What does the name of the website mean?
The name of the website – matteline - is a term often used when discussing 20th century, or non-digital visual effects. In the days of film compositing, the process of optically combining two separately filmed elements typically required mattes. A matte is a term for blocking off an area of the film so that it is not exposed. The matte or mask, leaves the matted area black, or unexposed. Shooting the other element required a matte that covers the opposite area of the film, to avoid re-exposing, or double exposing, what has already been shot. The mattes needed to be created in such a way that they line up perfectly with each other. Any misalignment will result in either an area of double exposure, or more often, a black line or ‘matte line’. Matte lines are seldom visible in static shots, such as matte paintings, but really became an issue with travelling mattes such as spaceships flying around, or actors inserted into a VFX background. These shots often required special photography, usually against a blue-screen, and this process involved multiple steps to make the necessary mattes to make the shot look as if it were photographed at the same time. This film elements were combined on a special device designed specifically for this type of work called an Optical Printer. Any errors in the original photography or in any of the printing steps, or the assembly on the Optical Printer could result in the mattes not aligning perfectly and often black matte lines are visible around the actor or ship.
I am big, big fan of the visual effects done in the ‘pre digital age’ and there are many truly extraordinary and spectacular images created through the technical expertise and creative artistry of the visual effects teams. By the 1980s, the talented artists and technicians at Industrial Light & Magic were producing flawless Optical composites. So that’s a little bit on ‘pre digital’ VFX. ‘Matte lines’ to me are almost synonymous with terrific sci-fi adventure films!
My Name is Matthew, and given that this is a website about artwork – drawings and paintings all start as ‘lines on paper’ AND given my love of the Visual Effects Techniques and the films that exploited the creativity this afforded, naming the site MATTELINE seemed like a good fit.
A little bit about me
I have been working in Animation on the production side of things for over 30 years, and have been fortunate to work with world class artists from all over the world. Inspiring and intimidating.
As a Producer, a lot of my job was about making the work environment as easy as possible for the artists to do their best work and all of their efforts can all go into the ‘art’ and not ‘the process’. And ultimately get the Director’s vision on screen… or as much of it as the schedule and budget allows😊 Films I have worked on include;
‘Klaus’ (2019), ‘The Book of Life’ (2014), ‘9’ (2009), Spirit - Stallion of the Cimarron’ (2002), ‘The Prince of Egypt’ (1998) and ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988 - my first film!)
Recently I have been doing a lot of digital painting, mostly for fun. I started painting a lot of vehicles from TV shows and Movies that I love, but where there was a shortfall in terms of still images that really showed off the vehicle. So I created my own ‘portrait’. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I have bene able to easily share this work, and have received a lot of positive feedback. This encouragement has turned into actual commissioned work!
Some inspirational artists
Derek Meddings - one of the masters of miniature visual effects (1960s - 90s). A talented, and prolific designer contributing some iconic designs for the Gerry Anderson TV shows including ‘Thunderbird 2’, ‘Fab 1, the S.P.V. and putting these on the screen. Incredible. He created many superb effects for films including ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’, ‘Moonraker’ and ‘Superman’.
Ray Harryhausen - special visual effects legend - creator and stop-motion animator on a number of glorious fantasy films in the (1950s - 80s). ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ contains the excellent sequence with the titanic bronze statue Talos and the stupifying fight with skeletons.
Douglas Trumbull - visual effects pioneer (2001 A Space Odyssey, Close Encounter of the Third Kind, Star Trek The Motion Picture’ and film Director - Silent Running, Brainstorm. I was very influenced by Trumbull’s imaginative approach and getting images on film without a camera. Cool.
Peter Ellenshaw - For many years Disney’s senior Matte Painter (1950s - 80s). A key figure behind spectacular and beautiful visuals including ‘Darby O’Gill and the Little People’ and ‘The Black Hole’.
Ken Adam - Production Designer responsible for the look of the early James Bond films including ‘Goldfinger’ and the spectacular Roger Moore films ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ and ‘Moonraker’ and the children’s classic ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and the down to earth Harry Palmer spy films of the 1960s.
Joe Johnston - VFX Storyboard artist and Art Director on the first ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’ movies. Responsible for many key spaceship designs - including the ‘Millennium Falcon’! - as well as storyboarding action sequences. Director - ‘Rocketeer’, ‘Captain America - The First Avenger’, ‘Jumanji’ and ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’.
Dennis Muren - Visual Effects Supervisor at ILM, responsible for many of the greatest visual effects of the 20th century - innovating new techniques and advancing the craft of Computer Graphics in the creation of VFX. ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, ‘Dragonslayer’, ‘Return of the Jedi’, ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’, Terminator 2’, ‘Jurassic Park’.
