First Post / First Mattepainting ever

[neosushi]

Hello to everybody in this amazing Forum.
My name is david and i come from germany, which you'll find out very soon because of my lame english grammer :)
I found this Forum browsing the web and i felt very comfortable with it, like it really much.
I started a mattepainting a few days ago and i'm absolute new to mattepaintings. so i decided to post it here to get some comment & critics from you professionals.

Here ist the link to the image i've done:
http://www.wicked-design.de/mattepaintings/alpen_stuff.html

and here is the small preview of it:
http://www.wicked-design.de/mattepaintings/alpenwip.jpg

i made the backdrop landscape in terragen which i think is very imprssive for doing landscaping. the waterfall was added from an image in photoshop. and the little shore on the left mountain was painted to in PS.
I used Cinema 4D for CameraMapping so i can place the Messerschmitt planes inside the matte.

the idea behind this image is the second world war and german pilots fleeing from the nazi regime to get to switzerland.

As i mentioned before i'm absolute new to mattespainting and i want to learn more to get better and better. If you have any tips or tricks or inputs i would be very happy about it :) I'm so excited learning more about mattepaining.

thnx so much for taking your time helping me on this one.

cheers
::neosushi::

[homer]

I like the composition and the mood.
If you want to have more photo realistic look, I suggest using more photo references for those areas close to the camera to add more details.

[Zoetrope]

Hi neosushi,
I agree with homer. Great composition & mood! But there are three things that bother me (nit picking?). I'm not very keen on the waterfall - I didn't realize what it was untill I read your post. I think it might look more natural if you pushed the falls back (just right a bit) and create a river running from the distance(starting underneath the right plane) between the mountains.

The other thing is, I like the depth in the matte, but the mid ground seems a bit flat. You might want to think about breaking up the wall of mountain on the left, or adding a more extreme foreground element.

The last thing is, the sky & clouds seem a bit flat and stretched out. Clouds are a great opportunity to create a little bit more depth. I do like how you have sillouetted the one plane against the one cloud. Nice.


Are you generating a single image? Or is this going to be moving?
Looks great!

[rapscaLLion]

The foreground mountains (and back to a lesser extent) look like plastic. Try replacing them with photographic elements, or paint some texture on top of them. Composition is great though, the only other thing I would nitpick on is the sky, I find terregen skys are generally ugly and recognizable. Replacing the sky with photographic elements would help.

Is this for a moving shot?

[neosushi]

wow thank you all so much for you comments & critics :)
It helped me alot, i see now i'll need to work more with photo reference and pictures. Yes the Matte schould do as single image, i didn't plan to animate the aircrafts. i saw a great cloud painting tutorial here on this forum maybe i dig deeper into that just in case in don't find a goo reference of a sky that matches. Well i think about placing some vegetation, plants trees and such. Do you all use photos as refernce on this task also ?

And one last question as i don't want to over do you with my questions :)
Why do you asked if its a single image or is it moving ? Do i have to take care differently when it is moving?

Oh my god i feel so lame at the moment asking all this stuff :oops:

thnx anyway for you great help

cheers

::neosushi::