Welcome to the eighth Digital Matte Painting monthly challenge, presented by CGSociety! Time has been truncated as this theme was announced later and the month of February is a shorter month than usual. We apologize, but believe in your abilities to get a shot done within the allotted time. Please use it wisely! 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 a special guest judge TBA!
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 x CGTOD, 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: “February 2015 - Alex Jenyon”
Instructions: For this month of February, read the script below, and create a cinematic digital matte painting production Styleframe image based on Part 2a OR Part 7. It’s up to you which you choose! If you go with 2a, there should be no spaceship, just the environment. If you go with 7, it should be painted as if it were the first frame of that sequence (giving you the most coverage in a project matte painting). Follow the requirements outlined below!
Script:
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A BLUE PLANET - A SCENE FROM SPACE
Crash-zoom to satellite view to aerial view of rural alien planet.
1A. INT. SPACECRAFT COCKPIT - NIGHT
Pilot readying for landing, as the spacecraft quickly approaches the
landing field.
- (Deleted)
2A. EXT. LANDING FIELD - NIGHT
PULL BACK to a shot revealing a vast crevice with a landing
field situated inside of it. There is a distant hyper engine noise
and within the canyon we can see the distorted image of a spacecraft
landing on a highly sophisticated landing field.
- (Deleted)
3A. EXT. LANDING FIELD - OPEN PLAZA INFRONT OF PRISON - THE ANTAGONIST
On the dark landing field power-suited Necromongers begin
to swarm out of a hatch opening, followed by their commander,
as he slowly exits the cyber transporter and walks a few steps,
before halting to take in his environment.
-
through 6. (Deleted)
-
EXT. - PLAZA - NIGHT - WIDE ANGLE LENS
A solid structure stretching off into the rock. The CAMERA starts
to move in until the detailed architectural intricacy fills
the SCREEN and then CAMERA MOVES THROUGH IT as we see -
INT. - THE PRISON - ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING
Built within the mountain itself, a marvellous high-tech structure
of great depression…
multilevelled but human scale, criss-crossed by the solid metal
reinforcer beams. -
CLOSER ANGLE - ROOFTOPS
Downshot, as a cyber transporter slides softly to a stop.
9A. ROOFTOP - HERO APPEARS
A shady figure ninjas out of the craft, moving swiftly along the
shadows and disappearing through a ventilation shaft opening.
Base Preview:
There is none! All based on your own creativity and take on the script and part you have chosen from above. The only reference is an alien cityscape in a more barren, rocky environment, such as my Monolith City dmp below for part 2A. Also, imagine The Chronicles of Riddick type of rocky environments. But not day time, night time of course according to the script:
REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS MONTH:
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Capture the visual essence of the script in a Matte Painting based photo-realistic production art illustration using either part 2a OR 7. Read the provided description and come up with your own unique idea based on the story. Matte painting is all about supporting the story!
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Resolution: Please submit works in both 1000px wide for preview, and 1920x1080p full HD .JPG format in the end.
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The final image can include atmospherics but should ideally NOT contain animated objects such as water, vehicles (again NO spaceships) or people, as we will be judging primarily based on the clean DMP itself.
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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
Let’s get started 
