Castle Dracula Matte, Brenton Cottman (2D)

[I-NetGraFX]

Very well done! Maybe a bit too desaturated for my taste ...


Daniel :arteest:

[chuck_belmont]

wow man........ just wow. i love the feeling i just love everything about it. it reminds me of the early castlevanias how they were more unfluence by tradition media and styles than the anime that they are nowadays. i know this is a lot to ask but if you could be so kind as to send me a slightly hier rex version for a wall paper that would be really awesome of you!

chuck.pires@gmail.com

[ploink34]

Simply marvelous, nice depth.

[ervine]

Ohhh.. i like this... maybe a simple glow from one of the windows of the castle would be nice...

[JonStoll]

Dude that is Awsome!
Good Jarb. I am curious what your process was? Please do tell. I really like the amount of scale you put into it. I think it is working great. That one little perch is really a nice touch. I personally like the dark feel on this one. There is this really Dead feeling that I like, not in a weird way. Well done, Wish I had a bigger copy for my desktop background.

[kornel]

wow! I love the atmosphere and details! Gratulations... :applause:

[Luke Mrozek]

That's a great image, very dark, with heavy and disturbing mood. I like it a lot (but I wouldnt like to live in that village...)!

[lv-88]

nice details and mood!
it would be intressting to live there ;)

[MKStudios]

Great details! I really like how the buildings in the foreground give a sense of scale to the rest of the piece.

[Necroskull]

impressive work!!!
good job!

[YANGZHENGDONG]

very good very good:banghead: I like it very much!
studying~~~~~

[Amilton Diesel]

Simply awesome!

[herbertV399]

Good work - has dimension.

[vanderwolff]

Ambient perfection. Outstanding use of focus and lighting. Now all you need do is give us a walkthrough of this pic to be canonized forever. :)

[snwbrdn7]

You know I feel like I just got taken out of the USA and into the making of a great film such as Lord of the Rings riding on the top of one of those Nasgoul creatures approaching a small city tucked in the mountainous valley of some fictional world. Keep up the great work. Did you use any 3d for this. Block tests, anything? Or is this pure inspiration of the mind via PS?

[brenton]

I'm just as amazed by this work as i am by the fact that you're one of the few people i know that have the same first name as me

but really, great work i love the dark feel and how the town is on the edge of the cliff

[SteelPixel]

I'm a retoucher by profession and I think what you did looks outstanding, great lighting, love the mood of the whole piece and you did an excellent job of blending your shots together, very sweet

[pinnamraj]

thats one great art piece u created.......
love the mood .......

[captainboom]

WOW........nice work....I like the mood


CAPTAINBOOM

[Vahle]

A very beautyfull painting, cool style. :applause:Five stars :thumbsup:

[AdamMiller]

ooh nice work. how much is the painting and how much is a collage?

[Haroon]

Really excellent work! The mood is amazing. What bothers me just a little bit are the textures on some of the mountains immediately to the left of the castle. They just seem too far for us to be able to discern such precise texturing.

[texxx]

very impressive....

[SpiralFace]

very nice.

The castle looks like a painting Yositaka Amano did for one of the Final Fantasys.

keep it up

[LiToKi]

Wow, I like the atmosphere in this one very much :).

Care to post the 3000 pixel version? :)

[cserbuj]

Great work. Very nice. Love the atmosphere. I love this kind of images.

[Tranchefeux]

Hello, very good atmosphere on your visual and the details are
impressive, cheer.

[elnady]

Very nice but a bit too blury:D Great work

[olijosman]

Really great! I love it...:applause:

[Frenkie]

Great picture!
You mentioned collage techinique, what's that?

[stefgrafx]

very good painting... remember me lord of the rings in the ambaince...

[thesuit]

beatiful matte...
the suggestion of much detail is what I like the most. Then the color palette , mood and depth.

Exellent job! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: two up here!
and five stars as well

[Fred Heys]

Cool! Like it...........

[telecaustic]

Man, this image just tugs on my imagination. The small forest at the base of the hill, between the town and the castle must have some scary things lurking about. The thing I like best about this picture is the "geographic sense" of things in the painting; everything is in the right place. Anyhow, good job.

Chris

I wish there was a high quality printing service for some of these images. This (and others here) would make a cool print to hang on the wall.

[a111]

WooooooooooooooooooooooooooooW! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[jdsb]

omg :eek: ,'kin awesome work man :eek:
the depth in the piece is insane.:applause:

[Coltzero]

oooooh i love it! a beautiful work! did you use a wacom?
And what about that church, did you draw it yourself, or used an existing picture?

beautiful work, great lightning and wonderful rocks!

