- Digital matte artist
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A Digital Matte Artist, or Digital Matte Painter (DMP), is today's modern form of a traditional Matte Painter in the Entertainment Industry. He or she digitally paints photo-realistic interior and exterior environments that could not have been otherwise created or visited.
The term 'digital' is used to distinguish a DMP from a traditional Matte Painter, although this is unnecessary, as the nature of a Matte Painter's work remains the same, regardless of the tools and techniques used.
Contents
From Traditional to Digital
Traditional matte painting is older than the movie camera itself and has actually been already practiced in the early years of photography to create painted elements in photographs. With the advantages of the digital age Matte Painters have slowly transitioned to a digital work environment, using pressure sensitive pens and graphic tablets in conjunction with a painting software such as Adobe Photoshop. A Digital Matte Painter is part of a visual effects team being involved in post-production, as opposed to a traditional Matte Painter who was member of a special effects crew, often creating Matte Paintings on set to be used as back-drops.
Workflow and Skillset
Through the growing need for 'moving' mattes camera projection mapping has been implemented into the matte painting pipeline. Although ILM CG Supervisor Stefen Fangmeier came up with the idea of projecting Yusei Uesugi's aerial painting of Neverland onto a 3D mesh modeled by Geoff Campbell while working on the motion picture 'Hook' in 1991, projection-mapping based 3D environment matte art was until recently, like its predecessor matte painting has been, the industry's best kept secret. The involvement of 3D in this until then 2D art form was revealed by Craig Barron from Matte World Digital in 1998 after completing their work on the feature film 'Great Expectations' when they introduced this technique as a 2.5D matte to the public. In production today this combination of 2D and 3D is part of every Matte Artist's bread and butter.
Because of their high artistic skills digital matte artists are often also involved with the creation of concept artwork.
Notable Digital Matte Painters
- Yannick Dusseault
- Dylan Cole
- Mathieu Raynault
- Christopher Stoski
- Dimitri Delacovias
- Jonathan Berube
- Susumu Yukuhiro
- Damien Thaller
- Alp Allen Altiner
- Yusei Uesugi
- Peter Baustaedter
- Sevendalino Khay
- Christian Haley
- Tim Warnock
- Jaime Jasso
- Kenneth Nakada
- Caroleen Green
- Ed Quintero
- Ronn Crabb
- Bryant Griffin
- Shahen Jordan
- David Luong
- Rick Rische
- Milan Schere
- Pamela Hobbs
See also
References
- Matte World Digital
- About Matte Painting
- CG Talk
- CG Channel
- Case Study Forum Post
- Camera Projection Techniques in Maya
- Matte Painting 2
- Digital Matte Art in VFX Production today
- FX Guide
Books
- Barron, C., 1998. Matte Painting in the Digital Age. In: Invisible Effects. Siggraph 98: Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics, July 23, 1998. Orlando, FL, USA.
- Cotta Vaz, M., 2002. The invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting. San Francisco, CA, USA: Chronicle Books.
- Rickitt, R., 2007. Special Effects: The History and Technique. London, UK: Billboard Books.
- Uesugi, Y. et al, 2008. d'artiste Matte Painting 2. Adelaide, SA, AUS: Ballistic Publishing.
Categories:- Digital art
- Digital artists
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