lighting to eliminate the harsh shadows that I had to hide behind intense adjustment layers.
-Redo the big cast shadows and better gauge the light direction.
- and so on, etc
After refining this to version 2, then perhaps version 3 and 4 based on later feedback, the next big steps will be to learn camera projections using Nuke, Maya and Photoshop. I’m so excited to actually be learning again.
Lots to do but I’m thrilled to be learning on the job and have this opportunity. I used to be hard on myself for not going to school for the right things and thinking it was all too late, but I’m lucky to be where I am at a company willing to cross-train people into different roles and foster their career growth. I’m so pumped to be a full-time professional working artist in the near future.
Quickie speed painting (30 min or so) of a Tom Thompson Algonquin landscape. Just to work on my eye for colour, matching his subtle tones. I’m enjoying the momentum. More to come! Excited to learn and to have time to learn.
Paint practice. First is painted from a reference with lasso and brush tools in Photoshop, and the second is photo manipulation according to reference.
I’m on lesson 3 of the Focus on Matte Painting Techniques course I’m doing on FX PHD. I watched along with the video and notes the steps, then sourced my own images to work with. I’ll probably run through the course files as well and match what the instructor did.
I started with this:
And made this:
I may have been a bit ambitious with the sky combinations, but am pleased with what came together, especially for my first attempt. I’m feeling more technically comfortable, but need to develop my eye and be able to judge what the image needs and which artistic choices to make. The missing link so far is review and feedback from an experienced instructor or supervisor, but that will come in time. Me posting here now is for them to look through later.
I also want to learn more about best practices, how to structure my files and how best to work non-destructively. I feel pretty comfortable and knowledgeable in Photoshop, but it’s been purely non-industry and I know nothing about professional workflows.
I’m seeking guidance from the incredibly talented artists around me at work (I’m an office worker at a VFX studio) and our Matte Painting Lead artist and all-around great guy Sean Samuels (view his Artstation here) has been sharing resources, which I’ll also post here. Today he popped by as I worked on this and pointed me to this gorgeous matte painting by Yanick Dusseault ( dusso.com ) :
Image manipulation like this is fun new skill to develop in my quest toward employability, but I’m also keen to get back into digital painting and improve my sense of colour and composition. Later on will come Maya and Nuke and learning to work in actual film shots.
Finally, here is my favourite track from the Day for Night album:
Here are a few more, the working exercises from the Sky Replacement lesson I posted about yesterday.
Here is the original image:
And here are two variations I did, per the lesson. I’d redo the initial matte to get better and cleaner detail in the wires and tree branches. I feel like I know how to do things but need to gear my mind more toward best practices and efficiency, rather than doing things manually.
A new thing I’m going to do here is to post my progress as I work through tutorials and self-training resources to become a matte painter for the VFX industry. I’ve been working in VFX production for a few years now, but not in a creative capacity. The industry fascinates me but working 40 hour weeks not doing art is making me die.
Today I did the first two classes from a course on FXPhD. The first was a basic intro to photoshop and commonly used tools for VFX matte painting. I’d done digital painting courses in the past, so this was mostly review, but it was helpful to learn the different focus of VFX matte painting.
The second one I did was for sky replacement. It took me through creating masks and grading to integrate the new sky with the plate.
Here’s one I did at home afterward to practice the techniques. From this:
To this:
I’m finding the difficult part starting out is to know what to do, to develop the eye to spot what doesn’t fit.
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