Fantasy Matte Painting

This is for another assignment that I have to finish. In fact, it's due tomorrow. Anyway, I decided to post my work as I go just like with my animations, this way you guys can see everything start to take shape as I go.

So, here is my rough concept. It is far from being finished and some things might look out of place. But it gives me a good starting point to work off of.


From here I'm going to start importing images to make this picture come to life. I'm going to start with the sky and ocean.

Hey Dynamo!
Cool stuff you have here. What did you use to make it? Did you use the computer or just paint?

At the top you have this big block of one color. Which is kinda out of place because the rest of the picture is blended, etc. Maybe change it to blend more with the other part of the picture.

The colors... Wow. That's a lot of pink. But it does match with the brown and greens so that's okay. The only mismatch color is the blue. It's super bright and pops out at you and its only small details that shouldn't really be emphasized. Maybe use a darker, deeper, blue, that is easy on the eyes.

The size. It would be easier to look at if it was a wee bit smaller. That way we could look at the whole picture at once and view it better to grasp the picture.

The shadings. I like the shadows from the mountains and the tinting on the green hills. Good job because I am horrible at shading.

The floating islands. I love this part. It's so cool. The are just suspended in the air. Love it!

The ground. There is a part of this that has a light brown line running through it, and I'm not sure what it's supposed to be... You can also see a bit of pink peeking out of some spaces around the hills and mountains.

Hope this helps! Awesome job!
~Storm

Thanks.

I used Photoshop on the computer to make this picture. The brown lines are actually roads. I'll keep in mind everything you said. But again, this is just a rough layout. There's a bunch of stuff in it that don't quite make sense, but I know what needs to be fixed and I'll make the changes when I bring in the images I'll be using.

So, here's my matte painting again with the sky done. I just want to get this out of the way right now, please excuse the outlines of some of the images in my picture. I realise they do look like I just cut them out of a magazine and slapped them on. The extract tool that I need didn't come with Photoshop CS4, which is odd because it was included in the previous version. I have a trial pluggin version, but everytime I use it it either doesn't work right or crashes Photoshop. I'll fix them tomorrow when I have access to one of the schools' computers.



Next I'll work on the floating islands. When you're making a matte painting it's best to go big. That way you can add things into your painting with just your paint brush, because when you compress the final image into a smaller size your viewers won't be able to tell that it's not part of the original image.

Take the floating islands in the distance for example. In my first image, the one I forgot to size down because most people don't have as big of a monitor as I do, you can clearly see that I painted them myself. In the smaller image they almost look real, don't they? More real than in the first image anyway. That's the idea of working with a big painting and sizing it down when you're finished.

Wow! That's very interesting. I think it will turn out very well. Is that sky that you have an up-side-down sea/ocean/place with lots of water ?
Um... Anyways, I think the floating Islands are going to be very cool hen you're done.
Might I ask you what the blue things are, floating around the top of that mountain?
Thanks!
Cool work.

The blue things floating around the towers are power crystals that create the water that flows out of the building. My instructor told me if I made the water from the ocean trickle down the mountains that touch it, it would confuse the viewer since I already distorted gravity to put the ocean in the sky. If I crweat a different water source, well that's another story. That's why I put those towers there and the blue crystal things.

Here's the next step of my matte painting, the floating islands.



An interesting piece of information, the island closest to the forground is made up of 6 different pictures. The crystals floating around the tower were actually protoss pylons from the game Starcraft that I modifies and shrunk down. You can also see that I fixed up the edges of the clouds in the background. Next I'm going to be working on the forground, then the shadows and highlights of it, and lastly I'm going to add in all the finer details.

Last night while I was trying to finish this assignment up for today's class I started to feel sick to my stomach. It still hurts now, but not as much as last night, or this morning for that matter. The point is, I wasn't able to hand it in on time. I'm going to finish it up today and hand it in tomorrow, which means I'm going to be docked 5%, but I'd rather lose that 5% instead of handing in incompleted work.

Wow.

This is really cool.

You did this on the computer? That must have been hard.

Thanks for the clearing up about the blue things. I was a little confused on that too.

I love how you are making this more and more realistic.

You are putting more details, and everything! Good luck with your grade!

~Storm

Yup, it was all done on the computer.

Well, I'm almost done. I've put in all the images I wanted and placed them where I wanted. Now all that's left is to do some color corrections, add shadows and highlights, and make some final tweaks.



This is actually the first matte painting I've ever done. If I can make something like this on my first try, just think what you guys can do with Photoshop.

Well, here it is. The touchups are all done and it's finally ready to be handed in.



If anyone has any questions about how I did something in my matte painting, just ask.

Woah. Why is the sea in the sky? Frankly, I prefer the very first picture you posted way up the top. *points up there* I don't know, it looked really cool. Like a fuzzy half-seen screenshot from a Star Wars-meets-Middle Earth-meets-Salvadore Dali film.



Still, the finished one is quite interesting. The rocks and grass and everything is realistic, and the clouds are awesome, and the floating island as well. It looks a bit too... I don't know what the word is. Collage-ish? Like, bits and pieces of other pictures clumped together to make another picture, and I don't like that style. Personly.

The blue things around the tower look a bit random and they don't seem to have a shadow. Is that the point?

*stars for the first picture*

Well, the crystals are supposed to be transparent, so their shadows are going to be a very feint blue. If you look at the tower's shadow carefully you'll see it.

So, you like the first image more than this one? I guess I didn't do something right then. Matte paintings differ from person to person. They can consist mostly of painting aspects, if you prefer to paint more, or the can be more about compositing, which is taking existing pictures and modifying them into something else. You might not realize it at first glance, but the closest mountain in the foreground is actually made up of three different mountain surfaces.

Personally, I like the final image the best simply because it's more cleaner and smooth than the rough image. But like I said, this is my first matte painting. I'm hoping me next one will be better. Thanks for your output anyway.

I like the (scrolls up) fourth one a lot.
For doing this on the computer it is amazing.

1) I like how you made it so detailed and realistic, although the subject isn't realistic.

2) The floating islands are awesome, and the fact that the sky is water.

3) I like the clouds in the sky. Very realistic and amazing.

Overall this is an amazing picture. I couldn't do half of what you did in this.

It comes with practice. Even for a college level student like me, this painting probably took me around 20 hours to finish. There's a lot that goes into a matte painting, but if you can take an existing image and manipulate it to blend with the rest of your picture, then you're well on your way.

The hardest and most tedious thing I had to do was making the selections of all the images I wanted before copying and pasting them into my picture. For those of you reading this, if you want to make something like I did the first thing you should start trying to learn is how to make a layer mask in Photoshop.

Wow that is really good! I dunno if it is just me, but those blue things are kinda distracting... They dont really go with the
Landscape, ya know. ANyways! It is reeeeallllyyy good! I hope 2 see more!