Iloura

I have started full time work as Digital Matte Painter in Iloura in Melbourne. It's a studio of around 50 based in South Melbourne with great atmosphere and some very interesting projects. I'm currently working on Great Gatsby and After Earth.

Here is the link to the company site: http://www.iloura.com.au/

Paintings will appear less frequent for the next weeks as we are busy but I will try to post something now and then.

Merry Christmas!

In The Dead of Winter

Aurora just started its beautiful display on the December sky but Sir Galahad did not have time to cast his eyes on it, he had to be focused...movement in his armor was very difficult that freezing, whisper quiet night.
The dead was awaiting his victim and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent it. Soon the silence will be broken...

Sketch produced without use of any 3d, 2.5 h Photoshop

Train Station 2036 Concept Design

Train Station, Unknown City, Year 2036. Still traveling on the ground using gravity on magnetic field cushion with speeds reaching 500 km/h 
I started with massing model in 3d Max, added details and textures in PS and painted over. I used some photography for parts of the image to speed things up a little, always a good exercise to be able to produce your concepts fast. Image was submitted to conceptart.com environment of the week. This is the final version as I did not manage to finish for the submission but I won nevertheless this time around :) Link:  

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?249833-E-O-W-Round-196-Train-Station-(any-genre)-VOTING  

Production time around 2 days in total.

Sketch Of The Day | 28 09 2012

Busy month and not much opportunities to paint. Here is today's speed painting 1.5 h on top of a plate by Jitu ( original photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10541586@N07/8028340516/lightbox/ ).Painted in Photoshop.

MPC Alien Cloudscape Results

The competition on mattepainting.org has been finalized. The 3 winners can be viewed here:
http://mattepainting.org/vb/showthread.php?t=7710
I have received a Honorable Mention which is always a positive sign that my work was noticed.

Here is a link to the 4k full resolution image for the interested:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8312/7948173476_b87faf1382_o.jpg

I've been very busy last few weeks due to our move back to Australia. Soon some new paintings will appear here.

MPC Alien Cloudscape - Final Submission on mattepainting.org

After countless hours I finally reached a point where I can't take this any further. I made a list of improvements and tried to troubleshoot my painting. There was around 10 elements which I worked on. They included:

1. Improve foreground clouds of the rings above the cumulonimbus formations
2. Add cirrus clouds on the upper levels as indicated in the concept
3. Improve air flow impression ( add another layer of lower consistency clouds )
4. Emphasise more natural look, storm air spinning feel
5. Add color variety throughout , try varies hues and add to the horizon line color diversity
6. Reduce highlights

I tried to follow the concept art as close as possible and introduced my ideas where there was some space left for creativity.

This was very difficult painting to create and I am happy I pushed myself to do it. The lessons learnt here will definitely pay off in the future. Results coming up in a week or so.

Sketch Of The Day | 29 08 2012

Few days break but here comes another painting exercise. Tough one I must say. Quite challenging color palette at this atmospheric Indian market. Painted from photo reference - Photoshop 2.5h, no color sampling used. Photo reference : Kiwix - http://kiwix.deviantart.com/art/Indian-Market-322132062

Sketch Of The Day | 24 08 2012

Photoshop, 1.5h painting time, photo reference used.

MPC Matte Competition

I am participating in MPC competition - 'Alien Cloudscape'. Please check out WIP thread here - http://mattepainting.org/vb/showthread.php?t=7633. I will post results in September. Fingers crossed :)

Entry Option 01 attached. Working on the second option and then I will make the decision which one to submit.

Sketch Of The Day | 22 08 2012

Finished in 2.5h in Photoshop. Again - no colors were sampled, painted from photo reference.   I dedicate this painting to my first boss from Sydney Architectural Viz company that I worked for ( hint - message behind the painting makes more sense in Chinese).

Sketch Of The Day | 21 08 2012

This time it's Photoshop - 1.5h . Random photo from the net. No color sampling used, painted just from the reference.

