Some recent work

If any of you have been wondering what I've been up to in the long silence of the past few months, I'll let you in on it. Much of it has been not that interesting from an artistic point of view; I've been reworking past images for application in new layouts. The film effects work is kind of interesting, but there's nothing I can show at the moment. 

But there are some fun things I can show. Here is a digital painting I just barely finished last week. In the final piece, it wrapped from the front to the back of a card so you didn't see the entire elephant at once, but I painted it as one image, then adjusted it for the final layout in Adobe Illustrator. It was a quick little project, but is was fun and something I don't get to do much of.

Here is a personal piece I did as a matte painting challenge contest for the CG Channel website. The plate was provided and instructions were given to create a Rivendell-like setting as a matte painting. I shot my own source material for the buildings and used them along with a new sky to create this painting. Video footage was also provided, so I then took my matte painting into AfterEffects, motion tracked the footage, then matched my painting to it. I also added some birds (had to key out the sky) after stabilizing the original clip. There was a good deal of masking and color correcting, then mist was added at the bottom. As I was working on it, I did send it around to get advice from other matte painters and I think that really helped. It may not be perfect, but I was pleased with the result, for a quick comp of the painting. In case you're wondering, I didn't win or place in the contest, but it was a great experience nonetheless.

Click here to see the final comped footage.