5.03.2008

I have a moment to breathe... I know, shocking! So before the moment runs out, I shall update the bloggie.

Continuing progress on the "Hermit of the Abbey" concept, I've torn down my original matte painting of his quaint waterfall cottage.



This was the original matte painting I did. Actually, now that I think about it, this is my first matte painting ever. Over the past several months, I've been growing increasingly curious as to the process of digital matte painting and photo-compositing. Over the past spring break, I decided to give it a try based on a few tutorials and matte painting forums I found online. This was the end product.

I guess my initial mistake was just throwing photo elements over my original drawing without fixing a lot of the perspective issues that I had. When I drew the image, I was trying to give it a fish-eye effect, however I failed to convey that with a wonky perspective on the house on the ledge. With such a dynamic upward angle, for example, I shouldnt be seeing that much of the rooftop. But live and learn, yes? This piece went through a series of harsh crits and was only received on a mediocre level at best. Gia was the harshest of my crits, but probably one of the more motivating in terms of starting over.

Taking everyone's critiques into consideration, I went ahead first setting up my scene in Maya and then doing a basic block-in of values in Photoshop. As it progressed I moved into the color painting layers and later started compositing photo elements into the piece. Here is my basic process and the piece thus far:




As far as the progress on this matte painting goes, there are some things that I need to immediately address... the shape of the cliff on the left and the waterfall are too similar in size and shape, horizontal, and too much like the original Maya geometry. I need to go in and break those shapes up but not too much where the shapes compete for focus. Brother Paul made suggestions about the left cliff-face and Brother Don gave me some pointers to break up the waterfall and make it more 'beautiful'... I just hope I don't mess it up. Heh. I was quite surprised and please with myself with how well the waterfall came out.

Anyway... any additional comments, suggestions, philosophical musings? Feel free to comment, everyone. :-D

3 comments:

Charlene Fleming said...

Sister Charlene recommends pushing 3-point perspective on all aspects of the image to emphasize height. It looks good on the right but you don't carry it through in the rest of the image.

Also, waterfalls typically get more narrow anyway as they get further down.

You should lower the contrast on the rocks as they move down and away from us. You should probably paint over the rocks too to maintain the painterly aesthetic and make it match with the rest of the image.

Lookin' good so far. I guess it's mostly just a matter of tying everything together at this point.

Anonymous said...

I have no valuable input here, as I know absolutely nothing about art. BUT, I did want to just say how amazed I am at your talent JonJon. That's just my uneducated opinion, I guess, but I'm amazed nonetheless. :)

Spyderman said...

Amazing stuff. This is what I think. I'm not quite sure where the point intercept or vanishing points are. The left side is not as detailed as the right side. But remember, I can't paint worth crap.