Final Products!

First is the final image of my Space Train!

I still have some ideas of what else I could do to this, but for now this is the finished piece

I painted the train, the platform and the railings myself. The train took  the most time to finish because I have never drawn/painted a train before in my whole life. :) I'm really pleased with the result!

Next is the desert ship image!

To finish this one off, I had to merge all the layers together to be able to adjust the Hue and Saturation, and the Brightness and Contrast levels. I wanted to give it a look as if it was during a sunset, and I think I did an amazing job!

I had to adjust the brightness down and up the contrast level before doing the Hue and Saturation levels, but I'm really happy with this result! I'm definitely going to be using this technique later on.

For now, this will be it. I had a lot of fun and worked hard on these pieces, so it will be easy to do more in the future!

So far!

And here is my painting after putting the ship in!
I added a small layer of sand over the ship itself, to make it look like it was stuck in the ground. I have never done this before, so I think I did a pretty good job!

I also added a slight color adjustment onto the ship so it would match the scene better.

Second images!

So here is the ship I'm going to use. I got it off of a royalty free website, so I don't have to worry about copyright claims.

I made a few edits to the ship itself, so it would be more "mine"

Matte Painting number 2 -- First Images

Here are the first images from my second Matte Painting.

This time, mostly painting it.

 1. I started with a soft gradient for the sky. This technique I learned last year from the Dylan Cole assignments, and I wanted to implement it for this painting. I had a few tries to get the one I really wanted to use for this, and this one was the one I chose.

2. I took the sky out of this desert photo and then cut half of the image to paste over my gradient. This is when I first started thinking of what I actually wanted to do with the desert idea.

3. Here is the image over my gradient, making a very nice looking sky. I got excited at this point because it was all working out.

--- I cleaned up the edges and such so it wouldn't be so pixellated, and that it would fade into the background. This gives the image a hazy and heat-wave look to the horizon. I'm feeling giddy now :)

4. I started painting over the sand at this point so I could create my own desert landscape. I'm happy with how this is turning out at this point!

5. And here is my clean desert landscape!! I'm going to be putting in an old ship in here, and it's gonna look so awesome! This is my favorite piece to date

More coming soon! Stay posted!

Updates Part Two

One more thing. My computer has been buggy and it wasn't working right last week at all.


So I've been a little late with this as well because I've been trying to figure out what has been wrong with it. I've even removed everything important off because I was planning on reformatting it, but I don't have the time for that.


I will have things up later tonight

April Updates!!

Hello all!

I'm sorry I haven't been posting lately, but I've been incredibly busy with other projects and school. I'll take the time to give an update of what's been going on here though!

1. I taught a small workshop during Animedia Fest to a small crowd of two. They were interested in learning some Photoshop techniques, and I in turn learned some new ones as well. I then took these techniques and applied them to my first matte painting. I'll have the finished picture up here later.


2. Because of the March Break Mania Camp Photoshop class, I learned how to make some really neat looking Nebulae. I'm going to create some space scenes later on too.


3. I have a second matte painting started, and I've been working on the painting side of it at the moment, but I will move on. It's going to be a Desert scene with a boat on the sand. This will look so neat I know it! This has been teaching me better painting skills which I then apply to my other personal works.


4. On the side I have done a few photo edits inside Photoshop to get a handle on where all the filters are, and what I can do with them. This has been an interesting learning curve for myself, and I'm excited to show it all off when I'm done.




That should be it for now! Pictures will be up later!

Mania Camp Round Two

Here are two more images to show!

March Break Mania Camp!

I'm teaching Photoshop to some pretty cool kids this week during March Break, and they're all learning how to make a space nebula background!

Here are the ones I've created so far in teaching them the course:

My Whole Evening

Has been spent painting a train in space.
I'm not kidding either.

But this means my first matte painting is almost done!

Here are the Work-In-Progress shots!

1. I started painting a train to put in my background to go with the image of myself and my family.

2. This is the train so far, with a basic platform painted up to get the rough shape and size for it. And this is the shot of my family. I still need to add a few filters to make them match up with the rest of the image.

Still trucking away on this!

Next Photos

Here are the other two photos that wouldn't upload last night!

7. Added a lens flare and put it behind the final clouds layer to make it shine through.

8. Took the transparency on the background layer down to 92% instead of 100%. It made the whole image 20% cooler

That's it for now, keep checking back!!

Nebula Time

Hey guys! Sorry I've been late!

Here is what I've been working on in Photoshop. A Nebula background for a composite painting!

Yup that's right. And I'm posting my Work-In-Progress shots here. Here's the first set of them:

1. The beginning layer. A circle gradient

2. Added clouds and an angled color gradient to them, then made the layer properties themselves set to Overlay

3. Repeated last step, to increase colour and vibrancy.

4. Erased some patches. Then added Noise to look like space dust. Adjusted amount in the Levels dialogue box

5. Added more Noise to look like distant stars. Erased some patches to make it look more natural

6. Added more clouds to increase vibrancy even more

And I'm currently having errors with trying to upload the next few images, so I'll get them up later.

Keep checking back! This will be one cool image when finished!

Self-Directed, Let's Go Round Two!

Hello again everyone!

This time around, instead of doing just one matte painting, I'm going to be doing multiple ones instead.

I am currently researching the works of artists like Dylan Cole, Matthieu Raynault, and Yannick Dusseault. This should prove to be an interesting semester indeed!

Also, before I leave this post, I will share with you the image I came up with last semester:

Keep checking back everyone and hopefully you'll all see something you like!