I am calling myself a background artist from now on. This whole “what is matte painting?” can go on forever in these forums (and already has).
I think if you really want to market yourself in the entertainment business its best to learn all you can from painting , 3D, photo manipulation and so on. The more skills you have the better off you are.
I still don’t get where you guys got that matte paintings have to be realistic and invisible. Just because there is a book called “The invisible Art” doesn’t make it so. The original meaning of the words was simply a “matte”, ie alpha channel in todays terms used to composite the image between the original film and the “painting”. According to all your definitions a matte painter is subjective to whether or not someone believes it is realistic or not, which is plain bogus imho. If you go by that definition then 90% of the “matte paintings” aren’t actually “matte paintings” because they may be surreal or non realistic in some way. All of you are just slicing hairs. Background painting, matte painting, its all the same f’ing thing.
I agree with you. I know for me personally when I made the choice to start learning matte painting it was never in my mind to only make photorealistic backgrounds but rather I started learning about all types of backgrounds in general. Because one week you might be working on a video game matte painting and they want you to go with the style of the game. And then the next week you might be only adding a roof to a building for a film.
The line moves and shifts around all the time, its impossible to pin down.
There was no such thing as computer animation when the traditional matte paintings were in their prime, so there was never a question about whether to do it stylised or not. It just had to be real!
We are in a generation now where completely real has become so commonplace, that we watch incredibly stylised movies like ‘300’. Were the matte’s in that still matte paintings? They certainly weren’t designed to look 100% realistic. They did however have to seamlessly fit into the aesthetic that the films visuals had established. Is that any different from matte painting for feature animation? Who knows…
What about very realistic background paintings for animation like Beowulf?
Either way, for me personally, i love all aspects of environment work, from concept art thru matte painting, and as such ill be presenting myself as a digital environments artist when i hit the job market. Ill be applying for matte painting positions though.
Seems like even among top professional matte painters, there is still no general consensus…
Nick
Its actually very sad that people are arguing this. Mattepainting has somehow evolved to an extent where the lines are blurred out. You can never really tell anyone that his work is a not a mattepaint or a mattepaint.
The definition doesn’t say it should be real, it says it should look realistic and believable, where real world rules apply. Thats the very reason why the real mattepaints was done, to create a “realistic environment” that could replace a set. The same thing is happening now.
Now why do people consider backgrounds in these animation mattepainting? Because its easier to say and write than " We want to hire people who know how to paint realistically and can apply that same skill on an animated flim that will use techniques that are also applied on mattepaintings." So… mattepainter… one word says it all. No more explanation and you have a concrete idea on what to do on that job.
No one is telling anybody to call themselves background artist, that is a pesonal choice… if you like mattepainting and want to do that go ahead… I think nobody will try to argue with you. Definitions are just there to define differences, thats all… call it what you want, Mattepaint, Background, Virtual environment, etc. etc…
So guys lighten up, don’t get all worked up with definitions. Those are just word, thats all they are. 
Let me throw in my two cents…
Matte painting:
Original definition: a traditionally painted image used to expand an environment, when it was not financially possible to shoot on location, or build the set.
Digital matte painting:
A digital image used to expand an environment, when it was not financially possible to shoot on location or build the set…
Now, this includes CG film and Video Games as far as I’m concerned, as long as the image is “Expanding the environment to save your budget”. It takes far longer to model and texture a massive environment than it does to just paint and manipulate it. And in the case of video games, it’s not just the financial budget your saving.
…And to quickly comment on my last statement, If you do not know how to paint (that is, have knowledge of color, shape, composition, lighting, etc…) You will be an awful matte painter. If you do know composition, color, shape, lighting, etc… then you know how to paint. To suggest anyone can create a matte using nothing but a 3D application sounds ridiculous to me, but if it exists id certainly like to see some examples.
@ simon wicker: do you know of any successful matte painters who claim to not know how to paint? or have not taken painting classes?
what do you consider successful?
look i hate painting. it is the most difficult thing in the world for me to do. if you put a gun to my head i try and get away with it but it is a last resort for me. i studied art (general foundation course that included painting and the graphic design) but it isn’t something that i enjoy doing.
i’m really worried that young aspiring artists are going to look around, wondering about whether or not they should try out matte painting as a discipline but get put off by the notion that unless they paint like dusso then there isn’t a place for them here. i’d like to reassure them that actually this is a broad road an there are many ways to get from A to B.
why did 90% of the digimatte department at ILM start learning vue during pirates? all of these things are tools in an artists arsenal. and they help to create a fully rounded generalist. but you don’t have to be equally good at everything. when i was working at ILM on revenge of the sith we all borrowed yannick’s dvd’s to watch at home and everyone but everyone who saw them came in the next day and said ‘how the **** did he do that?’ this is the problem you get when the best matte painter in the world produces a training dvd - in many ways i would like to see some of the jobbing matte painters asked to do a dvd so that young people get a chance to see the range of skills that are floating around.
