Posts by: Rasoul

Method Studios Art Department

Method Studios Art Department

Some of the projects that I worked on at Method Studios
Dr. Strange, Maleficent, San Andreas, Night at the Museum,Transformer, Whisper …

 

Maze Runner : Problem solving with style frame

Maze Runner : Problem solving with style frame

As Lead Matte Painter and Concept Artist for Maze runner, I worked with 6 great matte painters to create the environment of the Maze Runner, as it was mostly virtual environment with Projected DMP on 3D geometry,

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using Maya, Nuke and Photoshop.

Style Frame

I was also responsible for designing the look of almost everything for approval before the team actually starts on them. What refers to as “Style Frame” are quick photo-real sketches to showcase design ideas for approval. And after approval they were used as reference for the rest of the team from VFX Artists, Lighters, Modellers…

 

Problem solving with style frame

The Griever At some point Studio gave us this feedback that “the Griever is not scary enough”, we need to make the face look scary but with no eyes! In the style frames I presented variations of the face, teeth and head design that made the creature look more scary, with rougher texture, second row of teeth and more wrinkle in the face.

Creature design The creature concept design started by “Ken Barthelmey”. And I continue the process as we also needed a fast way to explore alternative look for different part of the Griever! These sketches had to be fast yet believable enough to be able to present to studio for approval. And these would be used later as design reference for modelling, texturing and lighting team. Here are a few of those sketches.

The wall In the first revealing shot, the plate has been shot at noon (with no dramatic lighting or shadow) and all we had was a boring wall to look at. How did we make it more interesting? In the style frames of the wall, I showed how we can cheat a bit in lighting and use the angle of the vines to scatter some interesting color and contrast to the otherwise the boring wall.

Color key To create Pre-viz and reference we also needed to define how the environment look like in different time of the day and night. And turned out that a very quick sketch on single frame was good enough to bring everybody in the same direction without the need of shooting in different time or lighting in CG.

The wide shot In the final revealing of the maze we needed to make the CG renders to be more believable. In this case I did a paint over CG to present over 30 different ideas of how to make that shot more believable. By giving variation in colors, enhancing the bounce light, higher contrast glints and reflections, changing the size of the background dunes, breaking the horizontal lines with antennas … This style frame was used intensively as our visual reference for the rest of the team all the way to the final comp.

Griever hole The Griever hole is an all CG environment where the big fight happens. For this we needed a solution to make it look big, wet, aged and more scary. I achieved this by creating smaller details with the illusion of having more perspective. In this series of sketches I also showed how to use high contrast lighting and reflections to make the environment wet and scary.

Transition locations In the early stage of the editing we needed some shots to act as transition between the sequence. The problem was that we had to use what was already shot. In this case I started with very rough sketches to come up with layouts that eventually become the full 3D dmp shots.

Digital make-up Practical make ups are great however they usually not enough for extreme situations. For that we just painted what we needed and track that back on the practical make-up.

Modelling and texturing speed The process of CG modelling and texturing can get quiet time consuming! Here are some other sketches that helped our team as reference on how to do the bridge, detail or layout of the maze ….

Pipeline Tools In this project I also wrote a few Photoshop tools to help us speed up the process to better manage the high number of shots. Read more about these tools at: simasystem.com/wp/dmp-toolkit/

 

Maze Runner VFX Breakdown

All images from the film, The Maze Runner credit to: Ben Rothstein TM and © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Medusa

Medusa

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas

Feature Film
Visual Development, Matte Painting

Abraham Lincoln the Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln the Vampire Hunter

This was a style frame I painted for Tim Burton’s “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”
I do these paintings to provide visual reference for both Artists and supervisors to follow the same visual goal.
After establishing the look, further concept art and development will follow …

Escape From Planet Earth

Escape From Planet Earth

Escape From Planet Earth

Feature Animation
© Rainmaker Entertainment
Concept Design, Visual Development, Matte Painting

A group of aliens from around the universe plan their escape from a prison in Area 51. It was so much fun to work with those amazing artists.

 

Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood

Working with Ralph Maiers and Syd Dutton, I had the chance to be creative in a beautiful film.
From quick sketches to camera based modelling and from designing DMP shots to setting up complex 3D environment and matte painting it was a delicious challenging project.

 

SPACE CHIMPS

SPACE CHIMPS

SPACE CHIMPS
Feature Animation
© Vanguard Animation
Concept Design, Visual Development

Thor

Thor

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