The only how-to guide dedicated to mastering the technique of digital matte painting! Matte painting affords seamless integration between an artist’s painting with live action film footage and allows for greater flexibility and creative input in the appearance of movie settings. This unique book reveals a variety of tools and techniques that are both industry and classroom tested and will enhance your existing skill set. Veteran author and instructor David Mattingly walks you through the process of creating a matte painting, starting with rough concept sketches, working out the perspective drawing, adding light and shadow, and texturing all of the elements in the painting. You’ll gradually upgrade to using Adobe After Effects and Autodesk Maya in order to fulfill your matte painting vision. Escorts you through the process of creating a matte painting, starting with the initial concept sketch, adding light and shadow, texturing elements, and incorporating motion and depth Author is an experienced matte artist and teacher and shares a plethora of unique industry- and classroom-tested tools and techniques Features helpful step-by-step instructions accompanied by screen shots and photos to illustrate the process of creating a matte painting Whether you’re creating a background for a studio production, independent film, TV commercial, or YouTube video, The Digital Matte Painting Handbook helps you successfully complete your project. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

The only how-to guide dedicated to mastering the technique of digital matte painting! Matte painting affords seamless integration between an artist’s painting with live action film footage and allows for greater flexibility and creative input in the appearance of movie settings. This unique book reveals a variety of tools and techniques that are both industry and classroom tested and will enhance your existing skill set. Veteran author and instructor David Mattingly walks you through the process of creating a matte painting, starting with rough concept sketches, working out the perspective drawing, adding light and shadow, and texturing all of the elements in the painting. You’ll gradually upgrade to using Adobe After Effects and Autodesk Maya in order to fulfill your matte painting vision. Escorts you through the process of creating a matte painting, starting with the initial concept sketch, adding light and shadow, texturing elements, and incorporating motion and depth Author is an experienced matte artist and teacher and shares a plethora of unique industry- and classroom-tested tools and techniques Features helpful step-by-step instructions accompanied by screen shots and photos to illustrate the process of creating a matte painting Whether you’re creating a background for a studio production, independent film, TV commercial, or YouTube video, The Digital Matte Painting Handbook helps you successfully complete your project. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Annotation Everything you need to know to become a professional VFX whizz in one thorough and comprehensive guide.

Wisdom from the best and the brightest in the industry, this visual effects bible belongs on the shelf of anyone working in or aspiring to work in VFX. The book covers techniques and solutions all VFX artists/producers/supervisors need to know, from breaking down a script and initial bidding, to digital character creation and compositing of both live-action and CG elements. In-depth lessons on stereoscopic moviemaking, color management and digital intermediates are included, as well as chapters on interactive games and full animation authored by artists from EA and Dreamworks respectively. From predproduction to acquisition to postproduction, every aspect of the VFX production workflow is given prominent coverage. VFX legends such as John Knoll, Mike Fink, and John Erland provide you with invaluable insight and lessons from the set, equipping you with everything you need to know about the entire visual effects workflow. Simply a must-have book for anyone working in or wanting to work in the VFX industry.

Discover the tips, tricks and techniques that really work for concept artists, matte painters and animators. Compiled by the team at 3dtotal.com, Digital Painting Techniques, Volume 1 offers digital inspiration with hands-on insight and techniques from professional digital artists. More than just a gallery book - within Digital Painting Techniques each artist has written a breakdown overview, with supporting imagery of how they made their piece of work. Beginner and intermediate digital artists will be inspired by the gallery style collection of the finest examples of digital painting from world renowned digital artists. Start your mentorship into the world of digital painting today with some of the greatest digital artists in the world and delve into professional digital painting techiques, such as speed painting, custom brush creation and matte painting. Develop your digital painting skills beyond the variety of free online digital painting tutorials and apply the most up to date techniques to your digital canvas with Digital Painting Techniques for Animators.

Whether you'd like to be an art director or already are one, this book contains valuable solutions that will help you get ahead. This comprehensive, thorough professional manual details the set-up of the art department and the day-to-day job duties: scouting for locations, research, executing the design concept, constructing scenery, and surviving production. You will not only learn how to do the job, but how to succeed and secure future jobs. Rounding out the text is an extensive collection of useful forms and checklists, along with interviews with prominent art directors, relevant real-life anecdotes, and blueprints, sketches, photographs, and stills from Hollywood sets.

Who can forget the over-the-top, white-on-white, high-gloss interiors through which Fred Astaire danced in Top Hat? The modernist high-rise architecture, inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, in the adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? The lavish, opulent drawing rooms of Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence? Through the use of film design—called both art direction and production design in the film industry—movies can transport us to new worlds of luxury, highlight the ornament of the everyday, offer a vision of the future, or evoke the realities of a distant era. In Designs on Film, journalist and interior designer Cathy Whitlock illuminates the often undercelebrated role of the production designer in the creation of the most memorable moments in film history. Through a lush collection of rare archival photographs, Whitlock narrates the evolving story of art direction over the course of a century—from the massive Roman architecture of Ben-Hur to the infamous Dakota apartment in Rosemary's Baby to the digital CGI wonders of Avatar's Pandora. Drawing on insights from the most prominent Hollywood production designers and the historical knowledge of the venerable Art Directors Guild, Whitlock delves into the detailed process of how sets are imagined, drawn, built, and decorated. Designs on Film is the must-have look book for film lovers, movie buffs, and anyone looking to draw interior design inspiration from the constructions and confections of Hollywood. Whitlock lifts the curtain on movie magic and celebrates the many ways in which art direction and set design allow us to lose ourselves in the diverse worlds showcased on the big screen.

The function of the painted wooden object ranges from the practical to the profound. These objects may perform utilitarian tasks, convey artistic whimsy, connote noble aspirations, and embody the highest spiritual expressions. This volume, illustrated in color throughout, presents the proceedings of a conference organized by the Wooden Artifacts Group of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) and held in November 1994 at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Williamsburg, Virginia. The book includes 40 articles that explore the history and conservation of a wide range of painted wooden objects, from polychrome sculpture and altarpieces to carousel horses, tobacconist figures, Native American totems, Victorian garden furniture, French cabinets, architectural elements, and horse-drawn carriages. Contributors include Ian C. Bristow, an architect and historic-building consultant in London; Myriam Serck-Dewaide, head of the Sculpture Workshop, Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique, Brussels; and Frances Gruber Safford, associate curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A broad range of professionals—including art historians, curators, scientists, and conservators—will be interested in this volume and in the multidisciplinary nature of its articles.

This book offers a comprehensive and detailed guide to accomplishing and perfecting a photorealistic look in digital content across visual effects, architectural and product visualization, and games. Emmy award-winning VFX supervisor Eran Dinur offers readers a deeper understanding of the complex interplay of light, surfaces, atmospherics, and optical effects, and then discusses techniques to achieve this complexity in the digital realm, covering both 3D and 2D methodologies. In addition, the book features artwork, case studies, and interviews with leading artists in the fields of VFX, visualization, and games. Exploring color, integration, light and surface behaviour, atmospherics, shading, texturing, physically-based rendering, procedural modelling, compositing, matte painting, lens/camera effects, and much more, Dinur offers a compelling, elegant guide to achieving photorealism in digital media and creating imagery that is seamless from real footage. Its broad perspective makes this detailed guide suitable for VFX, visualization and game artists and students, as well as directors, architects, designers, and anyone who strives to achieve convincing, believable visuals in digital media.

Accompanying CD includes exercise files and products to assist with working with the book.