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.