Richard Edlund - Visual Effects Supervisor at ILM, responsible for ground breaking visual effects and creating iconic imagery - ‘Star Wars’, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, ‘Poltergeist’, ‘Return of the Jedi’, ‘2010 - The Year We Make Contact’, ‘Die Hard’.
Ken Ralston - Visual Effects Supervisor at ILM, responsible for many of the terrific space battles of the 1980s and cutting edge visual effects that always perfectly meet the needs of the films and look ‘easy’. ‘ Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan’ and ‘Star Trek III The Search for Spock’, ‘Cocoon’. ‘Back to the Future’, ‘The Golden Child’, ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, ‘Forrest Gump’.
Phil Tippett - Stop Motion Animator and visual effects director - largely responsible for the AT-ATs in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, the dragon in ‘Dragonslayer’, the AT-ST forest batle in ‘Return of the Jedi’ (via go-motion!) as well as the dinosaurs in ‘Jurassic Park’ and the bugs in ‘Starship Troopers’!
Ralph McQuarrie - One of the artists who contributed enormously to the look of ‘Star Wars’ and provided key designs for ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’.
Albert Whitlock - Celebrated matte painter, visual effects supervisor and head of Universal Pictures’s Visual Effects Dept. Working on Many of the Alfred Hitchcock movies including ‘The Birds’ and in the 1970s ‘The Hindenburg’ and ‘Earthquake’.
Michael Pangrazio - Matte Painter who worked at ILM and Matte World prodcuing some of the best matte shots ever put on film. The closing shot of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ is one of the most famous shots in cinema and is 95% a Pangrazio painting.
John Dykstra - Visual Effects Supervisor on ‘Star Wars’. He lead the visuel effects on ‘Battlestar Galactica’ and ‘Firefox’ and supervised and directed the outstanding visual effects in ’Spider-Man’ and ‘Spider Man 2’.
Mike Trim was a model-maker and vfx designer creating many classic designs on the Gerry Anderson TV shows - ‘Thunderbirds’, ‘Captain Scarlet’, ‘Joe 90’ and ‘UFO’. He designed the classic album cover and the Martian machines for the Jeff Wayne ‘War of the Worlds’ album narrated by Richard Burton.
Roy Cross - celebrated marine and aircraft artist who contributed exciting and realistic artwork for Airfix model kits in the 1960s and 70s.
Brian Johnson - Leading Visual Effects supervisor / director (1970s-80s). Started out with Les Bowie and joined Derek Meddings on Fireball XL5 and directing a 2nd Unit vfx on Stingray and Thunderbirds. He jumped at the opportunity to work on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Supervisor of visual effects on ‘Space:1999’, ‘Alien’, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, ‘The Never Ending Story’,‘Aliens’ and more.
Harper Goff - Art Director designed the classic Nautilus interiors and exteriors for Disney’s ‘20000 Leagues Under the Sea’ and the Proteus submarine for the unique ’Fantastic Voyage’ directed by Richard Flesicher.
Fred Sersen - pioneering visual effects supervsior and director in the golden age of Hollywood. As Head of Visual Effects at 20th Century Fox he developed many ground breaking techniques and produced thrilling sequences. The earthquake sequence in ‘The Rain Came’ is simply stunning.
John P Fulton - pioneering visual effects supervsior and director in the golden age of Hollywood. As Head of Visual Effects at Universal he developed many ground breaking techniques - The Invisible Man movies pushed the envelope of optical compositing - and created excellent miniature sequences in the 1930s - 60s. The parting of the Red Sea in ‘The Ten Commandments’ is pure cinema gold.
Albert Nozaki - Art Director responsible for designing the iconic War Machines for George Pal’s ‘War of the Worlds’ (1953) as well as storyboarding the action and vfx sequences in the film. he worked as an At Directr on all of the George Pal sci-fi movies of the 1950s as well as Cecil B DeMille’s colour version of ‘The Ten Commandments’.
William Creber - as an Art Director working for Irwin Allen designed the Jupiter 2 and the Flying Sub (and probably had a hand in the Seaview). he also designed the Tower in ‘The Towering Inferno’ .. and maybe had a hand in the designing the MiG 31 for Firefox. (I wish I knew more about his career).
Ron Cobb - concept artist and designer responsible for designing futuristic vehicles and spaceships in films from the 1970s to the 1990s including Alien, Dark Star, The Last Starfighter, Aliens, The Abyss, Back to the Future and more.
