Digital Matte Painting: Final Project - Thematic Matte Painting

19.06.23 - 09.07.23 (Week 12 - Week 14)
Chai Yi Xuan / 0346645 / B' Creative Media
Digital Matte Painting / Entertainment Design
Final Project / Thematic Matte Painting (VFX)

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INSTRUCTIONS

To-Do List:

• Create a 2.5D animation using the set extension from Project 2
  

Week 12

Mr Kannan taught us After Effects in class, teaching the basics and the workflow of creating a 2.5D animation. After the lessons, I went ahead and separate the layers of my painting and trying animating them in After Effects. It didn't take me too long, but that's because I hadn't added the dust clouds and blinking lights.

Figure 1.1: Animated tryout

Week 13

While receiving feedback, I was told that my matte painting wasn't realistic enough, and had to be fixed before I animate my 2.5D matte. I went back to fix the inconsistencies in my painting, and it looked better than before.

Figure 1.2: Project 2 painting

Figure 1.3: Fixed matte painting and final render

Week 14

Since my rendered painting looks better, I moved on to animating it into a 2.5D animation. I have used After Effects before this module, and while I'm moderately good at it— I didn't like using it since it fries my laptop every time (I can actually cook an egg with the heat-). It's a slow process since I decided to split up more layers for my city, plus the cloud dust effect takes a while for my laptop to generate. It took 10 hours for me to animate the matte painting, but I think it was a good effort from me since this is my first time animating 2.5D.

Figure 1.4: Thematic Matte Painting, sci-fi dystopian cities

PDF presentation file for Final Project

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FEEDBACK

Week 13

Your painting is still not realistic enough. The perspectives on your buildings are flat, make them rounder and wrap them. Darken the parts that need to darken, and determine your light source.

The camera movement on your animation is too much. Make it slow and steady and zoom in/out just enough for your viewer to see what you want them to focus on.

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REFLECTIONS

Thematic matte painting happens to be the easiest out of all the assignment I had to do for the semester. Aside from my laptop frying, it's pretty easy work once I know how to use the camera layer. I find it fun to play around with the camera movements, but I know I shouldn't go crazy with it since it's supposed to be animated like a movie scene. Maybe I can try it with other illustrations in the future, and hope that it doesn't completely ruin my laptop.