In today’s lesson, we made a short matte painting sequence

Matte paintings have been around since the 19th century, they were originally glass paintings that were used in famous films to create fake scenery, to make landscapes, or a set, giving a fake illusion of an environment. It makes things look grander so it is more specific to the brief. Paint or pastels were used to physically paint a photorealistic scene on the glass. Matte paintings are now made digitally. This technique is often used when it would otherwise be too expensive, inconvenient or impossible to achieve by filming live. Famous films using the original method were The Wizard of Oz, The Birds, the original Star Wars films, Mary Poppins, Spartacus, Treasure Island and the Indiana Jones movies. These films all used actual paintings on sheets of glass to give an illusion of an Ewok village or a cliff face for example. Most films produced today have some sort of matte painting in them.

I added a sky background to my matte painting and put it into photoshop and animated the sky.

The matte painting sequence with the animated sky:

I added a green screen fog to the scene:

I made all the layers 3d and added a camera dolly that moves forward into the centre:

This method could be very useful when I make a title sequence or animation for my fantasy brief, as I can make interesting fantasy type landscapes for each location. For example, I can add a village on fire in the background of a valley.