I recall back in around 2005 when matte painting was cool; like Google or Apple, though we didn’t even know we needed a thing called an Iphone back then and terms like Facebook and Youtube were still a new concept! You want to send a tweet? what are you? a bird? … Marvel was a few years away from their golden lottery ticket that would be Iron Man, Lucas unveiled his final sin to the world in the form of Revenge of the Sith and a little known director was becoming a house hold name with a TV show about a bunch of plane survivors trapped on an island with a polar bear. Few people had heard of a program called Zbrush and Nuke was still just a WMD!
Back in 2005 this place was buzzing with young artists! many of those said people have gone on to become very successful matte painters and even directors! Sadly matte painting is rarely matte painting these days, now it’s 3d matte painting! or simply environment artist, but the idea lives on!
I’m not sure what i’m trying to say with this post; maybe things were more cool back then, and things are cool now, but back then whatever was cool, had energy, a buzz of excitement, especially in this corner of the interweb! It was like that moment when Leeloo first sees the outside world, or when Jake Sully is running through the trippy forests of Pandora … that sht was a rush to the head! … i’m not sure what’s cool today … that after 17 years zbrush finally decides to add the fundamental basics of any 3d program, an object manipulator! ? or that CGtalk finally has a working upload Image button for a site that is focused purely on a visual medium … after, 12 years?
Happy painting of the mattes 
and may you paint many mattes to come!