Digital Matte Painting Training With David Mattingly

Author of The Digital Matte Painting Handbook



Click on the following links for more details about each training opportunity:


David Mattingly has taught and nurtured the next generation of digital matte artists as a professor at two of the nation's leading art schools, School of Visual Arts, and Pratt Institute. David's former students now do cutting-edge work at major studios and effects houses, including Framestore, Pixar, Nathan Love, Curious Pictures, Psyop, Look FX, and Blue Sky. In a recent survey of graduates from David's classes, three-quarters (74.5%) list matte painting as a primary professional skill.

DMPH cover As a companion to The Digital Matte Painting Handbook, the industry's first how-to manual for beginning and intermediate-level matte artists, David has developed a series of training workshops for serious students. Many art schools do not offer separate courses in matte painting, yet it is a skill that is in high demand, and provides a leg up for graduates seeking careers in special effects for movies, television, commercials and music videos.

David personally leads the workshops, and shares techniques and anecdotes from his 30-year career in matte painting and digital illustration. The workshop curriculum is taken directly from The Digital Matte Painting Handbook, so students can expand on and refine what they learned in the workshop by referring back to the book. The workshops range from a one-day 'Introduction to Matte Painting,' to a five-day total immersion 'Boot Camp' for students who want an accelerated learning experience. In all of the multi-day courses, students are expected to attend classes during the day, and completing homework assignments each night to be used in the following class.

David's workshops do not require any prior knowledge of matte painting, or the software used in the course. The workshops are designed so that any art student who is computer literate can participate, and learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and Autodesk Maya.

Pricing for colleges and universities depends on the distance traveled, and total enrollment. Workshops can be custom tailored to your needs if you don't see exactly what you want, so please contact David for more information.


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WORKSHOPS FOR
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES:


Introduction to Matte Painting:
One-Day Demonstration & Lecture

Course Curriculum:

The Digital Matte Painting Handbook is the textbook for the course, and can be purchased at Amazon.com for 40% off.

AmazonLink

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Introduction to Matte Painting:
One-Day Interactive Seminar

Course Curriculum:

The Digital Matte Painting Handbook is the textbook for the course, and can be purchased at Amazon.com for 40% off.

AmazonLink

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Matte Painting with Camera Projection:
Three-Day Seminar

Course Curriculum:

The Digital Matte Painting Handbook is the textbook for the course, and can be purchased at Amazon.com for 40% off.

AmazonLink

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Digital Matte Painting Boot Camp:
Five-Day Seminar

The five projects completed during this intensive 'Boot Camp' will be:

The Digital Matte Painting Handbook is the textbook for the course, and can be purchased at Amazon.com for 40% off.

AmazonLink

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Individual Learning Opportunities:


The Digital Matte Painting Handbook
mentoring program

Perspective DrawingFor this online learning course, David offers to oversee your work as you progress through The Digital Matte Painting Handbook. The course is self-guided, so you can work at your own pace. He will critique each of the 5 projects contained in the book, broken into the 14 lessons listed below. David will mark up each assignment, noting where the project could be improved, and provide an audio critique to be e-mailed back to the student. The work must be completed within five months of the program's initiation, allowing approximately one month for each project.
At the completion of the course, David offers a Skype conference with each student to analyze and discuss the coursework, and answer any outstanding questions pertaining to the book.

David will individually critique each of these 15 lessons:


  1. Concept: Getting ideas down quickly, while concentrating on silhouette and mood.
  2. Perspective: Finding the horizon, and setting up a grid to the vanishing points. After identifying the large forms in the composition, the fine details are added using traditional and digital perspective techniques.
  3. Changing Seasons
  4. Form: Defining the silhouette of the drawing, and establishing the direction of the light. After the light and dark sides are defined, the forms of the structure are refined by adding reflected light, cores, and cast shadows.
  5. Texturing: Color correcting photographic textures, then distorting and manipulating them to create the final detailed matte painting.
  6. Preparing your Photoshop file for camera projection in Maya.
  7. Projecting your textures onto geometry prepared in Maya.
  8. Animating a second camera in Maya, and rendering out an animated sequence.
  9. Taking a daytime plate of the student's choice, and changing it into a nighttime scene, using mask-holding layers to define illuminated sections of the painting in Adobe Photoshop. Day to Night
  10. Animating a cross dissolve between the daytime and nighttime versions of the scene in Adobe After Effects.
  11. Taking a summertime plate of the student's choice, and changing it into a wintertime scene using color correction and transfer modes in Adobe Photoshop.
  12. Animating a cross dissolve between the summertime and wintertime versions of the scene in Adobe After Effects.
  13. Painting futuristic city elements to add to a moving, live action plate of New York City provided by the instructor.
  14. Adding the painted futuristic city elements to the moving live action plate in Adobe After Effects using 3D tracking points.
  15. Painting a layered matte painting in Adobe Photoshop from scratch, with no starting plate, and preparing it for use in Adobe After Effects true 3D space.
  16. Bringing the layered scene into Adobe After Effects 3D workspace, and placing the layered elements onto a horizontal plane that will have a texture projected onto it. Additional effects will be added, including smoke, fire, moving clouds, and keyed green screen figures provided by the instructor. Adding an animated camera, and rendering out a full demo-reel-ready 3D matte painting.

The Digital Matte Painting Handbook is the textbook for the course, and can be purchased at Amazon.com for 40% off.

AmazonLink

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Detailed critique of any one project

David offers to do an in-depth, marked up analysis of any project you complete from The Digital Matte Painting Handbook, along with an audio commentary on how it might be improved. Submit your finished project at any time, and you will receive a detailed review in your e-mail within seven days.

Future city


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Teaching at School of Visual Arts
and Pratt Institute:


David's classes often reach maximum capacity early in the enrollment cycle, so be sure to sign up early if you are a student at either Pratt Institute or School of Visual Arts.

The Digital Matte Painting Handbook is the textbook for the course, and can be purchased at Amazon.com for 40% off.

AmazonLink


Castle Final image Lava Waterfall Summer to winter image Future City image Keying image

Copyright David B. Mattingly. All right reserved.