Thanks
JamesM242, I did see it before but it's always good to visit the BR model shop again...
OK guys, today I have a special treat!
Yesterday my friend Stipan (the painter guy) came over to the studio and we did a quick MATTE PAINTING test - and it was the most AWESOME thing ever!!!!!!
The purpose of the test was to have a crack at the technique, and to figure out how does one light and film the painting.
First Stipan did some sketches to get the idea of the shot and the design of the buildings:
We didn't use actual glass to paint on, we used plexiglass instead. This one was just a test so we used 45x20cm piece of plexiglass, but the proper ones he will paint for the film will be around 2 meters wide so the glass would be really heavy and fragile. So plexi is much more practical for this.
I sprayed it first with black primer to block the light spill when it will be backlit, and Stipan then painted a basic layer of grey.
Then he proceeded to paint the sky and the buildings. Here's a step by step progress of the painting:
When the painting was done, he used an exacto knife to scratch the paint away where the windows and lights should be, making the ones closer to camera bigger, and the ones in the background smaller.
And here's how the finished thing looks. We back lit it with a single neon light to get all those cool tiny windows, and some of the lights we just painted red, to simulate signal lights.
After I filmed it I composited some searchlights over the painting, as well as a couple of flying cars in the background. Here's the final video:
I'm reeeeeally happy with how it turned out. As I said, the real ones will be much bigger and with much more details so they will look really cool.
This is truly a wonderful blend of the painting medium and film, and we really enjoyed the process. It's really magical, we can't wait to start the work on the big ones!
Hope you like it!