Sketch Of The Day

So I just came across this book called "Eat That Frog". I highly recommend it for finding great way to manage your time and hopefully changing your life! Simple but very effective ideas.
One of the main points in building your future is producing a list of tasks that will help to reach your goals and dreams. Without sharing my dreams with you ( yet :) ) I decided to do one digital sketch ( speed painting ) per day of environment or something that appeal to me and serves as good painting exercise.

Here we go then, first painting of a photograph by James Neeley ( great landscape photographer in my opinion ) . Let's see for how long I will keep doing those  - painted in Art Rage in 1.5h including small final tweaks in PS.

Sky Fortress

Environment concept for Gnomon Workshop image contest. The idea is no surprise after watching Avatar. Hovering mountain formations that can be a great protection from above, Fortress of Medth inhabitants suffer from constant lack of drinking water and ground to walk on. Armed to the teeth never been conquered...

Concept painting made in Photoshop with use of some textures and basic 3d model for perspective guidance. I started with finding an interesting sky seen from above the first layer of clouds. I then extended it by painting missing parts and came up with basic sketch/composition. This was developed to the form you see here through 3d modeling and painting over it. Pretty basic right now and would need much more detailing for high resolution modeling but the idea is delivered... I think :) Is it really a fortress?  hmmm, rather not - Sky city maybe...

Matte Painting Showreel 2012

It is finally done. This is my first showreel and now I do understand how much work does it take to actually create one of those. Paintings you see here have been created over period of one year since I decided that this is what I want to do from now on. There is still lot to learn but I do enjoy it immensely. The showreel was primarily produced in Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere. 3d parts were modeled and rendered in 3d Studio Max using VRay rendering plugin. Projections were created in 3d Studio Max. I hope you will enjoy watching it and please leave any comments or questions you might have. Thanks for checking out.

Matte Painting Showreel 2012 on Vimeo

Raz Media matte painting

Sharing with you my latest matte painting for Raz Media in Perth/Australia. Music video by western Australian band Origin to their track "Something Stronger" takes place on deserted,unknown planet with rigid, volcanic and uninviting landscape. The foreground will be part of the footage shot in the green screen studio. The 3d digital model will extend the set and the matte painting will fill the far background as well as the sky. I will post final video here once it's finished and posted online by Raz Media. What you see here is in 90% photographs with some mountains in the far background rendered in Vue xStream 10. Combined in PS CS5.5

Temple of Kong matte painting competition results

The CG Channel's March King Kong competition has come to an end and the results were announced yesterday.
I made the second place this time which is great! Congratulations Bobby and Gene! Great paintings this time around.

Results thread:
http://forums.cgchannel.com/showthread.php?p=21317&posted=1#post21317

Temple of Kong - Final matte painting

Here is finished " Temple of Kong" matte painting for the CG Channel competition. You can find the sketch for this competition in one of the previous posts. The plan was to include ZBrush sculpt in the foreground but unfortunately I ran out of time. I might do projection in the future and post it here so come back sometime. The WIP thread that shows few steps of the process can be viewed here :
http://forums.cgchannel.com/showthread.php?t=14732

I have created basic 3d model in 3d Max. I matched the perspective and rendered fairly simple RGB pass and textured it in Photoshop. I used 3d trees in order to achieve maximum lighting accuracy, they are not hyper realistic but will have to do for now. Waterfalls come from various photos as well as the horizon line image.

If you would like to check out animation of this painting with waterfalls in motion and small foreground parallax please check out my reel at around 1min :


https://vimeo.com/45778958

Underwater Research Facility

Concept environment of top secret facility strictly focused on weapons research. Somewhere in Chinese Sea.

I created low resolution 3d model in 3d max and painted over in Photoshop. Having the 3d model to work with gives great opportunity to explore different angles and camera types.

