[Sukhoi]

First of all I'd like to thank Timo, Frost, Torstein, Andy and the rest of the guys who commented on this when still in progress!!!! Thanks.

I'm doing three backgrounds all in all. The idea is that the first scape is shown for a couple of seconds. Lightningbolts pierce the sky and on these flashes we cut to the next image and so on.
Let's get on with the show:

Scene 1.

Details at 100 pct.


Scene 2.


Scene 3.

With all the "egg-like" thingies being living fetuses. (the foremost one being an animated puppet)

I believe Andy (?) requested some info in the project:
I'm doing these mattes/animated backgrounds for a student film project.
It's basically a story about rape, and the story ends up whith these vues of this barren landscape. It's finally revieled to us that it's full of fetuses who are results of rape lying around, explaining the 'spookyness' of the lands.

Any crits would be appreciated, as the deadline creeps nearer. I've thrown myself head first into this project, and needless to say I've grown with it. The only way really

Note: These images are REALLY dark in the browser, I would recommend photoshop as a viewer.
Made in Photoshop using some regular "cracked soil" images as textures, which where then build upon. The fetuses are a simple 3dmax iamge imported into PS for further detailing.

I believe that was all, if not I'll be back, thanks.

Sukhoi

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: Sukhoi ]

[Matthew]

hey
it sounds to me like it�s gonna be a real cool project. I was going to say that the 2 pictures at the bottom were too dark, but as you said the browser make them look darker.

I especially like the hole in the sky at the right, where all the light appear.
keep rockin and good luck with the project.

take it easy
Matthew alias Lensflares alias Billy the kid

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: Matthew ]

[Spectra]

Great work, great improvement from the WIP!!
Not much to crit there, would need to be really "picky" to say anything.

--Not a must but suggested: The cliff's edge at the bottom left of scene 1, could be more eroded, not a sharp line, since every others cliff's edge are damaged / rounded/ cracked, the eye would flow better in that area.

Again, really nice work!

Guillaume Le Tual

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: Spectra ]

[jonaz]

F���RK det ser bare iorden ud mester..

"right click, save target as"
"right click, save target as"
"right click, save target as"

filmskole projekt? eller hur...

[Sukhoi]

Matthew:
Yeah it's gonna be really interesting to see the finished result on this one. Glad you liked my weird pseudocloud (the hole tihng) hehe, it was a bit of a stetch. Thanks.

Spectra:
Thanks, well it's ok by me being an asspicking turd, it's the only way to get the details better, yeah?
Oh yeah, that cliff edge. Good point I'll fix it, tanks. Although I can't change it much since it has already been used, but I can change it a little.

jonaz:
Thanks, yeah it is.

The cliffs in the first and the second scene needs some adjustment, and the colors in general are completely random. And those fetuses are driving me nuts. Well, back to work.

Sukhoi

[r3t]

First off, i think all three of the scenes ROCK. Man, you are great!!@@!1!
i like the first scene most, the dramatic lightning is great. The other 2 scenes could use some more lightning or contrast. In the third scene the fetusses should look a bit more nasty. I dunno, maybe add some alien slime over it or sumthing.
It all looks like it could be in Mordor,
where's mount doom? :P

[Dr. Bang]

holly fuck Sukhoi, u have captured the mood PERFECTLY!

[Max]

ITS AMAZING !!!

Well done Sukhoi

[AndyT]

Great improvement!
I have no crits.
I kinda like the cold metalish feel to some of the cliffs (does that make sense?).
It adds to the depressing atmosphere.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: AndyT ]

[Bg]

You're an INSPIRATION! That's the best thing I can say The first one is my favourite, the second pic looks nice and calm, works well as a matte painting and the third piece has the same kind of potential as the first one. The nearest eggs look good but the furthest eggs would look better without so high level of detail.. it takes maybe a bit too much attention to itself, if you fake the details, it looks less heavy for eyes.. One way to fake it to pay much attention to the values and then painting only the highlights. This way you only have to worry about the highlights and that makes it easier to keep the composition good. If you keep the closer eggs well defined it will help to sale the effect.
Here's an overpaint so you can see better what I mean:



as you can see I also tried bright gradients on the walls but that changes the mood.. Loki has some great paintings of canyons, you might want to check them out for reference!

The following information isn't directed at you Sukhoi, (you apparently know what you're doing) but for less experienced artists.. some basics of matte painting. Thought it would fit in here, I can remove it if you think it's off topic:

When the deadline is looming and you have to do a painting fast, one way to save hours is to focus most of your efforts to one area (it will be the place that you want the viewer to look at). You can keep the viewers eyes locked tightly on it by giving that area the strongest contrast, a lot of texture and a colour that is the least used colour in the whole painting. An extreme example of this would be a small highly saturated red (=colour that grabs the attention) square (=hard edges, contrast) that has black dots (=texture) painted on a white canvas (=the less detailed areas).
If you keep the contrast down and texture minimal on the less important areas you save a lot of time, the quality stays good and the time spent painting it can be only a fraction of the time you would've spent on a highly detailed version.
As Spooge once said in shadowed and dark areas it is often pointless to make tons of texture, right values and gradients will do the job 10x faster, remember, sometimes less is more!
Here's another situation where you can save some details, this was easier to illustrate than to explain:



Oops, it's almost 7 am.. have to get some sleep now.

[Sukhoi]

Wow, thanks guys!

r3t:
Hehe, thanks. Yeah, dremetic lightning is also easier to draw from. The thing about the next two scenes ar ethat light is almost gone so they'll have to be dark. These scenes are mainly lit up by striking lightnigbolts though. Oh yeah, it's not done yet, I'll addd some "alien slime" for shure, always a good choice
"Mount Doom as about foryfive clicks left of the rocks over there".

Bang:
Thanks man, good to hear. What mood by the way?

Max Kulich:
Tanks!

Andy:
Cool, yeah the metallic feel is something that popped into my head when thinking about how many times these cliffs had been struck by lightning. Perhaps the intense heat melted some parts of the rock making it all shiny. It adds to the "hardness" of the land also, I think.

Bg:
Sweet jesus!! Thanks alot, that's serious business hearing that from you, man. Thanks. Yeah, again the dramatic lighting makes it look better and it also makes it more compelling to the eye.
That value thing....hardest of them all I think. And they're NOT eggs, they just look that way right now, haha.

Excellent advice, directed at all, I don't care if they knew it beforehand, they should still read it, dammit!!!!!

Great. I'll be back with some animation just to follow up on this. It's quite hard to accomplish though, 'cause the director have some specific ideas that need to be done right, and it's almost impossible to do it and still meet the deadline. All this comes down to communication. Once again *sigh*.

See you all later and thanks again.

Sukhoi

[Eudaimic]

Good to see the Danes profiling themselves (though I find it a bit rude to write Danish with all these other nationalities around).

I love the paintings, really nice stuff. If anything, I think that perhaps the clouds seem too solid if you know what I mean? Maybe brighten the shadowy parts of them ever so slightly?

[Borne]

The only thing he wrote was that none of the pictures showed up.. awesome work btw woo!