i can relate another story from yusei uesugi. we have all seen the photo of yusei working on the die hard 2 matte painting. the actual painting hangs in the corridor outside the lunch room at ILM and i spent many an hour looking over that. it is truly a work of genius. in fact one might think that for someone who was so skilled at painting they might carry on working that way. but for yusei it was never about the process, only the end result. he painted these huge boards because at the time there was no other way of doing these things. nowadays yusei is truly the king of 3d matte paintings - all his working on coruscant is amazing and the reason why i will be getting the new ballistic matte painting book. every skill or tool that he uses (such as vue on his work for eragon) is based around what will get him the most realistic result possible.
deke writes very passionately that this is all really the same, environments, backgrounds, matte paintings, etc. but i still believe that personally they are not. all the companies that he posted were asking for matte painters, not background artists or 3d environment artists but matte painters, so clearly in the minds of pixar, etc. a matte painter IS different.
cheers, simon w.
This could be an interesting new topic discussion,
but for now, all (3d) animation projects ive been involved inn, a matte, photorealistic or not, have been labled a matte.
Yes, that may be true, but that doesn’t mean it is a matte painting, simply, as you said, that’s the label it’s given; usually by art directors and HR people who stick everything environment related under the same banner because they don’t know any better.
Every animation company in the world seems to disagree with you. Please go tell Disney, Dreamworks, Bluesky, Pixar and every other 3d animation company that they should stop advertising for “Matte Painters”.
Don’t you think it’s the case that the title has become such a broads term used to describe a role that has far more expectations than a matte painter should be required to undertake? Another technique becomes available and they shove it under the matte painters role simply because its environment related.
Its possibly true that a matte painter as in the traditional sense simply doesn’t exist today, for one; painting is rarely used except to blend seams, simply because the alternative solutions are much quicker. Where photography doesn’t exist 3d will, and it will be the role of the “matte painter” to bring this to a photo realistic level and maybe re-project back onto the geometry. At this point you quickly fall into the category of environment artist, especially in smaller studios where you’re expected to add additional environment effects and in some cases comp the shot yourself.
To maintain the legacy of matte painting, especially given that its place is all put gone due to the evolving and every changing industry we have to hold a clear and distinct line between matte painting and traditional fine art/illustration landscapes etc. Matte painting is with intended purpose photorealistic, invisible and seamless with a live action plate. Another point been with the exception of establishing shots most DMPs shouldn’t draw attention to themselves or lead the viewer away from the focus of the scene. This is a skill in itself, to make your work look dull and unnoticeable:)
A matte painting ISN’T concepts, near photo realistic concepts, fine art, stylised illustrations, bird flapping in the wind, dragons, glowing mushrooms … i mean has anyone looked at mattepainting.org recently? i’m looking now and every image on the front page can be categorised as the above! there’s even one that looks like a water painting!!! dont get be wrong, great pieces of art in themselves … but not matte paintings!!
anyway before i start screaming like a random drunk person with fleas i’ll say no more 
Dave out.
@ simon wicker: do you know of any successful matte painters who claim to not know how to paint? or have not taken painting classes?
I’ve been working as a professional matte painter for two years and worked on a number of high profile projects … and yes i have to confess i’ve never had a painting class in my life and would say that my fine art skills are pretty useless
Dave.
adding to this, in this day and age there are always going to be pieces where we look at them and can’t decide what we are looking at. is it a matte painting? or is it a digital environment. what could be the defining qualities that separate them?
the art establishment went through this years ago when marcel duchamp signed a urinal and created a readymade. is it art? what made it art? that it was produced by an artist? that it was exhibited in a gallery?
obviously this is going to polarize opinion, with one reaction to be to broaden the scope of appreciation (so anything can be art or anything can be a matte painting).
cheers, simon w.
HR people don’t create position names, supervisors/producers do.
Most people only seem to remember the matte paintings which were realistic but always forget about ones from films where they we’re much more surreal and fantastical like Blackhole, Wizard of Oz, Marry Poppin, Tron and countless others.
I have seen matte paintings from LOTR where large areas were left very sketchy because they were only going to be in shot very briefly or were nowhere near the focal area of the shot.
Also, i notice that when looking at shots from speed racer and comparing them to shots from Pixar’s Ratatouille, even though one is a live action feature and the other an animated feature, the shots from ratatouille are much more realistic.
Compare:
To this shot from ratatouille:
Im not about to tell the matte department that worked on speed racer that their work isnt matte painting just because it isn’t 100% real.
