"Jolinar's Memories"
Kent Matheson is the digital matte painter for the TV series Stargate SG1. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, Canada, in 1991 and has also worked as an illustrator and designer.
Matheson describes the creation of this image from Stargate SG1:
"This images represents a twilight view from a palace window overlooking towers and walkways onto a dark and brooding alien city. Looming over the city and the palace are several massive alien spaceships perched on landing platforms. Between the spaceships is a grand causeway with raised roadways.
"The foreground elements of the palace towers were built and rendered in 3D to allow for camera moves. The spacehips are 3D and were rendered separately and provided as elements by the company that built them, Image Engine. The city elements were built as a physical models to spec by Iguana Models. The buildings were made as one sectional model approximately 4 feet square that represented about three-quarters of a kilometer of the city. This was photographed in many different positions in a grid on a sound stage rigged with appropriate lighting.
"The elements of the landing pad structures and the causeway were built and photographed this way as well but unfortunately were photographed poorly, and because of time and budget constraints we were not able to re-photograph them. To accommodate this I built 3D models to match the physical models, photographed the physical models for their textures and 'recreated' them digitally. This allowed me to place them properly into the image in such a way that they matched the other elements for perspective and lighting.
"In the final composite we added moving and flickering lights as well as a multitude of floating sky-ships and transports."
More of Matheson's work is displayed at www.kentmatheson.com.