"Small Victories"
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 how he created this image from Stargate SG1:
"The city and all elements were built entirely in 3D. Two sections of the city were built, one to represent the port in the immediate foreground, and another to represent the city itself behind the port.
"The city section was built as a square area and tiled and rendered repeatedly to fill the entire city area, exactly the way the city for 'Jolinar's Memories' was made, only digitally this time. Individual buildings within the section were shifted and moved at each render placement to add variey. These rendered sections were then pieced together along with the port area in Photoshop. This was done to save time and 3D memory, and also because in the final render the city was placed into the 3D scene as a backdrop image on a 'flat.' No perspective shifts would be evident at that distance in the range of the planned camera move so it was unnecessary to render everything in 3D at one time. This also allowed me to 'pre-comp' the city element and add movement such as traffic, moving watere and flickering lights to the city much more easily than doing it in 3D.
"The floating elements in the foreground were built by myself and Wes Sargent, who was doing some 3D work for Stargate at the time. Wes is responsible for the design of most of the alien crafts that flitter and float about in the sky."
More of Matheson's work is displayed at www.kentmatheson.com.