Big News + The Art of John Liberto

Hey guys!

Sorry for the long hiatus, I've been super busy with the end of my 4th semester at Centre NAD, and went straight into full out job hunting mode as soon as I was done with school. I also took a little vacation with my boyfriend last week to get some rest from all the craziness of the past few months.

But I'm now back with some really exciting news! Some of you might remember the post I made back in April about Mathieu Raynault, one of my favourite matte painters and a really big role-model of mine. Well, I had the amazing opportunity to meet him later that month as he was invited to attend the presentation of some of our student projects at Centre NAD. It was amazing to meet someone who's so successful and talented, yet super nice and humble too. Now you might think that chance encounter alone was enough to get me all excited (and you'd be right, I was pretty thrilled!), but there's more!

In two weeks, I will be starting an internship at Raynault.com, Mathieu Raynault's own personal studio, which specializes in digital environments and matte painting! :D It blows my mind that Mathieu so generously offered me this opportunity, and I can't wait to get started! I'm super thrilled and anxious at the same time, but it's a good stress. :) I'll be doing 3D modeling and texture, as well matte painting TD work. Right now I'm trying to get familiar with Speedtree, Terragen and Vue, which is some of the software I might have to work with over the summer, on top of Softimage and Photoshop.

That, coupled with a few exciting freelance illustration contracts will be keeping me extra busy over the rest of the summer. The next few weeks will be ridiculously intense, but very inspiring I'm sure!

Now I couldn't just write a whole post about how giddy I am without sharing with you the work of another very talented concept artist and matte painter, John Liberto. Yesterday I participated in a master class given by the great character designer Pascal Blanché, who works as an artistic director for Ubisoft Montreal. He encouraged us to dig deeper than the first level when looking at artists that inspire us, and to try and find what these artists' inspirations were. Looking deeper into Andree Wallin's (another amazing artist I presented here a while back) background, I found he was a big fan of Liberto. 

I was very happy to discover this swedish artist who's done some beautiful concept work for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Big Fish and Alien vs. Predator. He's also worked on Halo and a bunch of other films and games. I picked out a few of my favourite images from his website. Some of his work is a bit more illustrative, which I have a soft spot for.

You can check out his full portfolio HERE.

My progression with Matte Painting + A New Environment Master

Tonight I'm taking a break from some Harry Potter themed sketching (stay tuned for more on that later on this month) to show you the result of my second matte painting assignment, as well as feature a new Environment Master : Mathieu Raynault.

First off, let me tell you a little bit about our second assignment for our Matte Painting class. We were asked to use the three pictures below featuring a plane, some foreground characters, and a moody sky, and integrate them together as a basis for a dark, cinematic, apocalyptic-ish scene. The pictures were taken by our teacher, Jessy Veilleux, and I therefore do not own the rights to them. They were imposed, but we were free to pick and choose elements from them to fit our composition.

Below you can see my finished work. The process involved a lot of keying, color correction, digital painting, integration of photographic textures and polishing. I was lucky enough to benefit from my teacher's feedback throughout the process, which really helped me improve it up to this point. I had a ridiculous amount of fun with this project, and it definitely confirmed my interest in a matte painting career. Even though it was only my second official matte painting ever, the process felt very familiar and natural, which allowed me to really focus on integrating each element as well as I could to make it photorealistic. I tried to stay away from working with a large number of new elements, and rather spent more time on the few carefully selected ones I chose to add.

I'm very happy with it, although I had a hard time letting it go once the deadline came up. But on to other new exciting things now!

Alright so now that I'm fairly happy with something I made, here's the traditional "oh but look how much better this guy is" moment which is essential to keep me motivated and working hard. This week I present to you Mathieu Raynault, a fantastic matte painter and I guess someone I would consider a role-model and inspiration at this point in my life.

Why? Well partly because he's just so darn good at what he does, has an amazing sense of light, color and composition, and can turn any boring scene into an epic work of art, but there's more. Raynault isn't from just anywhere, he's from a little town called St-Bruno, QC. He's a french quebecer born and raised just a half hour away from my own little town, studied at Centre NAD (which for those of you who don't know is where I'm currently completing my second Bachelor's degree), turned out to be a talented artist with a bright future, and headed off to work at ILM and WETA Digital after his studies, to contribute to films such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Matrix, King Kong, Indiana Jones, etc.

Aside from his impressive list of film credits, he's also worked for the advertising and gaming industries, creating some of the most memorable environments in recent film history. After 15 years in business, Mathieu Raynault is considered one of the best matte painters of his generation, and looking at his work, it's easy to understand why. All that would be enough to make him a huge inspiration to the aspiring matte painter that I am, but there's one more thing about Raynault which puts him up there on my list of awesome people, and that's his contribution to our local filmmaking industry.

In 2006 he came back to Montreal, after working for some of the biggest, most reputable VFX studios in the world, and co-founded a little company called Rodeo FX. Since 2006 Rodeo has grown to more than 100 people and attracted a number of large-budget, cutting-edge projects such as Twilight, Spiderman, Underworld, Mission Impossible, The Golden Compass, just to name a few. I like to believe Raynault's decision to come back to Montreal and set up this new studio here had a major role in putting Montreal on the map of the VFX community worldwide.

For all these reasons, he's got all my respect and admiration, and I can only recommend that you go check out his fantastic portfolio now.

http://www.raynault.com/