Monday, March 28, 2011

shot 7 retouch

I always saw room for improvement in this particular section of the painting, and finally found the time to revisit it.


(old version)

shot 5 WIP

a few different atmospheric iterations (also, this version is missing the foreground)


(clean plate)





getting there!

Monday, March 21, 2011

Friday, March 18, 2011

mush-dev




having fun designing the mushrooms for shot 6 - entering the cave (above are a few "tops" and the latest version of the model - still tweaking the SSS settings).




The foreground mushroom will be fully CG, while the background ones will be rendered out and put on cards.

Monday, March 7, 2011

shot 6 WIP




(early concept art for this shot)


There are a few elements that still have to be layed in, and a lot of the areas where the rock meets the water hasn't been resolved yet. I'll be leaving some of the more stark god-rays that I'd like to be there for the compositing stage, but I feel that the atmosphere is beginning to define the space nicely.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

color

I'll say it again: James Gurney's book Color and Light is a must-read! I've been doing a lot more painting from life in addition to master copies, and that book has proven to be a great guide. Here are two studies I did this weekend:



Although acrylic has its limits, it helps you to work fast and works well for these kinds of studies. I've taken to doing about one of these a day, and can already feel their impact on each of my matte paintings.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

update

I have my website up and running - check it out!

www.friedlanderportfolio.com

Also, James Gurney's book Color and Light finally arrived. It already has been a huge help with understanding how color and light work, and is making a huge difference in my work.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

shot 2



This shot hasn't yet been fully composited. I'm still new too Nuke, and have had to learn a lot to get the program to do what I want. I've found that it's best to paint over what Maya renders, and use that as a guide when compositing.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Update

A few cool things: 1)progress 2)I've developed a new method of translating my paintings into 3d space!

1) I've begun to work on my fourth shot, and have almost completed the second and third. I'm getting a lot more comfortable in Nuke, and feel confident enough to take my own work into the program and begin to work on it. Adding layers of atmosphere, glows, birds and sheep (in some instances!) will hopefully add a lot of life to each shot.

2) I have developed a method that not only has sped up my entire process drastically, but also given me a lot more flexibility while translating each painting into 3d space.

Before: I had been modeling each foreground object, keeping the edges painstakingly close to the concept art. This took time, and often would have to be altered when painted over.

After: I now model with planes. Because the painting is projected, no matter where I position the card (plane), it will line up with the rest of the painting. I can also then easily create an alpha channel that won't reveal the mirrored texture that gets projected onto the back side of the geometry, as was the problem with modeling objects with a front and back.

Taking that a step further, I can increase the tessellation of that plane and model it with the sculpt geometry tool.

This is nice because I can model the geometry beneath the painting in realtime - Maya's high quality render panel gets a pretty clean version of the painting displayed. And I now have a lot more flexibility when painting, as I can easily deviate from the painting when I need to. What's tough now is moderating the amount of iterations that I can put out as it can turn into a rabbit-hole. Nevertheless it's nice to have that ability.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

weekly update

Although I have made considerable progress, there still is a huge amount to be done.

Here is an outline of where I am currently:

A couple weeks back I spent Saturday and Sunday driving all throughout Malibu with my camera and good music. The goal was to gather reference to be used in my matte paintings, specifically shot 3. Rather than find assorted images online or in print, this would help to define a look for that landscape with consistent geographical similarities. Below are three of the ~800 photos I took over the course of that weekend.







Back in the lab, I began to refine the geometry that I had laid out in Maya for my animatic. I started by simply extruding and dividing polygons, but after dusting off my modeling skills opted for the "sculpt geometry" tool. This cut the time that it took to get organic looking shapes considerably. After setting up a simple lighting scheme I exported a render to photoshop and began to paint. Below are images that illustrate several stages of that process.



The latest version will need a lot of reworking, but I have decided to move on to the next shot to be able to return to this one with a fresh perspective. I've found that once you take a painting to a certain point, you become so familiar with it that you have trouble seeing any glaring mistakes.

The above shot has been a huge learning experience. I've made a lot of mistakes that I have been working to avoid while working on shot 2. Below are some images from that shot. My work flow has been ironed out - I've set up render layers, put a lot more time into creating natural edges (Certain edges of Shot 3 are still noticeably geometric, and its been a headache going back and modifying it after the fact). Also instead of direct lighting I'm taking advantage of Mental Ray's physical sun and sky. It's simple, quick, and yields very nice results that make for great reference.


(This revision pulled the camera back, which allowed for a stronger composition and emphasis on the distant city. The bridge becomes a subtle part of the landscape, how I always intended it to feel. I also repeated the overall shape of the background city to mimic the shape of the rocks on the right foreground, a nice thematic tie-in)