Digital Matte Painting : EPortfolio

Week 1 - 14
SUNG J XIN/ 0370139/ Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
DST 60904 Digital Matte Painting
E-Portfolio

Instructions

Tasks

EXERCISES : Fundamentals Of Matte Painting

When doing the exercises, I looked for images online I could use for parts of it, such as the image to use for the virtual plain air and sky replacements.

For the interior and exterior perspective studies, I chose a scene from the movie 'The Shining' because of the iconic hallway scene as the interior option, while I chose a building with a corner sticking out as the exterior option. I sketched out the rough shapes of these 2 images before drawing in the perspective lines to make it easy to see where the lines would meet.

For the value studies, I used a sphere and a cube to show how differently the shadows look on them when there is a light facing them at a certain direction, especially since the roundness of the sphere and flat edges of the cube can clearly demonstrate a difference. I used the website 3D poser as a reference.

For the virtual plain air, I chose a picture of a snowy mountain because of the contrast of the bright tip and the dark bottom. I made an attempt to replicate the image by first sketching out the shape of the mountain and blocking out some basic colours on areas where that colour takes up most of the space. I used a finer brush to capture the smaller details.

For the sky replacements, I decided to go for a bit of a difficult image, which is an area surrounded by mountains, a grassy ground, and a fence that is engulfed in a shadow. I spent the most time on the 'cloudy (after rain)' because I added some details that did not exist in the original image, such as small puddles of water in the grass. The only other one with a stark difference from the original image is the 'noon' because I made it so the fence would not be under a shadow, since the sun in noon is in the middle, so no shadows would be cast.

Overall I think the exercises helped as a basic guide to how I will tackle the next tasks.

Project 1 : Pre-production

Proposal

Final Pre-Production

I wanted to do a digital matte painting inspired by the movie Allegiant, which is part of the Divergent franchise. I chose this movie out of the other ones because I liked the desert looking area that looks similar to Mars, with how the environment looks very dusty and orange.

I sketched out a basic composition on a drawing program and took it to Photoshop, to replace the sketch layers with some textures such as the rocks and buildings. I added in a ship from the movie as a final touch.

Project 2 : Invisible Set Extension

After some feedback, I changed a bit of the composition with a bit of a perspective in mind, as I wanted it to look like you are coming out of a cave to be greeted with a view of an isolated futuristic civilisation in the distance. I applied some textures with some adjustments to the colour.

For the video, I made it look like there is a beam of light coming from one of the tall buildings, with a spaceship flying out of the cave and into the city.

Final Project : Thematic Matte Painting (VFX)

The perspective on the previous image wasn't that good, so I came up with a new composition, with more of the cave in the shot, with an exit that leads to a dead end which is a cliff, and a full view of the city in the distance, with the original shape taken from the movie, with some buildings that were drawn in for more details.

I put in some more drawn elements to better fit the vision I had, with how dusty I made the desert below look. I kept the environment look tinted towards a specific colour like in the movie.

For the final VFX video, I decided to make it look like you are coming into view of the city as you are coming out of the cave, by separating the cave into sections, and the city itself as a separate layer. I also added in green screen birds to show that there are signs of life in this area.