# Matte Painting



## Michael Colton (Sep 1, 2014)

I thought I would make a post about one of my favorite art forms, matte painting. I personally love the evolution matte painting has taken over the last thirty years and I think it is rather underrated as an art form in comparison to traditional mediums or purist digital painting.

For those not aware of what matte painting is, it historically was done by production studios to provide the fiscally unfeasible or then-impossible elements of scenes for films. The actors would be filmed on a set in a minimal setting and artists would later paint the details on glass to overlay onto the film to provide the beautiful and creative settings you would see in the final product. As technology developed, this was of course able to be performed via computer software instead of glass - but the principle is the same. Artists are filmed in a minimal setting (today it is often done in front of the green screens you see everywhere) and then the computer generated graphics are added in later.

But there is another form of matte painting that has been able to emerge through the developing technology. This is matte painting that is not necessarily involved in films but uses the same principles to create a particular style of artwork. In this form of matte painting, the artists may use the same principles of 3D models and painted textures that are used by film studios - but the end goal is a traditionalist one-shot painting. Some also use techniques that are almost the reverse of film studios - they start with the textures they paint digitally, then include photographs of the real world and incorporate them. Often, all of this is later edited by hand with digital painting techniques. The combination of digital technique and photographic elements can lead down some fascinating artistic paths and, in my opinion, seems capable of exploring a range of theme and emotion that some other digital styles are not as easily able to capture.

I just thought I would write a little fan blurb about this type of art I love. The direct relation to Chrons is that a significant amount of matte painters work within the genres of science fiction and fantasy. The realism able to be captured, endless possibilities of digital techniques, and the form's historical connection to fantastical film and television seems to have produced a wonderful partnership between the genres and matte painting.

Here are a couple examples of matte paintings by Giorgio Iovino:


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