The Spirits Within
- World Creation - Matte Paintings
Matte Paintings
Many of the backgrounds used in TSW were actually
two-dimensional matte paintings, unlike the sets themselves. Matte
paintings have a long history in movies compared to the newer
technique of modeling landscapes. This technique uses painted
backgrounds that are composted onto live-action scenes to create
an illusion. During the making of the film matte paintings were
used when the scenery was not too vast, too expensive, or too
inaccessible to create.
"Even if you have models, a lot of what happens
behind the models is painted," says Christian Scheurer; the
illustrator who worked as both a concept artist and matte painter
for TSW. "Let's say you look out of a window. They would
model the window and some of the objects in the foreground, but
everything behind that would be painted. Everything that doesn't
need to be parallax and anything that doesn't move can be painted."
Traditionally, mattes were hand painted on glass,
a technique revolutionized by Disney Studios "Snow White".
In today's industry mattes are digitally created on high-end graphics
workstations. All the artwork is done digitally.
"I painted all of the skies in all the dream
sequences. When the camera pans and all the phantoms are standing
by the smoking pods, I painted that. The cloud effect in the nuclear
explosion is actually painted. The alien planet that breaks apart
is painted, too." Just as two-dimensional mattes are comp
sited behind sets in live-action movies, such as Raiders of the
Lost Ark, mattes created for the film were composted behind 3D-rendered
landscapes and sets created by Sets and Props.