Digital Matte Painting

What do Max Q's Designers do for fun or as a hobby? The answer is more Photoshop!
My personal interest is Digital Matte Painting, specifically science fiction and I'm working on a few designs right now.

There is a difference between matte painting which is basically a quick way to create an image or a look without spending a lot of time on the details and photo manipulation which is editing and merging images to create a new design . The idea of matte painting is to capture a concept which may be developed into a full blown design or integrated with video or film.

If you look closely at some of the major effects films you can see backgrounds of a high tech city or a mountain range that was created using Photoshop. As it's on the screen for a few seconds it looks like the real (or should that be unreal) thing. A lot of matte painting for movies is combined with 3d animation and rendering to give the desired effect.

City Dusk

This is one called City Dusk and is mostly photo manipulation to create a futuristic city.


Click on the image for a close up

It's a work in progress so when it's finished I'll post the final image.

Sciscape

This is one called Sciscape and is in it's very early stages where I'm trying to create more depth of field and use matte painting techniques to have an overall impression rather than the ultra detailed CityDusk


Click on the image for a close up

Again a work in progress so when it's finished I'll post the final image. These can change dramatically from the concept to the finished piece.

Scotland

This is based on a photograph taken in Scotland in January, we were travelling from Edinburgh up to Aberdeen and this was taken just south of Dundee. This image is not a photograph it was completely recreated in Photoshop. I wanted to see if I could make everything look real and spent a lot of time painting in the clouds and light.

The Scottish lowlands and highlands offer some amazing scenery and I thought I would share just a small taste.


Click on the image for a close up

Work in Progress

This is a work in progress, I'm recreating a landscape scene, it's a got a long way to go!


Click on the image for a close up

And it's done

So it's finished apart from tweaking, pretty happy with the way it turned out.


Click on the image for a close up

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Comments:

Those are pretty cool works!

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Excellent blogpost, great looking blog, added it to my favs.

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