Thursday 13 August 2009

Return Of The King, Dylan Cole

"Working on Return of the King was an amazing experience. It was a tremendous challenge on many levels, but I think I learned a lot on the way. I had only been working professional for less than a year before I got that job. So to get the call to go work on tat project was a huge thrill." Interview with Dylan Cole on www.cg-node.com

I love the realistic scenery and CGI in "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy which made me wonder who had done it and how it has been done? In "The Return Of The King" a young artist called Dylan Cole created a lot of the scenery by matte painting. He used Photoshop, After Effects and Cinema 4D to develop shots after they had been film and passed onto him. Using a lot of inspirational photo's and the past 2 films as a starting point he produced the stunning landscapes like the ones shown bellow.


Shot Dylan Cole Received.


How the shot finally ended up after matte painting.

He works using a graphics tablet and paints in the background of the shot using the software mentioned before. He then transfers these images to Cinema 4D because of the camera mapping tools available. Artists like Cole are the last people to touch a shot before it is edited together so everything has to be finished just right. But on the other hand (as Dylan Cole points out) "You have to realize that you are creating a single shot in a movie, not a fine art painting". I have a lot of respect for Dylan Cole as he captures the time and mood well in ever piece he completes. I thinks its fantastic how he can change an image so dramatically. The detail he goes into when producing a piece of work like this is absolutely fantastic and seamless. As technology moves on could Matte painters like Cole be the "Fine artists" of the future?

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