Matte Paintings

During this class I began working with video compositing, but I took extra interest in the matte creation used in the process.

This was the first time I really worked with a Wacom tabled, at least the correct way.  Looking back I can't see how I lived without one.  It was interesting to see that working with the tablet and Photoshop is simply an extension of the familiar pencil and paper.  All the same rules apply and the change of physical to digital medium has nothing to do with the final product and only the process is altered slightly.

One of our projects involved skies since this is one of the most common uses of matte paintings.  We worked with pure photo manipulation and hand painting as well.  Here are the ones I created:

Photo Stitched Sky

Photo and Hand Painted Combination

Hand Painted Sky

We were then to find pictures of landscapes and replace their sky with the ones we created.  Below the composite images are the original photos with the "real" sky.

Photo Stitched Sky

Photo + Hand Painting Sky

Hand Painted Sky

After taking this compositing class I will never see pretty much anything the same way I did.  I was absolutely amazed to find out just how much of movies and videos in general is "fake".  I was familiar with the concept of compositing and green screen, but had never realized the full power of techniques like set extension and rotoscoping.