Pixellation Station

These are a couple of concept paintings I did for a competition over at ArtStation. Time permitting, one of these will be made into a proper production-level matte-painting.

I flew from Burbank CA into Salt Lake City UT in December of 2016. I had a window seat, a Nikon D750, and clear skies. These are a few of the photos I took during the flight. 

I have been taking reference photos for many years, and have amassed a nice little library of images from the many places I have been lucky and curious enough to visit. Occasionally I’ll come across an image time and again that catches my eye and gives me pause. This happened tonight while I was working on a concept piece, and instead of finding the proper reference I needed to continue my painting I decided to develop this image instead. I would love to see this printed large-scale.

Here is a quick little concept piece I made. There are some fun ideas here worth expanding upon, but I ran out of time (as is so often the case, with concept work!). I think I will come back in and do some clean-up later.

I ended up building some geometry for the foreground and middle ground. I also put some cubes on top as place-holders for things to come...This is still a work in progress. 

This is an image I put together based off of some shots I took at Red Rock State Park. I did a little camera motion test on this using cards, but it didn’t work that well with the shot. I think if I were to do some camera projection on some basic geometry for the foreground and middle ground it could be successful. Camera projection is awesome, by the way. Like, totes.                          

This is a quick breakdown of the image above. The base plate photos are my own, taken at Red Rock State Park in California. 

Wire removal, power line clean-up, and sky replacement are tedious but necessary skills to have in the world of matte painting and compositing.

Here is a simple breakdown video of the layers I used to get to the final image of “Pink’s”. Original photo is my own.

Here is a breakdown video showing the layers of the image, from the plate which I photographed to the final image. I had an entry-level DSLR at the time, so the resolution of the plate isn’t that great; I was fortunate to be able to get such a spectacular sunset from that perspective at just that moment, though. The color is so beautiful, I have revisited the photo several times over the past couple of years.

Here is an image I put together today using After Effects and Element 3D, with some clean-up in Photoshop. The background plate is based off a picture I took in Japan many years ago. 

This is a quick concept piece I bashed together.

I went back to the old Building Crater from a few months ago and changed a few things. The lighting wasn't quite right, and the collapsed I-beams didn't make a lot of sense. I have started to build some geometry in Maya and get a little camera motion. 

This is a shot break-down which will later be put into my demo reel. I started with a picture I took in Japan, did a paint-over in Photoshop, made simple geometry in Maya and projected the matte painting onto it, animated a camera, then did the final compositing and color correction in After Effects.

Here are some process images for a 3D matte painting I am working on.

Ship courtesy of Tu Bui; concept, lighting, colors, and textures are my own. 

Ship courtesy of Tu Bui; concept, lighting, colors, and textures are my own.