Major Project

OK here is the final result for my major project. The result was influenced by the beacon of Amon Din from the "Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King"



To achieve this image, I combined several photos shown here.

Foreground right rocks


Foreground left rocks


Foreground figure (shot last to match image perspective)


Background


These were blended using masks and adjustments in RAW to bring the colours and exposure in line.

The tower in the middle ground was painted using a brick texture and various other painting techniques. Shadows and highlights were manually painted in to match the scene. The final tower was duplicated to place into the background.

The fog was painted in at a low opacity using my tablet.

Artificial Elements

Here are the results for the artifical elements exercise

Original shot 1


Edited shot 1 - fog and rain
To create this shot from the original I went through a few steps.
-In RAW, lowered the saturation of the image overall, as well as lowering the saturation of certain colours.
- Still in RAW, added in an exposure gradient to the left hand side to even out the exposure across the frame
- I introduced a few cloud photos from my archive to give the overcast/rainy look to the sky
- The fog and rain effects were painted in using my tablet, the fog was done with the normal round feathered brush, the rain was done with the "Water Colour Loaded Wet Flat Tip" brush (this brush gives the streaky lines you can see)
- From here it was simply a balancing act to bring the elements together using opacity adjustments


Original shot 2


Edited shot 2 - stars, day/night conversion
To achieve this effect I went through the following steps.
- In RAW, the overall exposure was lowered, and the saturation and luminance of the blues was heavily reduced.
- Contrast was increased slightly.
- On a new layer, the clouds in the sky were cloned out, new clouds were introduced.
- The starfield was created using the noise filter, copied, expanded and masked off to give different size stars.
- The moon (yes its too big intentionally) is a photo.
- The highlights on the windmill were painted in.
- Using adjustment layers, i selectively reduced some colour from the sky as it still appeared a bit too bluish.

Major Project research

For my major project I have decided I will be doing a matte painting. The following is just a few examples of work from 3 matte painters whose work I admire. These images and artists will feature in my presentation for my proposal.

The definition of a matte painting is as follows.

“A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that would otherwise be too expensive or impossible to build or visit”
-Quoted from Wikipedia entry on matte painting

First up, my all time favourite matte painter, Dylan Cole. The first 3 images are all personal works, while the last is a production matte painting made for Peter Jacksons' "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King".

www.dylancolestudio.com









Next up, Chris Thunig. These 3 images are all production based.

www.thunig.com

Blizzard Entertainments computer game "Diablo 3"


Unused painting made for Danny Boyles "Sunshine"


Matte painting produced for Ridley Scott's "Kingdom Of Heaven" (The actors in front are live action, the background is a matte painting)


Last but certainly not least, Yannick Dusseault.

www.dusso.com

This piece was a personal work.


A view of Caras Galadhon from Peter Jackons "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring"


Painting made for an unmentioned production.

Retouching Exercise

Ok here are my results for the retouching exercise, these may get tweaked before they get submitted but here they are so far.

Shot 1 - Original



Shot 1 - Retouched
For this shot, I cropped in a bit tighter than the original capture, removed the female models hand, cleaned up the background a bit, and then did the usually cloning/airbrushing to clean up the face. I also had to fix the corner of the models mouth as it looked a bit strange stuck together like it was.



Shot 2 - Original


Shot 2 - Retouched
All I did for this shot was cloned out some skin faults, airbrushed over the whole face of both models. I enhanced the eyes of both models slightly and also the lips of the female model.