What is Matte Painting

Matte painting and the film industry go together like peaches and cream. Strictly speaking, matte painting is an image, created using digital or traditional painting techniques, to create a representation of a scene that would be impossible for filmmakers to realize in real life. This could be because the landscape does not exist in the real world, it is not economically practical to travel to a location or extend the setting outside of its filmed parameters. Photoshop revolutionized matte painting by offering a digital solution that would speed up creation time. It also gave anyone with the software the opportunity to try out the high-end techniques at home. The resulting matte paintings are not always intended for use in film, and over time the phrase ‘matte painting’ has diversified to describe a subset of digital art that we all have the opportunity to experiment with.

Understanding matte painting

A good matte painter usually has a solid knowledge of art, which helps when achieving realism. It is important to learn the Sweden Phone Number Data fundamentals of art, pick up a good book and start learning about color theory, perspective and composition. If you have all of those, it doesn’t really matter what tool you’re using. This knowledge is vital for realism, as the eye can sense when something is wrong, my main advice would be to always be aware of scale and lighting. The human eye is very good at knowing when something isn’t quite right and you can often find what you think is the perfect image or element to incorporate into your painting and it will ruin everything. Having a clear concept of what you want to achieve and being organized is a good place to start, especially if you’re under time pressure to create .

Considerations for matte paint

Next, you need to consider what you are going to use for the base plate of your matte paint. This is the key element from which you will build a complete scene. It is worth creating a bank of photos that you can use as a reference to help you understand the way light and shadow work in reality, as well as images that can be incorporated into your actual artwork, either as a base Aero Leads photograph or for additional textures. down the line. Your photo references should help guide you through the creation process. It’s really important to always put some photographic references on the screen while working on a matte painting.

Scroll to Top