in another way. A huge task for a lot of people for a long time. I had the fortune of making both all the backgrounds, which
became an ever growing job and all the 2D matte paintings. A job I'm proud of. Most of the matte paintings are made in
layers for later animation.
The town of Hebalon lies behind a cliff wall. The city gate was build in the studio and was later supposed to serve as plate for this matte,
but when stored outside it was damaged in a storm, so I had to recreate it by memory and various takes and stills. The scene is where the
city closes by elevating a horizontal bar, thus preventing the citizens to leave. Because of the strings, remember? All the strings were added
as animation along with extra puppets in the foreground. The matte was planned to be animated, as with CGI rain stopping, clouds drifting
aside, letting the sun come through, revealing a promising change in light. All carefully planned, but for some reason it never happened!
A closer look at the city gate. Again, hundreds of strings were later added as animation. Every citizen in Hebalon has at least 15 strings. Count yourself :)
This was fun! This was mostly made in-camera. I painted the perspective directly on the studio floor. The camera was mounted
on a crane and I had a monitor to get the camera's view. I started out with taping the perspective lines on the floor, matching the lines
in the decoration. Then I made the painting itself, always checking the monitor. Old, but nice trick, huh? (Mouse over to see floor line).
For some reason, the exteriors seemed smaller than the interiors. So we realized we had to expand almost all exteriors digitally. To give
an impression the set was app.7x10m, the backdrop was 12m in width, but still... RADAR Film made a fantastic job on extending the strings.
(mouse over to see plate)
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