Concept art / matte paintings with SketchUp

[Alex Jenyon]

Here's some examples of how I've been using SketchUp in my professional work. Some of these are pretty old, but I don't think I've posted them before.

UEFA champions league promo concept art:

SU:

Concept:

SU:

Storyboard:

SU:

Matte painting:

Detail:

The cityscape was modeled in 'blocks' in sketchup - I think I did about 4 or 5. The 'blocks' were then seeded to Vue as an ecosystem, and 'grown' into a fully fledged city. This is what the render looked like before processing:

'The Day of the Triffids' matte painting

Plate:

Paired with 'Vue', I'm actually using Sketchup quite a lot for photo-real matte paintings. I'm working on 'Narnia' using it at the moment, and it was used extensively on matte paintings for 'Leap Year'. Hopefully I can show some of that work later this year.

Here are the Sketchup elements for the above matte, based on a 'Camera Match' to get a correct camera, and then rendered in 'Vue' using my 'Camera2Vue' script. The buildings weren't SU (though I think they could have been) - they were already rendered in C4D and provided to me in advance.

Hope people like seeing these - I know SketchUp only played a small part in the creation of each one, but it proves it is a serious tool, capable of being used on the biggest projects...

Take care

AJ

[artysmedia]

Amazing work, AJ!

[EarthMover]

Inspired beyond words!

[pilou]

SU in real action

[majid]

really artistic job

[Alex Jenyon]

Thanks for your comments. I don't usually get any feedback on these kind of images after the job is finished - basically because it doesn't make any difference, and the client is long gone...

If there is anything bothering you about any of the images, chuck it out there, feedback is great.

I also forgot these, a rush job for the Macy's Christmas Special 'Yes, Veronica' (produced by 'Bitstate'). It's a steampunk-style heartrate monitor, a bit like a victorian ECG:

SU:

[johnsenior1973]

For the CL stadium, what are the long blue things hanging from the roof? As a football fan the last thing I'd want to see is something blocking my view of the pitch.

Did you create the CL stadium, or did you just do the artwork to someone else's instructions?

I especially like seeing the images. I'm a big football fan (I'm a Chelsea fan so I can't say I'm any fan of UEFA ) and was intrigued by the CL stadium - the huge size makes it look as if it holds at least 500,000 people. The roof, even though it's completely impractical looks awesome every time I've seen it on TV.

How involved are you in the projects? Do you just come up with the concept art or are you also involved in creating the ads/shows for TV?

[Alex Jenyon]

The blue things are the banners that furl down in the final video, and show video clips of various teams as the camera pans past them.

I was working for a visual effects house, so I got to have a lot of input into the design of the sequence and layout of the shorts, but not the overall concept of the video. The art director from the agency gave me the brief for the stadium design - it had to have the Champions League logo as a roof (totally impractical), it had to have some very large banners around the pitch (totally impractical, as you point out), and it had to be the biggest, most impressive stadium ever (again, probably totally impractical).

I sat down and did the rest. The 3D model was then done in maya by the 3D modeling and texturing team at 'Rushes', based on my SketchUp model.

[olishea]

unbelievable work!!

[ken28875]

Awesome renders, Alex.

All the Best,

_KN

[ENG. YASEEN]

That's unbelievable

Well-done Alex

All the Best,

[Richard]

Stunning work mate!! Keep posting some more, this is great inspiration!

[andyc]

Hey Alex - wondered where you'd been hiding. Obviously hard at work. Great work as usual, and always nice to see SU integrated into a production pipeline. Always look forward to your posts.

Andy.