Temple of Kong

After painting few pieces for weekly Conceptart.org environments I decided to have a go with another matte painting competition on CG Channel. This time it is based on one of my favorite movies - Peter Jackson's King Kong. Plate was given by host Johnathan Berube and here is my concept painting. Matte painting should take at least a week to finish especially as I will need to create high resolution model for the foreground as I'm planning move camera forward few meters.  For the piece you see here I used some basic 3d created in 3d max rest was painted in Photoshop using Wacom tablet.

At The Banks of Glowing River

Environment concept. The idea of glowing river and whole planet during the night is not new to us. Avatar showed us how gorgeous this can look. I still remember the big gasp in the cinema when I watched the film. Anyway, this is not supposed to be on Pandora. Concept of glowing river is just super cool and this is my version of it.

T Rex Valley

I am a huge fan of Peter Jackson's King Kong and really love the design work Weta Digital artists did on that amazing film. So here is a fan art and good practice exercise in the same time. Actually this was initially done for a project that didn't go ahead. In the brief T-Rex shaped rock was supposed to be right under the waterfall. Hope you enjoy

Debris

Post hurricane debris field - environment concept.

Painted digitally in Photoshop with minimal use of textures. Painting time around 3.5h. Originally I wanted to include flower of hope growing out of the displaced root in the foreground but it just didn't work

Game of Thrones Fan Art

Matte painting of the House Bolton of the Dreadfort. Idea was to create dramatic image depicting sinister castle of one of the houses in the story of Game of Thrones. The image was part of the competition hosted on CG Channel.

Composited in Photoshop , castle modeled and rendered in 3d Max/VRay .

Animated camera projection can be found at around 01:23sec of my showreel : https://vimeo.com/45778958
Projection was done in 3d Max, composited in After Effects where I also added falling snow and birds flock.

Rouge City Matte Painting

Final entry to the online matte painting competition based on Steven Spielberg's Rouge City theme. It won the first place.

Foreground has been given. Everything else behind is modeled in 3d Max and rendered with VRay. Distortion was applied in Photoshop and then reflected in 3d set up of the scene.
Final comp done in PS.

WIP:
http://forums.cgchannel.com/showthread.php?t=14379

PLATE:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30343787@N07/6440487919/in/photostream/lightbox

Star Wars/Tatooine matte painting

My entry to the CG Channel matte painting monthly competition. It placed as runner up.

WIP thread:
http://forums.cgchannel.com/showthread.php?t=14268

Modeling and rendering 3d Max and VRay. Compositing - Photoshop
Don't we all love Star Wars? Well, at least the classic ones

Victorian City Square

This concept art have been created a while ago, it was done for a project pitch, however it seems like the project might never come to fruition therefore it's ok for me to include it in my portfolio. Even if it comes back it might take totally different form and could be also taken over by different production designers and creative teams. For the sake of that I will not name the project. My inspiration was work done on Disney's Christmas Carol which had some amazing visuals and artwork in my opinion. The film itself...well, let's leave it here. Rough model done in 3d Max, then I selected an angle and rendered it out simple diffuse and shadow pass. Painted over and textured in Photoshop

New on Blogger!

Hi Dear Visitor . I have just joined Blogger today so forgive me for posting old images that have been created this and last year for now. I should be up to date soon and keep my blog fresh :) You will be able to find here my digital paintings, environment concept art, competition entries and matte paintings..and hopefully other exciting posts. Welcome and have a good stay!

True Time Tales Teaser

This teaser have been created in 2009 before production of full 30 minutes pilot of the True Time Tales. I'd like to share this one with you guys even if that was already a while ago .I was the creative artist behind it and designed all concept art, locations, lighting and cinematography. It was co-directed with Stuart Brennan.Modeling done in 3d Max, rendered with VRay. Special effects - After Effects. Modeling and texturing credits - Green Leaf Film Studios Team

Please email me in order to watch it and receive the password ( jacek.at.jacekirzykowski.com )

True Time Tales Teaser