CZ

[pearson]

Great picture!
You mentioned collage techinique, what's that?He means that he took pieces of several photos and put them together, then painted the rest of the picture on top of these joined photos. It's not as easy as it sounds, either; getting the lighting and colors to match, plus keeping the scale of all the elements believable in relation to each other is quite difficult.

[sideffect]

Very nice atmosphere. could you post wip pics so we can see what is photo and what is painted?
Great work

[buzzbomb]

Love it! :thumbsup:

Great atmosphere indeed, I wanna go there :D

[OPM]

just wonderful, the whole ambient and atmosphere is great.keep it up!

[lapinstudios]

very nice, great atmosphere

[ShinChanPu]

:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:

No words.

[Branko]

Magnificent composition.

-rasdasa

[malcolmvexxed]

flawless as far as collages go.

edit: i can't think of the artist whose work this reminds me of. i'll get back later

[mr3dhabiby]

very nice
thank you.

[Derrie]

I like this one a lot. :)

[J-CoM]

I like the scale and depth you've achieved. I do feel that there's a lack of contrast between the castle and the surrounding mountains. Although, that may be what you were going for.

Also, is that a dull sun or a bright moon? It seems like it could go either way. A dull sun would be incredibly creepy.

Great stuff :D

[bCottman]

Wow! Thank you all so much for your feedback and compliments.

I_NetGraFX: I agree and I adjusted the saturation.

Chuck_belmont: it's funny that you mention Castlevania, I had been playing "Symphony of the Night" just recently. Those old castlevania games just had such great atmosphere. To bad they dont make them like that anymore.

brenton: I am as amazed. It is a rare name indeed. Often see the first half but not the last half.

Shadow Slayer: I am a big Yoshitaka fan. I was looking at some Vampire Hunter D for inspiration. I've played some of the older FF titles, none in a while though.

Frekie: As Pearson said, by collage technique I am refering to cuting, pasting and painting different sourch images into my composition. Often a matte painting will have a "plate" image which is altered with say a sky or extended buildings or something. You then can have before and after images. Here I didnt start with any plate. instead I had a rough sketch. By starting with a layout sketch, my original composition is driving my painting rather than whatever reference I might find. from there I would find, cut, past and paint over whatever element I need for a particular area of the painting. very similar to the way you might create a texture map over UV coordinates. in this case there are about 20 different images. There are also areas within the picture that are just straitforward painting, but usually it is a combination.

Telecaustic: Thanks. Everything is in place" isn't that the Talking Heads?

Coltzero: yes I do use a wacom table. 6 x 8 Intuous 2. And yes, the church is completely hand painted. I think it may need a bit of work still though.

Haroon: I see what you are saying about the texture. I will do something about that.

I will try to get some sort of image breakdown together for those who were asking for a work in progress.

Thank you all for the kind words
Brenton

[PetriJ]

Compostition looks good, but the scale of colors is very limited. Although, in film industry they seem to put somekind of monocromic filter in the final version anyway.. http://cgtalk.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[rmsmedia]

I love it, awesome scale and mood...

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

WOW! Now this I like VERY much......I'm always amazed at the stuff people do with PS. I so need to get back into it.


Top work! :)

[userBrian]

As sideffect said, can you post the photos so we can see
your process?

[depleteD]

That is beautiful.

[bCottman]

I posted a link on the first page to an image of my initial layout. I hope you find it helpful.

Thanks
Brenton

[adam-b]

I wanna paint like this!!:sad:
Very impressive work :thumbsup: :buttrock: :applause:

[OTO-ACP]

Yop :bounce: !!!... Good work under photoshop, I like the environment which emerges some as well as the idea, cheer, good road!!!...

[jrr]

hey brent, a really good one, representin!

pop me an email dude, what's going on?

[cris castro]

sure i like, its fabulous!

[Darkmatter]

So any chance we can get a high res version? I'd love to put this on my desktop.

Thanks!

[uwil]

very nice matte painting. i love the mountainside looks real. :buttrock:

[vki77]

amazingly done - after seeing the break up - i admire the simplicity and the beauty

[userBrian]

Gotta try this technique sometime. Thanks.:)

[snix]

great imagination!artistic conception!

[Spc]

WoW
Like in castlevania.
Excellent work! :eek:

[Christoph_H84]

Perfect! Truely amazing how you direct the viewer throught the image by lightning technique.

Amazing over all compositing and lovely details.

