DIGITAL PAINTING
- REVEL IN
RESTRICTION
05. DO YOUR RESEARCH
“When working for movies (or even TV shows),”
says Tiberius Viris (www.tiberius-viris.com), “The
colour, perspective, mood and so on are often
already decided in pre-production and you need to
follow specific concept art and layouts. Sorry to
burst your bubble guys, but in reality more than 80
per cent of the work you will do as a matte painter
will involve bringing those concepts and layouts to
a realistic level. That means you have little creative
freedom and your success will rely solely on your
photorealistic eye and knowing how to bring a
concept to life.”
But it’s by working within those guidelines that
the matte painter can really shine. “You usually
follow a concept art or layout pre-viz that already
sets your overall composition, perspective, colour
palette,” adds Viris, “and you also have access to
sequence footage or even precomps that give you
a good idea on how everything will work together.
[It] might seem restrictive, but working in a team is
a lot of fun!”Finding reference material can be tough: “There
are not a lot of image banks that suit the need of
a matte painter,” explains Christian Kugler. “But
usually for feature and commercial work, a lot of
reference will be shot, and depending on the
circumstances and the quality those really can
prove helpful. If you are basing your work off a
plate then your best reference is to always match
the plate. That is super important for each
project. If you are creating from scratch then if it
is part of a sequence use lighting as a point of
reference to help guide you along. When I first
approach a shot and I am asked to do a concept
or put something quick together I try to keep it
as loose as possible without sacrificing quality.
These days there is not enough time for revisions
so it is best to have the closest representation to
sell the shot as quickly as possible.”TOMÁŠ MÜLLER’S WORK PERFECTLY DEMONSTRATES THE COMBINATION
OF SCOPE AND DETAIL THAT GOOD MATTE PAINTING MUST HAVE- IT’S ALL IN THE DETAIL
01
BUILDING BLOCKS
Tomáš Müller (www.tomasmuller.com)
was inspired to create this painting, called The
Building Blocks of the Universe, by a speech in
sci-fi smash Battlestar Galactica. His workflow
always starts in the same way, with sketching and
figuring out perspective and composition.03
GROUND YOUR IMAGINATION
“Then I’ll prepare all the photos, textures and other resources and sort them out,” says Müller.
“After that I can create 3D parts first, if there are any. Once I have 3D parts rendered I can finally focus
on painting and assembling all parts of scene together.” In this image, see how the crunchy detail in the
foreground anchors the rest of the piece.02
RESEARCH AND 3D
Once he has a sketch that represents the
final alignment of objects in the scene, he starts
researching. “With matte work you need not only
the painting itself but also lots of photo references
and in a lot of cases you need to create some 3D.
So first of all I decide which parts of image are
going to be produced in 3D, what calls more for
digital paint and where I’m going to need photos.”© Tiberius Viris© Disney© Tomáš Müller