Well, our 100 Year Anniversary Animated Film is out now. I had a wonderful time working on this film with our amazing Set Extension team along with our fabulous Set Extension Supervisor, Suki Lee.
Check out Wish is theaters, there are tons of Easter Eggs referencing many many of our films.
Here are a couple shots I worked on that have been used in our Marketing campaigns.
Enjoy!
Check out Matte Mentors for my upcoming classes! New semesters starting in January!!
We have a Black Friday coupon that’s good til 12/02!
I had some amazing students as we focused on completing a full one-off shot over the past 4 weeks. The students chose their own idea to take from concept to completion. Since it was such a compressed timeline not all of their pieces are finished but everyone did an amazing job!!
If anyone is interested in our courses at Matte Mentors, we now offer 2 versions of classes; Interactive group sessions and Pre-recorded Content only. There are also COMBO classes offering discounts.
Class begins July 16th! I will work with you on your own shot for 4 weeks. We will build it up from concept to final utilizing the same techniques you see here. Sign up now!
Look for Matte Mentors at this fall’s LightBox Expo as well! Chat with Instructor, Eric Bouffard at their booth.
Very excited to announce the latest shows from Disney Animation Studios, that I had the honor to work on: Strange World, which is releasing Nov 23rd, and Zootopia+, which is now available on Disney+.
Here are some of the newest Trailers for Strange World and Zootopia+
Some of my shots from the trailers so far…
Hope you enjoyed the clips! Make sure to see Strange World on November 23rd!
If you are interested in Matte Painting, check out my courses atMatte Mentors!
I just wanted to announce that I am teaching at the site Matte Mentors
The new class on Matte Painting for Animation will start on January 8th, 2023. You can pre-order it now to reserve your spot. It will be an 8 week course with weekly live interactive Zoom sessions and individual critiques on everyone’s work. So if you are interested in learning Matte Painting for the Animation industry come check it out.
I also have a FREE course if you’d like to get a taste of what I will be teaching. This course is Ancient Bridge and is available for download now.
High Speed Clip Highlighting the Ancient Bridge Demo
Hope to see you there, and signup to our email list for future classes and seminars.
I’ve been watching Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and it got me wanting to create some mountains. I created this quick concept.
So, I opened up Gaea this weekend and did some quick mountains there. Gaea is great. Very intuitive and easy to use with it’s node based system.
Simple node setup
You basically keep adding nodes and moving sliders till you start getting something you like.
Gaea nodes
Once you get shapes then you can apply textures within it as well.
Gaea mountain with textures
You just export out your maps and geometry and bring it into your program of choice. I went into Maya to design my shot.
Maya layout
Here is a simple render using Arnold to test look mountain.
Maya render with Arnold
Once I got the placement of geometry (you can use height maps as another method) in Maya, I exported it all over to Clarisse. Here I added volumes of mist and clouds using VDBs.
Clarisse for final and adding volumes
Here is the final raw render.
Clarisse raw render
I then wanted to add some little character traversing the land, so I exported out a ranger archer character from Mixamo and placed in the scene.
Mixamo Character
Little bit of Photoshop retouching and painting for the final.
Final Quick Concept Painting
A quick little Lord of the Rings-ish Mountain concept painting, definitely not a finished painting but was fun to put together for a few hours.
There is this relatively new software, Affinity that’s pretty good candidate as an Adobe substitute if you are looking for a non-subscription model. Their current applications are Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher. I’m currently most interested in Photo.
You can download them for a 90 trial.
The Affinity Photo has some nice features that Adobe Photoshop still hasn’t addressed over the years. Raw editing, true HDR workflow, and 32-bit workflow.
What’s nice is you can import/export PSD/PSB file formats and it supports ABR brushes, so you can have the best of both applications.
You can see the UI is very similar to Photoshop so working in it it’s hard at all.
The cost of the software is pretty affordable, just $50. You can purchase these apps at a 50% discount now. They are available for Mac, PC, and iPad. It is not a subscription model. It is a single one-off price. You have full capability whether on PC, Mac or Ipad.
Download for free and see what you think. For me the HDR and 32-bit capability alone is worth looking into.
Another Semester closes as we begin Summertime. I had an outstanding time with my latest group of students. So many of them really went the extra mile and couldn’t be prouder of the growth they all made. Please take a moment to look at all of the students work.
After 4 straight years of teaching at CGMA, I am taking a sabbatical for awhile. I had such a wonderful time working with all of my amazing students over the years and it has given me a new drive to delve into my own projects and IP for a spell. Please keep an eye out on my Blog for some of my new endeavors. Cheers.
I had the honor of giving a demo at University of South Florida St. Petersburg at the beginning of the year. This is one of the demos I made that weekend. Had a fabulous time with the students.
Wishing that everyone is a safe and well during these troubling times!
This image also announces my CGMA Matte Painting course will be all NEW starting this summer!! Registration just started. Hope to see many of you joining us! This is one of painting I did for the new course.
There have been tons of great courses, programs, etc on sale to help those cope with our current lockdown. I have started to put together an Artstation store. If anyone would like some brushes and some tutorials please take a look. Some are free and I have a coupon for 30% OFF now thru Summer. The CODE is LOCKDOWN2020
Studio EB 