Creating Worlds Podcast

Anyone who knows me, knows that I put a big focus on the craft of matte painting. I found two awesome matte painting tutorials this week, and they really dole out some awesome information, but what makes them different is they’re from colleagues that I regularly talk to and have watched for quite a while.

Click through to check out the artists and their tutorials

Gordon Tarpley

Gordon Tarpley is a rising star in the matte painting world. He takes part in a lot of contests, and wins a lot of them. He’s constantly releasing new work and he releases screenshots of 3d stuff that he’s working on. If you want to talk to an easy going, but clearly focused guy, check him out on twitter.com/gordontarpley. Gordon shares a lot of information through various networks but the best collection of his behind-the-scenes work and his videos is on his blog: http://kneadableeraser.blogspot.com/

What makes this tutorial from Gordon interesting, is that it’s for a stylized matte painting. It’s a little bit more “painterly” than most of his other work, but that’s because of the subject matter. Technique wise, Gordon shows how much can be done with just a brush. Gordon also does a lot of interesting things with masks, layer adjustments, and with the way he handles photos. Don’t take my word for it, just check out his demo below.

CGChannel April Matte painting Challenge WIP video from Gordon Tarpley on Vimeo.

Tim Nargi

Tim Nargi is a very talented beginning matte painter/vfx artist who lives in the Washington DC area. Like most of us not living in major film centric areas, Tim has to work hard to keep the dream alive,  and just like Gordon, Tim has work ethic in spades. Tim is also a great photographer, and budding filmmaker.  It’s clear that Tim knows the DC area very well and If I needed footage/photos of anything in DC, Tim would be the first one I’d hire. Check out Tim on twitter.com/digitaltimmay.

Here’s a short video showing what Tim has created in his tutorial:

What’s great about this tutorial is that Tim, goes through the steps in great depth and not only does the matte painting and 3D work, but also shows off the compositing aspect that so many matte painting tutorials leave out.

Check it out here: http://blog.digitaltimmay.com/2010/08/21/skydive-matte-painting-making-of/

Tim has told me that he plans on creating new tutorials on a regular basis. So definitely check out his blog: http://blog.digitaltimmay.com/

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Tutorial Tuesday by Matthew Scheuerman