Also, here is an interesting interview with Matte Painter Ronn Brown. He has worked on several big live action movies, and is now heading Dreamworks matte department, and has some interesting points on the subject:
http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=5711
Anyway, for me, ill still consider mattes that are stylised or not in live action productions to be matte paintings. I guess the persons portfolio should speak for itself and let the companies be the ones arguing about whether we are or are not matte painters, not arguing it amongst ourselves.
Cheers
Nick
The speed racer / rat-a-tooy example is perfect.
Yes, speed racer matte is very styalized, but so is the FILM it was in, and its PURPOSE in that film was to EXTEND THE ENVIRONMENT. without making models of it, finding something like it in real life, or rendering (video) of a 3D version of it.
the matte in pixars film served the same purpose. Neither of them, look “photo real”. But both of them look like they belong in with the rest of the elements of the film.
which brings me back to the deffinition of… A matte painting is an image added to the film to enhance, or extend the environment to save money. That IS the deffinition of a matte. period. There are plenty of great environment paintings that could be used as a matte if you were to add it to film. but untill you composite it to film, it is not a matte. it is just an environment painting. Nothing wrong with that, its just a deffinition. And for the sake of defining and catagorizing, thats the best deffinittion of a ‘matte’ you are ever going to get. You can add anything to film, as you can see the speedracer image is far from looking ‘real’ but it serves its purpose of showing an environment behind the live action plate. There fore, its is a matte painting.
Honestly I dont care when people use the phrase “matte” for there work. As i said before, all that matters is that its serving the purpose of extending or enhancing an environment by using 2D images instead of 3D, or real life, for the purpose of saving time and money. And if your calling something a ‘matte painting’ your usualy refering that the piece is meant to be used for that tradition. and thats fine. Im realy not not pickey, or care. But if someone wants a deffinition, thats as good as its going to get.
these definitions are way too slack!
looking at the images posted from speed racer and ratatouille are we sure they were matte paintings? taking into account our past experience of how these companies and vfx teams like to work i would imagine that both of those were the creation of an environments team and a digital environment created by a department of people is NOT a matte painting.
a traditional matte painting is the work of a single artist, an artist and an apprentice or an artist working with assets created as part of a team.
for example in Attack of the Clones: in the sequence where obi wan kenobi is chasing the bounty hunter through coruscant the sequence does not use any matte paintings (all of the backgrounds are digital environments created by the 3d department at ILM).
in king kong when kong is atop the empire state building the digital environment does not constitute a matte painting because a large team built the environment around the empire state building. this sequence does use matte painted elements for the distant buildings and skyline.
you can extend this over to games where you have an environments team spending several years building a city or landscape to encompass the game. this may well use many of the techniques used by matte painters but the final result cannot be considered a matte painting.
in Revenge of the Sith when yusei uesugi creates a full 3d environment of coruscant that IS a matte painting because you have a single artist with complete control of the environment creating the image.
you cannot say that every environment (as long as it is in sympathy with the surrounding elements) is a matte painting because clearly it is too easy to pick out backgrounds that fulfill these requirements but are not matte paintings. the backgrounds in any miyazaki film are beautiful and fully in sympathy with their surroundings but they are not matte paintings. if i make a film stickboys adventures in stickland my stick trees and stick houses are most fitting but they are not matte paintings.
it is very strange to me that we are part of a long tradition of artists stretching back to the dawn of filmmaking but instead of trying to uphold that tradition we are simply allowing it to fall away. now everything is a matte painting and everyone is a matte painter.
cheers, simon w.
I dont think anyone is letting it fall away. I think its more about it evolving with technology.
So I have to go back to this quote because you are now changing your definition of “Matte painting” to being done by a single person because your previous argument all of a sudden has holes in it. You still never explained why Wizard of Oz and Marry Poppins are considered matte painting. Both are in the “The Invisible Art” so your previous arguments are a little hard to quantify. The single person thing is bogus too because there are many famous matte paintings on glass done by more then one artist.
You seem to be defending this definition you are rolling out of whole cloth post by post simply to protect the sanctity of your job title.
This is what i meant when i said the line is too blurred to pin down. These statements seem to contradict each other. That is why i think its so difficult to completely assess what is, and what isn’t a matte painting, because unlike traditional matte artists, there are many films being made where even the live action looks completely phoney.
That’s before we even get into the differences between complete photorealism and hyper-realism…
We seem to have suddenly changed topic from whether stylised paintings can be matte paintings, to whether full 3d scene’s can be matte paintings, but that’s ok, they are both interesting and related i guess.
You said how the coruscant sequence was not a matte painting because it was created in full 3d by 3d dept, and then go on to say that Yusei Uesugi’s full 3d scene WAS a matte painting because it was all created by one artist. So is your definition of a matte painting purely that it was created by one person rather than a team?
