City center

[Novalism]

hi

I'm new here :)
I've noticed there are very good artists on this page, hopefully i can learn from them.
Mattepainting is new for me.
yesterday i started my first one

http://www.novalism.com/progress/concep ... ment1.html (http://www.novalism.com/progress/concept/paintings/enviroment1.html)

plz comment it ? so i can make better stuff
tnx in advance

It's not finished yet but i seem to have problems adding elements (perspective problems)

[AliK]

Novalism ,
Nice job,
The snow next to the left big building is too much.
Instead of covering the cars with the snow, you should extend the building down, and paint the rest of it to match the ground level.

Also the Light atmosphere - glow in the very front and those in the back look the same, they should have different values or opacity. Or the atmosphere right in front of camera should be a bit lighter.

[Fuzz]

Good point on bringing the building down to meet the snow. Another option would be to go to the other extreme and make all that snow look more like a pile. thats kind of what it looks like now and all it would take would be some shadow work and a little dirt around the base.

[chris_mac]

I think this is a great piece of work.

I agree that the mountain of snow covering the car is a bit too much, but if i hadn't seen the original photo I don't think I would have noticed.

A bit of in depth information about how the image was created would be really useful to someone like me.

Truly inspiring work.

[Novalism]

well if it can be of any help

just start photoshop
and "stamp stamp stamp" everything away.

with a soft brush add some white strokes and set them to screen(mode)
as final play with levels, brightness contrast, color balance ;)

@ AliK
how do you suggest to change that value? It's painted directly on the footage. select with feader and change the levels a bit?
I have no idea of what you mean with "the value"

and yes shadows i should do them
good remark

How can i add more variation and like dirt to the ground? normal grey makes it dull .. ive tried

first timer here
thx for the comments

[AliK]

Well it actually depends on how you have your file setup.
I usually have everything in separate layers. So I can easily change the opacity value of the layers. And in some case I just paint the mask for that layer to vary the effect.
And in this case I would just lower the opacity of the atmosphere for the front light.

[Novalism]

aha yea
i understand

I find it hard to work with lots diffrent layers.
Sometimes when i merge layers the painting changes .. like not respecting the merged layer his bending option.
It confuses me ...

And for example? if you have a layer with light effects .. on top of a painted layer. Suppose i want to dodge the lightning .. you have to merge first .. than dodge right? or is there another way?
... (merge effect layer with black... than set it on multiply?)

[Fuzz]

You can use some texture from another photo and clone that in for dirt. Just set it as an Overlay layer.

One thing that has always driven me nuts is the fact that you can only dodge and burn on a flattened image. I wish photoshop would figure out a way to let you dodge on an empty layer or as an adjustment layer.. that would make my life so much easier.

What i usually do to fix that problem is i duplicate the image and flatten it, then i cut out a piece of the section i want to Dodge out, and paste that back into my original file. That way you get to keep all your layers and you can just work on that little section of flattened image you pasted in. Hope that makes sense...

[Novalism]

it does Fuzz
tnx m8