Just added a couple of comps I did several months ago of an Interactive Sommelier for Central Market. I designed these in support of several ideas we presented to the client. This one never got the green light and I’ve since moved on to other client work, but they were fun to make.
Shame. I really wanted to drag that cork with my finger.
Photographer Hiroshi Seo has an nice mix of work in his portfolio. His site also provides an interesting way of navigating his work through the use of a timeline.
I used to do a fair amount of work in 3D before working at Springbox. My abilities as a 3D artist were limited, mostly focused on texturing, lighting, and rendering still shots, but the time I spent in the field was highly enjoyable and beneficial to me as a designer. During that time I would frequent CG artist forums such as CG Talk to get answers to questions, inspiration, etc and I was often drawn to the work of concept artists and matte painters. I quickly became intrigued by their methods.
For Our Entertainment
The majority of the work concept artists and matte painters create is for the entertainment industry. Concept artists work early on during the course of a film project to establish the story’s setting and style based on the ideas of the storytellers. They generally work in a loose, more painterly style and tend to churn out a vast amount of paintings for any given project. Concept artists have a masters understanding of perspective, which is vital in realizing the scale of the environments, vehicles, and characters they are illustrating.
Matte painters create massive digital paintings, mostly of environments, for use as backdrops in complex scenes. Their paintings are generally of scenes that would be either too costly to create physically or don’t exist in real-life. Their work is highly realistic and strongly leans on the understanding of composition. They leverage photographs and images of real objects, filling in the gaps with digital brushes and bringing all of these elements together as a collective whole through their strong understanding of light and shadow.
A Great Resource
Probably the best online resource for learning more about their techniques is The Gnomon Workshop. The Gnomon Workshop is the leading resource of training materials for digital artists of all kinds. You can find DVDs on matte painting, 3D animation, special effects, character design, etc. These DVDs are hosted by some of the best artists in the business. I recently discovered that almost all of the training sessions have sample clips that you can view online, which is a great way of getting a taste of what’s contained on the DVDs.
I’ll admit that I’ve never watched one of these DVDs, but I know people who have and they speak very highly of them. I’ve been tempted to buy a few mainly to learn more Photoshop techniques from some of my favorite digital artists and increase my understanding of concepts such as perspective. Speaking of favorite artists, here are a few concept artists and matter painters I greatly admire.
James Clyne
James Clyne is a concept artist and matte painter. You might recognize the top 2 images from the new Star Trek movie. I love the work he did on the Romulan ship (2nd image). The 3rd image is one of the ones he did for Transformers. James has worked on other films such as X-Men 3, War of the Worlds, Troy, and A.I. Here are his DVDs at The Gnomon Workshop.
Ryan Church
Ryan Church is a concept artist and has had a prolific career, specifically for his work on War of the Worlds and a couple of the Star Wars prequels. Ryan creates some amazing looking machines. Here are his DVDs at The Gnomon Workshop.
Dylan Cole
Dylan Cole is a matte painter, concept artist, and ridiculously talented. You can see from the images above that he’s worked on some high profile films such as The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Superman Returns, but has also worked on films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, I, Robot, and 310 to Yuma. Just check out his resume to see that he’s been very busy over the past few years. Here are his DVDs at The Gnomon Workshop.
Dusso
Yanick Dusseault, aka Dusso, is a matter painter. It’s hard to put into words how epic his paintings are. Everytime I see his work I’m blown away and wonder how in the world he does what he does. He’s worked on projects such as The Lord of the Rings, War of the Worlds, Star Wars, and Pirates of the Caribbean. The bottom 3 images are panoramas of “Coruscant” from Star Wars and have to be seen in the higher resolution versions from his site to be fully appreciated. Here are his DVDs at The Gnomon Workshop.
Yesterday Flickr announced the ability to display photos taken near your current area via location-aware mobile devices such as the iPhone. Obviously the images that are displayed have to contain data either from GPS coordinates or entered manually on Flickr. Either way, the idea of having these various vantage points with you no matter where you are in the world is an interesting idea.
Sometimes when I’m out on a photowalk by myself I often wonder how other photographers would approach the subjects I’m photographing or maybe what angles they’d see that I might miss. Being able to pull in a pool of Flickr photos based on my location would no doubt spark my imagination in those moments.
On September 18th, 2008 Sigur Rós did a live recording of 4 songs from their latest album “með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust” for AOL Spinner Interface…whatever the heck that is. This video is a sample from that recording, although they have the song name incorrectly labeled in the video. This is a performance of “Fljótavík”, not “Vid spilum endalaust” which is also featured on the site. The other 2 songs they performed are “Inní mér syngur vitleysingur” and “Íllgresi”.
The videos are rounded out by a short interview that’s so-so. Sigur Rós interviews are not always the most informative. If you want to know more about the band and their music I would highly recommend watching “Heima” (here’s a trailer).