James Bama - A superb artist best known for artwork of the American West. As well as Aurora monsters of the movie model kits and Doc Savage Man of Bronze novels.
GALLERIES
Original Designs
As assortment of vehicles that I have designed. Some of these are for stories - film / graphic novel / game projects - while otherwise are just ‘cool’ designs.
I really enjoyed designing my own ‘Martian Fighting Machine’ from H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.
Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson is famous for creating and producing a number of spectacular science fiction adventure shows in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘Thunderbirds’ is the most well known and was the perfect synthesis of a terrific idea and format for a show, which involved spectacular action and did not rely on good guys vs bad guys. The writing was superb. The production values including a vast array of superbly designed and realised vehicles was outstanding. The puppetry and direction was exceptional and the music score was second to none.
This gallery features portraits of a lot of the key hardware featured in the different shows. The designers primarily involved – Derek Meddings and Mike Trim have been highly influential.
Humans
An assortment of portraits of screen heroes and actors. Ranging from the Golden Age of Hollywood, (Cary Gran) to the stars of today (Blake Lively) as wells as James Bond, and stars of numerous adventure films and TV of the 1960s and 70s.
Classic Sci-Fi
This gallery is filled with a glorious assortment of fantastic vehicles from Sci-Fi and Adventure of the small and big screen. Some are more classic than others - the iconic ‘Nautilus’ from Walt Disney’s production of ‘20000 Leagues Under the Sea’. The Dalek Flying Saucer from the 1966 feature film ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 AD’ is less well known but is a cool and original design. A big Thank You to the Designers and VFX Artists who brought these creations to life on the screen. Please contact me with any requests.
Real World
A handful of Matte Painting test shots that I did a few years ago. All hand painted in Photoshop, no digital cloning or photo-mashups employed. Without the before and after these are not that compelling.
There is a video on my YouTube channel showing some of these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOJX06le4C0
These were done using a phone camera and creating the painting as a separate layer. Much easier on a computer with the many tools available than the way the rea matte paintings were created on either original negative or composited with rear projected plates… all excruciatingly complex work.
A have a huge amount of admiration for the great Matte Painters of 20th Century Visual Effects. Peter Ellenshaw, Albert Whitlock, Percy Day, Les Bowie, Michael Pangrazio, and Chris Evans are among my cinema heroes in this field. I find this work so inspirational.
Some famous aircraft are featured in the rest of the Real-World section as well as the historic Apollo 11 Lunar Module landing on the moon on July 21st, 1969.
What If?
A series that is wishful thinking of some products from yesteryear. Things that if only the toy companies and the filmmakers and producer had managed to get together and create some of these things. Mainly model-kits and predictably a lot of Gerry Anderson vehicles, in an imaginary Airfix range circa 1970s. Many of these images appear on other galleries, albeit modified for the box-tops.
I am also doing pictures of things I just wish we could have seen. Like Daniel Craig’s James Bond driving around in one of the new big, and brutishly beautiful Bentley cars. In racing green as described in the books!
Graphics
A variety of graphics that I made up to celebrate key aspects of some of my favourite films, or tools of filmmaking, From my early days making ‘home movies’ on Super 8, to some of the tools used in professional productions such as the Oxberry Animation Camera stand.
In general I tend to like the more unusual subject matter, where if you recognise it, and ‘get it’, it is something special. The Tundra Torque and The Glass Tower graphics are two of my favourites and are my designs based on existing materials.
I am a big fan of film music and I made up a series of graphics – primarily for T shirts (currently available through ‘redbubble’ and ‘teepublic’ - that celebrate different film composers and highlighting their speciality. ‘Everything is more Intense with music by Hans Zimmer’. ‘Everything is more offbeat with music by Danny Elfman’. Here too I have included some less well-known names, who nonetheless nailed their particular genre and have produced some truly great music. Hammer Horror films of the 1950s all had music composed by James Bernard.
Scale Models
I like making models and grew up making ‘Airfix’, ‘Aurora’ and ‘Revell plastic kits’, usually purchased from the local ‘Beatties’ hobby shop. I also did not some scratch-building of some of my own designs created from balsa wood and cardboard.
These pictures show some of my recent(ish) work. The ‘Proteus is the recent Moebius 1/35th scale kit of the submarine from the 1966 sci-fi film ‘Fantastic Voyage’. This is a favourite film of mine and this model was a labour of love to make it as accurate as possible. The project is documented on my YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZxWGdOyPA&t=576s
Thank You for visiting.
For a bit of fun, please check out the Sci Fi Sound Effects quiz on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRSXU-NZDN8