Track down this guy, he's a ridiculously talented digital artist in great demand. When you see his work, you'll understand why. His name is :-

NIK AINLEY

He's a Pom, and used to run a website called <Shinybinary.com> Take a look if it's still up and working.

Regards Wiz

Great link! Nice stuff!
Thanks Eve!

you're welcome

someone brought up not long ago
http://www.alexanderjansson.com/

IMO, the best in the biz when it comes to digital painting: Craig Mullins http://www.goodbrush.com/

Following impormation very useful for us. Thanks all

I watched 2 lectures of Dylan cole and I'm really impressed by it.
The first lecture I've seen was where he sketches city-backgrounds by using brushes.

The 2nd lecture is where he starts from scratch, making this

I recommend to watch this, although personally I didn't really got to learn a lot because Dylan works in high-speed tempo + the movies are a bit fast forwarded.
After the movie is made, he records comments explaining what he's doing, but not always going in detail. But that's ok, it's a lecture, not a full-training course.

What I really like is how he makes all those elements fit, especially the cities.
He starts with a sketch drawing, colours it in and then starts to look for elements which match his sketch and brings them in.
The adjustments he does to each element is spectacular in my opinion by using a lot of curves, Hue/sat and a lot of brushes to draw things himself.
His highlight/shadow work is excellent.

Thx again for pointing out this artist.

I got some lessons from this guy, not the world greatest but interesting to see! http://www.nw-5.com/

That's looking very nice, unique style.
Just wondering, is this done with PS or is it mostly Illustrator work?
I'm not familiar with Illustrator at all, still trying to understand the differences, but I have understood that Illustrator is mostly used for Vector drawing etc.

so what is "matte painting" exactly? is it just a fancy name for "chop"?

is he using photos for his works or is it all brush work?


either way it's very impressive.....

wow! straight into my favorite artists folder! thanks Eve.

I'm not quite sure myself what Matte Painting stands for, but Dylan Cole uses both brushes and photos.
First he sketches everything and then fills the sketch with photos and additionally he uses brushes to make images more rich and detailed.

For pure photoshop - I always look back at this guy's work...and it's "somewhat" of a tutorial.

http://www.wade.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/tutorial1.htm

SO basically matte painting is used for film work ect. A good place to learn this stuff is at