Welcome everyone to the fourth Digital Matte Painting monthly challenge, presented by CGSociety! These short monthly challenges will give you a chance to hone in your skills or learn new ones. We will be providing a different theme each month, with (sometimes) a base plate, as well as guidelines. It will be judged as usual by David Luong, Milan Schere and one special guest judge!
These are meant to be fun while at the same time, allow you to hopefully, create a nice looking piece in the end (and win some prizes if you place in the top 3!). These pieces will be a production Styleframe to be presented to the client for approval, so it could be a clean matte painting, or a concept in photo real quality. As always, supporting the story according to the theme is paramount in both technical terms, and creative terms.
All skill levels of artists are welcome in this challenge!
The prizes for top 3 placements are:
1st Prize: 1 x CGWorkshop, 1 xCGTOD, 1 x Ballistic Book of Choice, 1 x CGSConnect Membership
2nd Prize: 1x CGTOD, 1 x Ballistic Book of Choice, 1 x CGSConnect Membership
3rd Prize: 1 x Ballistic Book of Choice, 1 x CGSConnect Membership
Required in every monthly challenge to qualify for the prizes:
An early rough concept of your idea, at least TWO W.I.P’s (work in progress drafts) in the forum for critiques or you will not qualify. Your final draft must be delivered on or before 11:59pm PST on the last day of the month of the challenge.
To enter, simply create a new thread in this forum with the DATE of challenge and name such as: “October 2014 - David Luong”
For this month of October, the theme is “Barlangis” and the brief as follows:
[I]"BARLANGIS can be reached in two ways: From the East coming by train or the West after hiking through 2 days of darkness.
The first thing becoming visible once your eyes finally get adjusted to the distant spotlights are the enormous metallic structures rising out of the solid mountain walls, ceiling and ground. The dark, cold industrial shapes seem out of place in their earthy environment. Faded and worn down by humidity and hard labour.
Whether Barlangis is unfinished or has been demolished is hard to tell if one does not know its past.
Travelers might question the mysterious bond between man and nature but soon come to understand the necessity of their connection.
Only after spending enough time underground can one truly understand the meaning of sunlight and begin to miss the stars.
For the inhabitants of these complex labyrinth of poles and strings a seemingly never ending shift work pattern, in order to secure the very existence of their home, is just as much part of their everyday life as the daily mental recreation in-front of the television, enjoying one of the endless amount of available channels offered to Barlangis’ citizens."[/I]
Concept: https://vimeo.com/4223172
[vimeo]4223172[/vimeo]
Objective: There is no base plate this month. Participants will have the unusual freedom to create a DMP from scratch. There is also no format limitation this time, as long as your final entry reflects the brief in a visually pleasing way. This is more of a photo-realistic shot design task which can include animated objects such as smoke, water, atmospherics, etc. but this is to be a finished Styleframe image, as if presenting to a potential client.
- REQUIREMENT: Capture the visual essence of the brief in a Matte Painting based photo-realistic production art illustration. Read the provided description and come up with your own unique idea based on the story, it can be but does not have to be inspired by the attached reference.
Resolution: Please submit final works in preview form of at least 1000px (jpg) width and while there is no set format for this month’s challenge, we recommend a 16:9 aspect ratio, as this is mostly an industry standard DMP practice for all participants.
Reference: Gunung Mulu cave system
http://wallpaper.pickywallpapers.com/1920x1080/cave-and-water.jpg
Inspiration: Neil Miller’s Bethmora production art at http://www.neilmillervfx.com/page3.htm
and “The Hobbit - Goblin Town” environment http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130202222446/lotr/images/7/78/Goblin_town.jpg
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Tip: Not every detail of the description must be incorporated, as not all landmarks of a city are always visible simultaneously on a postcard.
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Works in progress (W.I.P.) MUST be shown here in order to be considered for prize placement. You must have at least a basic concept, AND at least two rough versions posted in the forum for critiques or you will not qualify.
Well be judging on technical and artistic skills in these. Good luck to everyone! Please feel free to ask any questions here.
As always, you can ask general digital matte painting questions, and post WIP work not pertaining to this challenge in the regular DMP forum here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=196
Cant wait to start this piece.
