Atlantis | walkthrough

The legend of Atlantis is one of the greatest legends in the history of mankind. A story so beautiful, filled with questions and mystery, certainly makes one think and dream. So imagining the city of Atlantis is something that each and every one of us did at least once. The concept is amazing and the possibilities endless.

When I started thinking about making the image , all I had in mind was that I wanted to create the city in its' glory, filled with life. I wanted to create a mysterious civilization, with charming architecture, ancient looking buildings, but technologically advanced, with a science fiction touch.

The idea was of a colossal underwater city, so the first thing I though about was setting the mood, choosing a starting color palette, and create a basic environment sketch, to help me picture the whole concept better.

When reading this making of, the first thing you need to keep in mind is that my image is a digital matte painting, belonging to an area with so many techniques , so different from each other , all towards the purpose of building a realistic result.

In pursuit of this "realism" in matte painting we use a lot of stock photography. But choosing your photos is not so easy. They have to work for you, not you for them. Always try to be creative and use the photographic elements in an original manner. If you just stitch them together, you won't get anything more than a photo collage. Instead, find the photos that will help you get closer to the concept you have in mind, but try to be original and always get an unexpected result.

In matte painting there are several things you have to be very careful with. There are basic principles, but maybe the most important. The first thing you have to keep in mind is that the result has to be realistic. And in order to achieve this there are some very simple yet , very important- and sometimes hard to implement- rules.

Depth. Your images need to have depth. Especially when we're talking about environments. It has to be clear what is in the foreground, what is in the middle ground and what is in the background. For that you have to watch the levels and the colors. The foreground elements should have high contrast and more powerful colors. Towards the back, the contrast fades, black turns to gray and the colors become a lot less saturated. This is what you have to keep in mind when combining your photos.

Lighting. Another important thing is choosing the lighting. It depends weather you want it to be dramatic or not, but you have to be very careful to make everything look right. When adding a light source think about the consequences, about the highlights and the shadows you have to add. And always be careful to match the lighting of the main image when adding a new stock photo.

Scale. This is something you could run into when working with a lot of stock photos. You have to be very careful not to destroy the scale of your image. This is something that's very important, especially in very dramatic matte painting depicting massive environments.

The city concept I had in mind, was very environment dependant, so I started building the setting of the city first. The idea was to create some sort of steep cliffs in the foreground, and in the distance a great valley surrounded by hills. As you can see in the final image, things changed a bit from the original concept though. So I first started detailing the foreground cliffs, to get into the feel I wanted for the environment. I started working on the right part of the image first and build the canyon like type of cliff, with that very nice terrace.

For the left part, I tried different settings, because I was also thinking about the city. I wasn't quite sure on the architectural style, so I was trying different kinds of photos. I wasn't sure if I want the left cliff on the same distance as the right one or if it would be better to bring it closer. Eventually, I chose to make it similar to the right one, and started detailing. My main concern was to create shapes with the right volumes, to make everything seem massive.

One thing I would like to point is that the landscape I created was complicated, and the viewer had to understand very easily what was going on. That's why I enhanced all my edges with small portions of sand and later on I added all those light pillars. This way the eye couldn't be fooled, and the environment was easy to understand.

As I said, in the initial concept the background was a valley surrounded by hills. But sometime later on came the cave idea. I tried it and I absolutely loved it. So I started building those giant stone pillars in the background, and the powerful light sources. That was maybe the most important step in building the environment, because it gave the image the original and impressive touch it needed.

The city was one of the difficult parts of this image. I wanted to create a monumental city, with very stylish and unique architecture. And that isn't very easy. I had a pretty clear concept in mind, but hard to illustrate. The idea was of dividing the city in 3 parts. In the foreground I wanted an area with big structures, with a lot of space between them, filled with temples and special buildings. The second part was the far city, in the valley, very crowded. It had to give the feeling of scale of a megalopolis, with a big density of buildings, the part where the people work and live. And the last part is the big castle, the point of interest of the image. It was also going to contribute to the feeling of scale in my image. I started with the right part in the image where I experimented with several versions of base architecture : Greek, Turkish, modern Mediterranean, even Aztec.

The look I got wasn't what I was looking for, so I tried another solution: 3D. I rendered some buildings I had modeled earlier and started to place everything. Things were looking better. Then several stock photos were included, and I was starting to get the feeling I wanted. But now I had an ancient civilization and I wanted to also add the feeling of technology. That came when I added the triangular shapes on the top of my temples. These were made out of a modern skyscraper photo. I think this is a great example for what I said earlier about using photos in an original manner.

And after all this struggle , I finally got the style I wanted. For the middle ground and background I used photo reference of Paris and other big cities to crate the feeling of scale I was going for. I paid a lot of attention to placing the elements, because the streets and avenues had to go well with the compostion.

For the temple I used a 3D render of a big castle I modeled. But it wasn't textured, and it hadn't the detail I was going for in my image. So I added more architectural elements , so it fits the mood and style of the image.

Building the city of Atlantis was a very interesting experience. From developing the concept to getting everything the way I wanted it to be was a lot of work, but also very rewarding. I think I managed to create an original image, that takes the viewer to another world and makes him think how it must have been to live in the great City of Atlantis.


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