[mboden]

I totally agree with everyone, You have done an excellent job of compsition and lighting, Would please send me a larger version to me so I can enjoy the image to it's fullest.

[habashart]

Wow, A very nice work, dark and vague. I raise my hat for you, the best in collage technique.

[HGM]

Very well done!! The photos you show in your breakdown are well chosen, and you integrated them perfectly. I love the desaturated feel!! Exactly as it should be! This is an excellent example of what a talented artist can do with mixed media, and I'm really impressed.

-Heidi

[Darkmatter]

bCottman, are you going to fullfill the requests for a higher res image for people to put on their desktops?

Thanks vbmenu_register("postmenu_1701935", true); vbmenu_register("postmenu_1701935", true);

[bCottman]

Thank you all again for your responses and interest in my painting I truly appreciate it. Unfortunetely I prefer not to a post high resolution images of my work at the moment. Being that the high resolution image is the only "Original" of the painting I have, I prefer to hold onto it for a while. Sorry.

Thanks again for all of your comments.

Brenton

[Darkmatter]

Thank you all again for your responses and interest in my painting I truly appreciate it. Unfortunetely I prefer not to a post high resolution images of my work at the moment. Being that the high resolution image is the only "Original" of the painting I have, I prefer to hold onto it for a while. Sorry.

Thanks again for all of your comments.

Brenton


Its understandable, although disapointing. :) When you feel more comfortable maybe you could link even a medium res one so that some of us can have a nice desktop. Up to you though obviously. :) If you ever change your mind about your large res peice, please PM me. I really like it and actually considered making a poster out of it for my room. For some reason your image just struck a cord in me about my old gaming days.

Best regards,

Darkmatter

[Sardinha]

great sense of depth and rich atmosphere...thanks for the link. instructive.

cheers

r

[TheDrunkenRabbit]

Wow!, allot of work and great results.

[MorganRalston]

Very Spooooooky! I'd hate to live in that village. Good Work.:thumbsup:

[redneckstudio]

Spooky and beautiful. Makes me feel sorry for the people who live down in the village though. You just know they have a bat problem.

[eclu]

great sense of space and scale

[MattGyver]

That's just amazing. It's definately much more impressive than the real Dracula's Castle! :eek:

[Nekura]

Wow! I love it! The image just sucks you in.. I feel somehow transported.. really fantastic work! :applause: Even though it'll stretch, I'm still going to put it in my wallpaper rotation :)

Excellent!!

You know, I kind of get the feeling that there was no cliff when the castle was built.. but such a strong evil emanated from the dwelling that the ground slowly sank into nothingness..

Anyhow, Cheers!! :beer:

[ThePumpkinKing]

That's just amazing. It's definately much more impressive than the real Dracula's Castle! :eek:
What, there's a real dracula's castle?

[MattGyver]

What, there's a real dracula's castle?Yup. It's in Romania if I remember correctly. The home of Vlad "The Impaler" Dracula. He was the inspiration for the Dracula book. It's actually a very plain looking castle, but it is way up in a very inaccessable spot and is still pretty freaky.

Edit: Technically his family name was Tepes, but Dracula is more intimidating. :twisted:

[AmazeMe]

I totally agree, there is such a strong evil emanating from the dwelling it is almost unreal.
No I would not be residing in the village either.
Fabulous work.

[ysvry]

great work i love the atmo in this picture

[ZombieFrog]

wow, no crits, just wow

[Eva 001]

Chilling scene, I love it!:thumbsup:

[Folashade]

Very well done! Maybe a bit too desaturated for my taste ...


Daniel :arteest:
I dunno..... I'll have to disagree a little there i think the uses of colour really creates a distressed gothic look. Rather cool too I must add! :thumbsup:

[ThePumpkinKing]

Hey, sorry to be the one to bump the age old thread up, but I just saw this making of thread on CGNetworks. May I just say this is one of my favorite Matte Paintings, and this was part of the reason that I wanted to learn to Matte paint. Well done on the making of thread.

[conceptx]

Pretty cool stuff here... it feels so real but still have some hanging effect kind of like end of the world, if that was the aim brilliant but if it's part of the world then otherwise.
Keep it up man.

[floatingrunner]

hmmm.... its really nice :)
to be honest, i didn't really thought of dracula's castle be this way <- heheheheh~~ i guess years of playing later versions of castlevania kinda just give me the impression.

kinda spooky...

[mastara]

hey.......:) i live in transylvania:buttrock:
...eeerrr....don't realy have this kind of scenes but.......oh well:shrug:

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