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. « Back