Obilex does a Matte painting!

Obilex

Sooo my dad's birthday is in a few days, and I'm on a massive matte painting kick. This is the only surviving visual record of his childhood home, which I stumbled upon at the town clerk's office randomly this week. All the other photos burned down with the house when he was like 13. I've still got a bunch more work ahead of me on this but I figured I would let you guys in on this while i'm still working on it. Crits and advice are more than welcome as always, I really want to make this as good as I possibly can for him.

NightDragon

I think you're going to have to draw over a lot of that house. It also looks completely desaturated...and even though it's directly in the path of sunlight, it is neither casting a shadow, anywhere, even on itself...or being obviously lit from that side, either.

The trees look way too crisp and numerous and, frankly, green...and way too covered in snow when the house hardly has anything at all on it. The pond (?) doesn't look right, and doesn't make any sense with the bumpy ground it's sitting on...Which seems so bumpy because it's covered in tall grasses...so why would the pond be that shape? And that contained, when there are clearly lower points in the ground immediately surrounding it?

The clouds are also just awkward-looking - there's no sense that the closer you get to the horizon, the farther away the clouds are. If you're dealing with mostly lower-atmosphere clouds, it won't be as obvious, of course...but it's absolutely still apparent.

I'd suggest you just take a bunch of winter pictures, and try to replicate what's happening in them (in terms of overall colors, softness of edges and objects as they fade into the distance, snow cover, etc). It's very obvious that you've cut these pictures and pasted them into this image. Take soft eraser brush and soften the edges of the photo layers a bit (like the tree tops, for example). Redraw things by hand if you need to - like the posts of that house. The house was obviously taken from a lower quality picture, and it's obvious when you see the sharpness of everything else in the image.

Obilex

You rule ND, I'm currently working on the house right now and i'll take everything you posted into account on my next update!

tynic

Yep, the house looks like a dodgy collage at the moment. But I'm interested to see where you go with this!

Aim

The left horizon contour seems a bit weird - on the original photo it looks like a rock outcropping in the distance, or a deciduous tree closer by, but the very defined edge with firs doesn't look natural.

Mustang

I hope you get this to a decent level Ob, because it's a brilliant idea for gift.

Obilex

workinworkinworkin



mainly on the house and sky so far. Just pluggin away.

Thanks for all the words guys!

Kendeathwalker

man I think youd be better off just doing a straight up painting for the house element . That looks like a really low resolution jpeg shopped into a higher resolution one.

The trees look extremely cut out. im sure youll adress that though..


I actually liked the sky better in the last update.. That intricate cloud structure seems to important now competing with the house.

Edit: Was just thinking how difficult/pain staking it would be to paint the house up to that level of detail.. I dont know how set you are on "this must look exactly like a photo".. Another approach-- you might try just keeping the photographic foreground elements and painting the house/trees sky? Might be an interesting effect.. might look like shit, never done it.

NightDragon

You also don't really get super-fluffy cumulous clouds like that in winter...at least, it's not a very "wintery cloud". Super-fluffy cumulous clouds are more for midsummer or fall, I think. The previous iteration seemed more accurate.