Amazing Movie Matte Paintings from 5 Professional Artists!

We’d like to let you know about people we think are doing great work. And this time we present works of five professional matte painters who have colossal experience in film industry. They are: Dylan Cole, Frederic St-Arnaud, Yanick Dusseault, David Luong and Chris Thunig.

 

What is matte painting? - you ask. Matte painting is a mixture of photo manipulation and digital paintings to create the vision of a place that makes you believe it really exists. Matte paintings are widely used as backgrounds for movies and video games.

 

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DYLAN COLE.
Dylan Cole is a leading matte painter and concept artist specializing in work for film, television, and video games. He was born and raised in Southern California. He enjoyed drawing at an early age. He mainly drew pictures of comic character. But at the age of 14 Dylan started to paint. He pretty much taught himself traditional painting and it became his obsession.

 

Dylan attended UCLA’s fine art program. His first real job was with Illusion Arts shortly after I graduated from UCLA. Then he rose very rapidly. His client list seems to go on forever. Dylan collaborated with: Black Box Digital, Blizzard Entertainment, CIS Hollywood, Digital Backlot, Dreamworks, Microsoft, Origami Digital, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Animation and VFX, Warner Brothers Studios, Weta Digital and many others.

 

Matte painting created by Dylan Cole for the film “The Lord of the Rings”.

 

Dylan Cole contributed his digital art skills to many blockbuster movies such as: A Sound of Thunder, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Van Helsing, The Chronicles of Riddick, I, Rorot, Sky Captain, World of Tomorrow, The Aviator, The Ring 2, Memoirs of a Geisha, Four Brothers, The Reaping, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Superman Returns, The Last Mimzy, Pirates of the Caribbean: at World’s End, The Golden Compass and etc.

 

Matte painting created by Dylan Cole for the film “The Chronicles of Riddick”.

 

But probably, Dylan is most proud of the work he did on Return of the King because he contributed a lot to the film.

 

Matte painting created by Dylan Cole for the film “Superman Returns”.

 

Take a look at DylanColeStudio.com to know more.

 

Matte painting created by Dylan Cole for Happiness Factory, Coca-Cola project.

 

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FREDERIC ST-ARNAUD.
Frederic St-Arnaud is a visual effect artist with 10 years of experience, focusing mostly on high-end photo-realistic digital matte-paintings, set extensions and concept arts. Frederic was born in the small town of Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada. From a young age he showed a keen interest in art and began to draw. After two years studying Fine Arts and one year of Communication Arts, he worked on many theater plays and exhibited his paintings during this time. In 1997 Frederic entered 3D animation School in Montreal where he studied 2D and 3D animation. At the end of his studies he worked as a Storyboard artist for a time moving on to Character Animation for several TV Series and commercials. Currently, he is a lead matte-painter at the visual effects company Digital Dimension.com.

 

Matte painting created by Frederic St-Arnaud for the film “The Wind and the Willows”.

 

Frederic St-Arnaud has credits in the following movies: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Golden Compass (Best visual effects Award Winner 2008), The Legend of Secret Pass, Race to Mars, Silent Hill, Sin City, Babel, The Wind in the Willows, Racing Stripes, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sharkboy and Lavagirl, The Last Sign, Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Napoleon, Spy Kids 2, 3, Once upon a time in Mexico and many others.

 

Matte painting created by Frederic St-Arnaud for the film “The Wind and the Willows”.

 

Frederic did many concepts arts, sketches for Sin City movie trying to figure out how to adapt the black and white cartoon look of the original comic book from Frank Miller.
And then, he did lot of CG environments and matte-paintings. Here is one of the examples.

 

Matte painting created by Frederic St-Arnaud for the film “Sin City”.

 

Frederic St-Arnaud was involved into numerous famous projects (cooperation with Fly Studio, Hybride, Alpha-Vision, Digital Dimensions, etc.). But his experience at Rodeo FX where he works now, is so far, the one that he enjoys the most.

 

Matte painting created by Frederic St-Arnaud for the film “Nouvelle France”.

 

Take a look at www.starno.net or read the interview with Frederic St-Arnaud to know more.

 

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YANICK DUSSEAULT.
Yanick Dusseault, aka DUSSO, is a visual artist, matte painter, conceptual artist and illustrator from Canada. Currently he is employed as a Lead Matte Painter at ILM (Lucas Digital) San Francisco, California.

 

Matte painting created by Yanick Dusseault for Star Wars. Episode III.

 

If you are fascinated by such movies as Star Wars (Episode III), Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lord of the Rings, then you must love the works of Yanick Dusseault. He also created rich and detailed background imagery for the following movies: Screamers, Witchboard III, Silent Trigger, Solo, The Assignment, Warriors of Virtue, What Dreams May Come, Mystery Men, Dungeons & Dragons, Terminator III and etc.

 

Matte painting created by Yanick Dusseault for the film “The Lord of the Rings”.

 

Take a look at Dusso.com to know more.

 

Matte painting created by Yanick Dusseault for the film “The Lord of the Rings”.

 

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DAVID LUONG.
In 2005, David earned his BFA from the Academy of Art in San Francisco, California, specializing in matte painting and compositing. Then he worked for Disney Toon Studios as a background painter, and from this went onto to work at Luma Pictures on Underworld: Evolution as a digital paint artist.

 

David also worked as a freelance matte painter, creating environments for independent films and for the Dubai based cityscape concept studio, Riva Digital. David is currently working for Blizzard Entertainment as a cinematic artist and finisher. This included look development, painting, lighting, rendering, and compositing to finalize a shot.

 

Matte painting created by David Luongt for ‘Wrath of the Lich King’ project.

 

Some of David’s credits include StarCraft 2: Teaser Trailer, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, StarCraft II, Night at the Museum, Pimp My Ride, Superman Returns, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, Silent Hill, Underworld: Evolution and the newly released Diablo 3, etc.

 

Matte painting created by David Luongt for ‘Chains of Humanity’ project.
The original photo is below.

 

Matte painting created by David Luongt for ‘Temple of Knowledge’ project.

 

Take a look at DavidLuong.net to know more.

 

Matte painting created by David Luongt for ‘Temple of Souls’ project.
The original photo is below.

 

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CHRIS THUNIG.
Chris Thunig is a professional matte painter and concept artist. In 1999 he was given a job as a storyboard and preproduction artist at a 3D animation company at Babelsberg Film Studios near Berlin, Germany. Then Chris moved to Paris where he worked as a digital matte artist at French visual effects house Duran Dubois. After spending more than a year on a feature production he joined The Moving Picture Company in London.

 

Currently Chris Thunig is a part of Blizzard Entertainment’s cinematic team.

 

Matte painting created by Chris Thunig for ‘Alien vs. Predator’ movie.

 

Some of the motion pictures Chris Thunig has since been involved in are: Wolfgang Petersen’s ‘Troy’, Ridley Scott’s ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, Tim Burton’s ‘Corpse Bride’ and Ron Howard’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’, Paul Anderson’s ‘Alien vs. Predator’ and others.

 

Matte painting created by Chris Thunig for ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ movie.

 

Take a look at Thunig.com to know more.

 

Matte painting created by Chris Thunig for the film ‘The Da Vinci Code’ .

 

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Hopefully, you’ve found this article inspiring for you. Wish you much success and more creative ideas! See you soon!

 

 

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 9:20 amand is filed under Illustrations and Art, Matte Paintings and Concept Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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