Page 48 - Star Wars Insider #176

MATTE PAINTINGS
even painted a matte, working
under the guidance of supervisors
Chris Evans and Craig Barron.
“There was a little bit more
room for experimentation. And
Chris and Craig really liked to keep
their hands on the whole process,
so they loved the original negative
method. They loved being able to
shoot the plate, do the painting,
do the exposure of the painting,
and then deliver a fi nal shot.”
Digital Inroads
Huston would go on to hone his
skills as a matte painter on features
such as The Goonies (1985), and
Ghostbusters II (1989), and by
the early 1990s he was very well
established in ILM’s matte painting
department. He recalls that, as the 07
decade progressed, “Photoshop
came along, and I immediately
‘glommed’ onto it.”
The first digital matte work he
undertook with Photoshop was
for commercials, but it wasn’t
long before he was applying the
technique on narrative work—
specifi cally The Young Indiana
Jones Chronicles (1992-93).
“Bruce Walters was the head of
the matte department, and he set
[matte painter] Yusei Uesugi and
myself up in a small back room
in D Building [at ILM’s San Rafael
facility] to see what we could do
with some Young Indy shots.
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“As Photoshop’s tools got miniatures and model making. “I
more sophisticated, it got easier would go buy a toy car or a toy
and easier to use,” he continues. truck, or I could quickly build
“When we first started using it, something in foam core and paint
there were no layers. You could it,” he explains. He would then
cut and paste, and there was take photos of the miniatures that
this crawly ant line around the he could scan and work with in
selection you made. If you clicked the computer. “Or you’d head
on it, it would just immediately to the bookstore to see if you
composite. You’d end up doing could get a book that had a good
things over and over again until photograph that you could scan
you got it at just the right angle. and then manipulate digitally.”
Yusei would use photo reference Taking what they’d learned
and do small acrylic paintings. on Young Indy, Huston and
Then he would photograph Uesugi then applied their digital
his painting and take that into matte techniques to the Star Wars
Photoshop at the end to avoid the Special Editions (1997). Uesugi
cut-and-paste level entirely. I was built the Mos Eisley spaceport
more comfortable just hammering as a 3D computer-generated
everything in Photoshop.” (CG) environment, enabling
Complementing the tools camera movement with realistic
in Photoshop, Huston, Uesugi parallax as Luke’s landspeeder
and their colleagues also began makes its way through the streets
working with After Effects for 2D before stopping at the Imperial
animated elements, as well as checkpoint. Huston, meanwhile,
the 3D programs Electric Image composed digital mattes of Mos
and Form-Z. Huston notes: “We Eisley, basing his work off photos
jumped into 3D right away of miniatures he constructed from
because there are so many things foam core, paint cans, plastic
that you used to have to do balls, and other materials. He
manually as a matte artist that 3D also worked with miniatures for a
just does—like perspective grids, new establishing shot of Obi-Wan
which are tedious but need a high Kenobi’s desert home, with Luke’s
degree of accuracy. A lot of things landspeeder parked outside.
became much easier.” Working with visual effects
Huston also continued to supervisor John Knoll, Huston
draw on his prior experience with also built a six-foot-wide model
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