A simple and effective way to see how a Matte Painting comes to life

At MattePaint our goal is to help Artists and aspiring Matte Painters around the world achieve their professional goals and improve their skills. Our Artwork Guides are a great spot to stop and learn how Matte Painters go about their creative process.  These Guides are a simple and easy way to look into what goes into creating a Photo-real MattePainting and allow the reader to quickly see an image come together from start to finish.  Over the past 18 months we have had some of the Industry's best Artists show us how to create beautiful Matte Paintings using our Image packs and walk us through the process.  For those of you who haven't yet, make sure to check out these Tutorials and Image Packs as we revisit them!

Art Guide: Rocky Alpine Tutorial

  • Images included - 15
  • Medium Difficulty
  • 350mb Filesize
  • PSD included
I didn’t really come up with a story to begin with, I just started creating and let things flow. The concept unfolded as I went along and I found my stride with it. I let the images in the pack inspire me! (Check out the pack here!) I grabbed the images that I liked the most and then I went from there. As I started putting together the pieces of the puzzle I had all sorts of ideas - I wanted to put futuristic buildings here, have a character there; I was overflowing with possibilities. The last touch to the story was the little droid I added. By that point it was clear that the hero character is heading towards a secret base hidden in the mountains with his robot companion. - Saby Menyhei

Art Guide: Goblet Of Giants Tutorial

  • Images included - 16
  • Medium Difficulty
  • 927mb Filesize
  • PSD included
I created this artwork as an entry to the weekly competitions hosted by MattePaint and to challenge myself by competing against fellow matte painters.  While browsing the resources provided by the team I really loved some of the water images and that inspired me to turn a scene from the aforementioned anime into a photo-realistic movie setting. - Erik Shoemaker

Art Guide: Storm Tutorial

  • Images included - 9
  • Hard Difficulty
  • 775mb Filesize
  • PSD included
I created this artwork for the contest hosted by MattePaint.com a couple of months back. The aim was to use a predefined set of photos from the site to create a matte painting. I aimed to do a simple, but very finished 2D matte where every aspect of the image was finished and polished in a way a matte painting needs to be. The piece was worked out over a weekend and was not really planned but was more of a result playing with images until I decided which ones were producing the most exciting image look (which in essence is what the challenge was). - Josu Solano

Art Guide: Artefact Tutorial

  • Images included - 10
  • Medium Difficulty
  • 340mb Filesize
  • PSD included
The most challenging thing for me, as I’m an amateur in matte painting, was to create a feeling of depth in a landscape filled 90% with snow. If I hadn’t prepared a few reference photos before starting — showing the sense of depth in snowy mountains — then probably I wouldn’t have achieved such a realistic look in the final image. Of course I find all my resources on MattePaint and it’s always so easy! So I always recommend looking for reference before you start any piece.  I spent about 3–4 hours a day after my office hours working on this piece. I also added a 3D sphere from zBrush using the ‘Greeble’ effect. - Waldemar van Deurse

Art Guide: Rio Skyline Tutorial

  • Images included - 12
  • Medium Difficulty
  • 866mb Filesize
  • PSD included
I wanted to avoid the super cliche "looking out at the landscape" image, so I tried to bring a little interest to the foreground character by adding some additional elements to his clothing. I wanted people to question where he's from, is he human or Alien, how far in the future is this?... I think that's what makes artwork really interesting in what we do. I don't think I'm the greatest story teller in my work but I'm always focusing on improving that. - Mike Johnson

Art Guide: Starfighters Tutorial

  • Images included - 8
  • Medium Difficulty
  • 385mb Filesize
  • PSD included
This tutorial will show you how to create a very common transformation: Cleaning and Integration. As a matte painter, you will be asked to do this task quite often! It’s a method that seems easy at first, but in truth it’s a bit more complicated. I will show you some tips that I used to properly clean this image of all life and artifacts from the photo. - Victor Pietrzykowski

Art Guide: Castle Of Abaddon Tutorial

  • Images included - 22
  • Hard Difficulty
  • 140mb Filesize
  • PSD included
I‘m a big Game of Thrones fan so my idea was to create a moody establishing shot for a castle setting which could appear in the series. It was also a personally challenge to myself because most matte paintings I did before were for the Sci-fi genre. The full painting took about 5 days, because I could only work on it in the evening after work. So probably about 10–12 hours. - Marvin Funke

These Tutorials are a great way to see the workflow of Artists in the Industry and see how a Matte Painting comes to life.  For a deep insight into each Tutorial be sure to check out the downloadable Packs for these Guides that come with all of the images used to create the Cover Art as well as the PSD's from the Artists themselves.  Check the Artwork Guide Packs out here!