CINEMATIC :: 07/04/16 - Mattepainting Updates

Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on the mattepainted background for our animation.  Admittedly I've struggled a lot with it composition-wise and have been neglecting to update my blog about it - so here's where I'm at currently.

Last week I refined the concept sketch of the spiritual world, removing a lot of aspects of the floating islands in order to create a stronger and simpler composition.  This was the final sketch that I got out

It ended up being a really dense, naturalistic landscape with a lot of trees and foliage, with one central floating island.  The group seemed ok with it and I started messing around with colors and brush types/shading technique

In the end, this was as far as I got with it, as Tea came up with a much nicer composition based on my sketch and Hamish's test images.  I was told that we were going to add the phone in through use of 3D, and my task for the rest of that weekend and up to this point was to refine Tea's sketch into our final mattepainted background.

Currently there is no background and I'm still debating on whether I need to deepen the lighting/shadows on the islands, but I'll work on that over the weekend.  All of these islands are on separate layers and having a background set up this way means that Jo and Tea can start adding their creatures into the scene!

I do still need to add pipes under the tree for when the Spirit world turns dark, but the rest of the island changes can be done in post production, as far as I understand.  At least the basic setup is done now so that I can play around with lighting and composition effects.  I'm still not sure if I will be doing a background or if Hamish is going to quickly generate one, but for now, it is safe to say that the background plates are more or less done!

I'll probably be helping with animation after this, assuming that I don't need to put too much more into the mattepainting.