Who is matte painter

Provide or acquire photographic reference materials. Combine photographic, paint, and 3d assets to conceptualize, create and design environments using techniques such as camera animation, image projection, layering, and lighting. Perform tasks related to integrating imagery into shots, preserving a unified sense of lighting, perspective, and color.

Ability to understand and interpret creative directives. Concept work is considered a strong asset. Ability to combine painting skills in animation software, with knowledge of photography, practical and digital modeling, and design, to create 2D and 3D paintings. The first ever digital matte painting was created by painter Chris Evans for the film Young Sherlock Holmes, when he scanned a photographic image and layered it with a digital drawing to create a scene.

Fun Fact: Chris Evans also did a lot of the matte paintings for the Star Wars films, including the spaceship hangar in the famous imperial march sequence. Though digital renderings are the new bread and butter of VFX, actual painting still has a place in the film world. Sometimes pastel drawings or actual paintings are used as concept references or even photographed and scanned into a computer as a base for the visual setting to be digitally altered and layered with other images to create the final setting.

Modern matte artists use a variety of digital painting techniques to create digital matte paintings, including scanning photographs or images of handmade artwork, collaging images, or even pure digital painting techniques. Modern matte artists might create entire landscapes or small set pieces such as statues or buildings to be digitally composited into footage.

Digital matte painting is used to change the landscape, to turn a single background extra into thousands of people, to change a sunny sky to an ominous one, and to manipulate film footage in many other ways. The artists are given a description and desired mood of the scene, then they create a concept piece to work from either by hand or in a program like Photoshop or illustrator.

If you want to become a matte painter then you should train as a studio artist first. Learn any digital artistic program you can get your hands on. Try getting a job in the art department of a film studio as an animator, concept artist, or even an assistant. Using various software tools and techniques matte artists digitally produce backgrounds that seamlessly replace live-action elements. Most matte artists have a background in fine art, animation or a similar field.

This creative role requires a strong understanding of 3D effects. Using 3D imaging , and painting techniques or projection techniques, matte artists enhance designs in a way that results in environments that appear visually realistic or downright beyond extravagant.

The Matte Artist is responsible for digitally producing interior or exterior environments that could not otherwise be visited for filming or are difficult to create in other manners. Matte artists essentially are involved in the creation of the environment for the film.

Matte artists are often brought into the production during the very early stages of pre-production so that they can work up sketches and early concepts that help the art director and the film director to get the dialogue started. Digital matte artists or digital matte painters DMPs work with other members of the visual effects team during post-production to digitally perfect the look of the environment. DMPs produce artificially perfect environments using various techniques including photograph integration, digital painting, editing, 3D rendering, and various other methods.