Week 3|Concept Artist, Matte Painter, Prep Artist and Compositing Artist 2D / 3D

Concept Artist

Alias: art director

Pre-production department

Entry requirements: having experience in art-related careers such as illustrators, proficient in using relevant softwares (such as Zbrush, Photoshop, etc.), showing potentil artistic talent

Concept art convey a visual look and set the tone for an entire artefact, usually appearing in game or film industry. It helps art workers keep in line with the theme as a strong reference point throughout the project. It is divided into mutiple categories including character design, creature design, environment design and prop/asset design.

Concept artists create the concept art to help storytelling, they are sometimes required to work with exisiting design or to develop a brand new with their personal unique art styles. The way of creating includes using traditional and digital tools, and the artefact ranges from 2D to 3D. The development of digital tools enhances the efficiency and variety in art industry.

A concept artist is a typical freelance job with high-level specialised skill, but some of them also play crucial roles connecting VFX studio and film team in a large-scale company.

Concept artists are different from illustrators, the former is to create work as reference for use across the pipeline, wheras the latter is for advertisement or promotion. While, it depends, as some work from concept artists is only for internal use, some may be published as visual displays.

Here are concept arts in Princess Mononokea (1997), using traditional paiting tools in 2D

Character design in Princess Mononokea (1997), using traditional paiting tools in 2D

These are concept arts in game Gujian 3 (2018), using digital softwares in both 2D and 3D respectively:

Here is a video talking about the differences between illustrators and concept artists:

Matte Painter

Alias: environment artist

Computer-generated (CG) department

Entry requirements: having experience in art-related careers such as illustrators, proficient in both traditional and digital painting skills

Matte painters create or improve the realistic environments which cannot be produced on-site for any reason, such as a landscape, a distant location, by using both traditional painting techniques, software packages such as Zbrush and animation programs such as Maya. The work that they create is called matte painting.

In other words, the job of matte painters is to make virtual backgrounds and make them look true to life. A matte painter need to master the principles of drawing, lighting, colour, composition and familiar with the rules of perspective, in order to keep a balance with other elements which will be composed in the same footage.

In large-scale companies, the work of matte artists might be divided into two tasks assigned to environment artists and texturing artists, however, one modelling artist need to manage both modelling and texturing in smaller studios.

Here is an example of digital matte painting showreel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMIjqm3NKw4

Here is a video recording the matte painting process:

Prep Artist

Alias: digital preparation artist, paint artist

Entry level in Compositing department

Entry requirements: a strong porfolio to show the ability, extra bonus if having a degree in graphic design, or another VFX-specific course

Prep artists focus on producing a clean plate as background for the following composition, they will remove all the unwanted objects from the footage to keep a blank foreground. Their work includes image denoising, repairing dropped frames, removing dust or larger stuffs using a set of VFX softwares such as Nuke.

Cleaning-up a plate is a time-consuming process. It is easier to remove elements by using tracking techniques, therefore prep artists always denoise and grade the image sequences firstly. It is impossible to cleaning a plate without rotoscoping in most cases.

In larger companies, prep artists cooperate with roto artists to enhance the work efficiency, whereas in smaller studios, prep artists are also playing the role of roto artists.

Here is a showreel from a paint artist:

Compositing Artist 2D / 3D

Alias: Compositing artist, Finishing artist, Visual effects (VFX) artist

Compositing department

Entry requirements: a showreel to illustrate the abilities, degrees in VFX, experience in VFX industry

Compositors create the final image of a frame, shot or VFX sequence. They take all the different digital materials used (assets), such as computer-generated (CG) images, live action footage and matte paintings, and combine them to appear as one cohesive image and shot.

Compositors consider visual aspects of a scene. Realistic lighting is a key one of these. Anything caused by light hitting a lens is a compositor’s responsibility. They relight in order to improve the look of the image.

Compositing breakdown by Łukasz Stolarski

Compositors do ‘chroma keying’ (also just called keying). This is where they select a specific part of an image that has a distinct colour or lighting and extract it to be used elsewhere. This method is commonly used with ‘green screen’ or ‘blue screen’ footage, where a subject has been shot in front of a singularly green or blue background, in order to be able to place the subject in a different setting or environment later, in post-production.

Compositors work as the last part of a VFX ‘pipeline’ (the name given to the VFX production process). They can be employed by VFX studios or work as freelancers.

Here is a video introducing what is called compositing: