[Gecko]

I may be really blind to it, so does everything look fake? there are parts of old holiday photos involved in it.



thanks. no more army.

[The Magic Pen]

Im sorry it does look fake , but it is a very good attempt my freind. I wish I could tell you what to do but it is beyond my skill maybe Spooge will help you out.

[GeN]

Very nice idea and realization but it looks like a fake... *searching for Spooge*

[SolarC]

Don't get me wrong, I haven't done a single matte painting myself so I'm definitely no expert on the subject.

I just think that the type of light at foreground and middleground doesn't match with the sky. (contrast, shadows + color) The air seems to be full of mist and there is no trace of sun to be seen, but the color of the light seen in people and on the ground seems to be from straight sunlight. If you want foggy air I think you should use diffused light (low contrast, much reflections, pale color).

- SolarC

[Atomic Urine]

I think SolarC pretty much nailed it.

The shadows cast by the figures seems to be from a rather intense sunset type of light, while sky in the background on both sides of the image seems lit by a foggy volumetric type of light. I also think the reds on the ship are too saturated.

Henrik, spooge, loki.. someone help the man.

Don't get me wrong though Gecko, I think your stuff kicks so much ass. I'm just being honest, as I'm sure that is what you'd appreciate most. Regardless of what I've just said, I still think this piece is stunning... just not quite as realistic as you were shooting for.

Take it easy.

[dead]

I'm no good at this either, but I gave it a quick once over. I probably made more problems than I solved by adding the jets but I thought that would add to the beleivability.

Wouldn't that be great if you could summon mullins like a genie to do your photoshop
bidding?



tell me if this image doesn't show.

[henrik]

I don't understand why you chose this aspect ratio, as I cannot see you might want to do a pan from left-right or the other way around. And it's too wide for a single frame even at 2:35.

But, here's my advice for the left part of the image. A very quick image to solve the light situation.

[Gecko]

okay i need to think this whole over.
i've been working on it for another hour, thanks for the overpaints.
the aspect ratio is a result of cropping and re-cropping and whatnot. i started with a deserted city scape :) why am i doing this? to see what it takes to make a matte painting. i never tried before, im constantly running into lots of things to take into account.
greenpeach your bus has some nice values & colors in it, on the upper side. the rockets dont keep up with the level of realism. thanks.
henrik, you did give a reason for that huge shadow to be there.

i started to solve the whole thing from another direction, paint the whole damned sky in there instead of going for fog and mist and desaturation. it's too easy to cover stuff up in the fog :)

well anyway i'll be posting whatever i come up with.

thanks again

[dead]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gecko:

greenpeach your bus has some nice values & colors in it, on the upper side. the rockets dont keep up with the level of realism. thanks.

---

Do you mean visually or logically?

[pixelsoldier]

Yay!

It's times like these when I don't think these forums have gone to hell. It's cool to see people help other people out simply to see them progress as an artist.

Cool thread. Very inspiring. I can't wait to see what you come up with next Gecko.

[Allen W]

Combine the colors on GreenPeach's bus with Henrik's building on the left... then Gecko's repaint of the sky.

Can't wait! This makes me want to go find some pictures to matte-ify...

[Gecko]

thanks for the good points.
i'll try some things with the pic, see if i can figure out the lighting.

[Gecko]

hrrhmh. this is painfully difficult :]












puhh... kill me. i dunno what to do.
greenpeach: i don't think your colors were really logical, but the manage to look good and fit the setting pretty well even if they wouldn't really exist in a scene like that.

i took a bunch of photos yesterday from my home city to play around with. another dozen or so tries and i might finish something that would actually pass when heavily blurred :]

[Sumaleth]

Cool image, although to me one of the things that is making it less effective than it might be is the perspective difference between the group of people and the rest of the image. They appear to have a much higher horizon line than the rest of the scene.

Row.

[Liser Studios]

i think the picture looks good, but there is something about it that lets you know it's not real. I don't know what it is...
but if it's a perspective problem, you could always check where the horizon line should be.
you might already know how to do this, but i'll say it anyways.
the boy that's closest to us, in the white T-shirt, and the boy to our right (navy blue shirt, red strips, grey inbetween the red stripes) seem to be about the same height.
Draw a line through the heel of both of their feet, like a line that would go to the vanishing point (i'm sure you know what i mean, you've probably done plenty of perspective stuff).
Then do the same for their heads, except maybe pass the line a little over the top of the navy blue kids head (he seems a little shorter)
and they should meet at the horizon line.

at least i think they should.

you might have already done this, btw... i didn't check so i don't know if the perpective is right or not.

but really, this is making me want to try out matte painting. I can't digi paint any more, not with my crappy P3 500 mhz, 128 MB RAm piece of junk. my computer is skipping from typing this and listening to an MP3!