What about matte’s that are worked on by 2 or 3 artists, as is the case in a few professional matte’s that i have seen?
In my mind, if a scene is created in full 3D, textured, lit and rendered in 3D and then composited straight into the shot, it falls under 3d environment rather than matte painting. I guess some people will agree with that and some disagree, but that’s why i think its so hard to pin down.
I have a deep and serious respect for all of the traditional matte painters, and study anything and everything that i can find with regards to traditional matte painting.
However, we are in a digital age now, and the art form from traditional matte painting has almost completely evolved into something else with digital matte painting. You said yourself earlier in this thread how you are a successful matte painter who cant paint traditionally at all…
If i could ask Albert Whitlock and Peter Ellenshaw exactly what they would classify as a matte painting in todays digital age, i would love to do that, but i have a feeling that even they would have a hard time deciding where to draw the line between matte painting, background painting, stylised matte painting, photoreal and hyper-real matte paintings and 3d environments… Its just a very different art form now than it used to be, with lots of people having lots of diverse skills.
Nick
i’m not changing my definition, simply expanding on what i think. a matte painting is a photorealistic background. a matte painting is generally produced by a single artist (but i qualified that by saying that you will often have a senior/junior setup, etc).
so far everywhere i’ve worked have allocated one shot to one artist so i think it fairly accurate to say that if you have a team of 50 artists creating a sequence where you are splitting out each discipline in a traditional 3d pipeline of model, texture, layout, lighting, you have a digital environment and if you have a single artist you are dealing with a matte painting. this would be why yusei creating coruscant comes under the matte painting label and the coruscant chase is a digital environment.
a matte painter has always been a jack of all trades, taking an image from raw input through to final output with control of how an image looks - this was one of the things that first attracted me to the job. i can model, but i don’t want to be a modeller, i can texture but don’t wish to be a texture artist. being a matte painter is the best of all worlds because you end up touching all areas of visual effects.
i’ve already said that there are going to be examples that bend the rules because that is just the way art in the twentieth century has progressed. there are always going to be things that make you think ‘hmm, how do you label this?’
however just because we are entering this new age i still don’t think that we can just say that everything is a matte painting, there is still a traditional common ground for what is a matte painting and what is not.
i still believe that a background in a film like spirited away would not be considered a matte painting. this is not to say that they are not beautiful and amazing because they are - but they are NOT matte paintings.
now if we think that the background used in an animated film like that is not a matte painting then what difference is there between that and the background from ratatouille? what process occurred to make one a matte painting and not the other?
or do we consider that there is no cut off point and even my stick film would be considered a matte painting if i entered it into the ves?
cheers, simon w.
I guess in a very loose way, yes, i would consider the backgrounds for a Miyazaki film to be matte paintings. Even your stick man movie…
The difference is, by that stage, you have gone so far away from requiring the skills and techniques offered by a matte painter, that it would be pointless advertising it as a matte painting job.
I see the point you are making, and in my head i really wouldnt watch a Miyazaki film for its matte paintings, but its where to draw that line, and i dont think that is anything set in stone, i think it is just a persons personal decision on where that line lies.
The thing is, backgrounds for animation (back in, say, 1950) and matte painting for film (in the same era), were totally different jobs carried out by totally different people. Now with that work being done in the same software and with similar skills required, it becomes very difficult to know where one ends and the next begins.
If traditional matte painting and traditional backgrounds for animation are the 2 extremes, then 3d animated features represent the middle ground that becomes hard to define. Movies like Speed Racer and 300, and some Japanese films now that are moving towards more 3d realism and utilising more of the technology from western animated features, only serve to blur the line even more in both directions…
That is why i dont think there is a right and wrong about where matte painting stops and something else begins, its just down to where an individual believes they have crossed the line from matte painting into something else…
Cheers
Nick
it doesnt matter how many artists worked on it. a matte painting is a single 2D element that enhances or expands an environment.
a 3D chase sequence is not a matte. Its a 3D environment that took a ton of rendering and compositing as a ‘video’ sequence to achieve. (although there were probably a lot of loose mattes in the background behind the 3D buildings that were wizing by…)
the STILL image of coruscant, though rendered in 3D, is a still image. it was rendered once, the chase sequences of 3D elements were rendered many thousands of times as a video file.
you see why coruscant was cheaper and faster by comparison? why render it thousands of times while its on screen when you can render it ONCE slap it on a matte plate, composite, and your done?
2D cartoon backgrounds do not count as a matte because they are not saving time, or money. there is no other way to have a background in a 2D animation except to paint a background. Its not trying to pretend to be something its not. Mattes are there to convince you there is an environment back there when there is not. and its used to save time and money.
yea i’m a grouchy old painter. 