The conceptual designs used toward the beginning of a project, to give others an idea of how things should look. Without them, you could have artists running off and just doing their own thing, and that could look weird if you're trying to maintain a particular style or feel. Concept designs help everyone see the same thing and work better together. Concept art does not need to be beautifully rendered like finished production art. It need only be able to get the correct idea's across to those involved, anything more than that is likely overkill.
Digital Mattes
Digital matte's are paintings, created digitally, to change the appearance of an image or scene, or to add new elements that may otherwise have been impossible or too expensive to do. Such as filming over the side of a cliff. That would be far too risky much of the time, and you may not be able to create the exact shot you want. So instead a matte is used to fill in the background and surroundings, to get the look you're after. Unlike 3D digital Matte's, the regular kind (which previously were painted on large sheets of glass that were then filmed with the actual footage showing through) generally don't allow for much movement, though there are still ways, and both these and the 3D kind have pro's and cons, depending on the situation.
3D Mattes
A 3D Matte is like a regular Matte, only created fully or partially within a 3d environment. The purpose of which is to allow more freedom with the camera, unlike regular mattes which are limited by the angle. But because of the extra work involved, 3D Matte's generally take longer to create and in many situations require motion tracking to accurately match them with the real frames in composition.
Production Paintings
A production painting is a step up from concept artwork. Where concept art should be plentiful and focus on getting the designs right. A production painting would be the beauty shot. Taking those concepts and turning them into paintings, perhaps depicting a scene from a film for example. Ralph Mcquarrie's work on Star Wars were production paintings. While they may not have been 100% representative of the final movies. They helped those working on them to get the same feel of the major scenes. Naturally, fewer production paintings are made in the time it takes to make hundreds of concept drawings.
3D Modeling
As the name suggests, 3d modeling is modeling..in 3D. You will probably have had to have lived on the moon the past 20 years or so to avoid 3D models. Today they are used in almost everything, even if it doesn't stand out. From the creation of impossible/expensive to build creatures or space craft, to creating extended sets to save on having to build them for real.
Photo Manipulation
Photo manipulation, is of course, to manipulate a photo. Most commonly called photo retouching, and used almost all the time in the beauty and magazine industries, making the models appear better than they really are. Removing spots or unsightly marks or stray hairs, cleaning things up and editing the colors slightly.
3D Animation
3D Animation works in a similar way to regular animation, only using re-usable 3D models instead of hand drawn objects on every frame. Because of the nature of 3D, the results can be very realistic compared to traditional methods. But comes at a price, most noticably - render speed. However with good forward planning, what may appear to be a difficult task can be made much easier using various tricks of the trade Some uses for 3D Animation
- Fancy Logo's
- Characters that would be too expensive/impossible to physically build
- An alternative to filming scale models
It can be used from something as simple as a sphere bouncing around the screen, to creating legions of orcs fighting through the mountains of a distant world.
Composition
Composition has been around for a very long time in one form or another, from the early days where everything was done on huge projectors, to modern methods digitally. Basically the name says it all, to composite a collection of images together to create a single one. To many this may seem like a lot of extra hard work, and to set things up it can be. But down the line, the more passes the better it seems, especially with 3D work, rather than re-rendering what could be very slow frames. You can adjust the individual passes (highlights, color, shadows and so on) in realtime, letting you fine tune the final output to your liking, without having to wait forever after each minor change. So compositing would be to put all those passes together, and if live action footage is involved, perhaps to place different backgrounds behind your actors via blue/greenscreen.
Color Correction
Color Correction involves taking an image or source footage, and changing the coloring, brightness, contrast etc to improve the overall quality, or even to change the mood entirely. Advanced color correcting doesn't simply change a few sliders for all the frames, but involves masking area's and in some cases many different corrections per frame. Bringing some details out, while hiding others. On the surface it seems like a simple process, but those who only do color correction work as a living, will tell you there is far more to it than that. Bad corrections can instantly ruin the feel of a movie, while good ones will transport you away into the story without ever realizing.
Camera Tracking
Camera tracking is the process of taking a live action scene and calculating the exact movements of the camera so you're left with a virtual shot that accurately mimics the live action footage. There are many uses for this, most involve adding 3D models or artwork into the scene seamlessly, giant robots like in Transformers, or even the removal of various elements, to adding completely new objects to the shot in such a way that the viewer can't tell you've done it.
Architectural Visualization
This is the process where a building to be made is created in 3D (and more often these days, in an explorable virtual world) to show a client how the finished building will appear. The difference between this and actual Architectural designs, is in this case, it only need look like the finished article, it doesn't need to be built exact and taking into account safety issues.
Experienced in the following areas
- Graphic Design
- Concept Art
- Production Art
- Fine Art
- 3D Modeling
- 3D Animation
- Pre-visualization
- Editing
- Visual Effects
Experienced with the following software
- Photoshop
- Corel Painter
- Lightwave 3D
- Softimage XSI
- Quark Express
- Corel Draw
- Zbrush
- Bryce
- Poser
- 3DS Max
- AfterFX
- Combustion
- Shake
- Digital Fusion
- Flash
- Standard Database Apps
- Standard Spreadsheet Apps
- Various Word-Processing Apps
Skills
- Knowledge of multiple 3D design programs, art related software, and some web-based technologies
- Hands-on experience within the industries
- Committed to producing work of a high standard
- Enjoys learning new areas of the industry
- Works well alone or within a team
References
Available upon request
