Every person possesses his own psychologic perception of the reality and it is the different one for each of us. The absolute and objective reality exists separately our minds and doesn’t deal at all with the processes of cognition. It is just a fact and it should be accepted as entity. We understand and take the world around us through our world outlook and the prism of our essence. We create for ourselves some illusion that is slightly closed to the reality and we live in this wonderland for the whole life. Matte painting is a kind of illusion, the rendering of reality through the point of view of its creator. These paintings are done using digital graphics and photo manipulation, and this very technique helps to create astonishing panoramic views for various films and games. Matte paintings look like true to life images, but at the same time it is just brilliantly done work, the illusion that is so captivating and unforgettable.

Take a deep breath and be ready to soar oneself in the illusive and awesome world of matte paintings.

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Matte Painting created by Yanick Dusseault for the film “Star Wars. Episode 3″

Portfolio here

The breathtaking broad valley stretches away on this very illustration as far as the eye can see. This splendid scenery is so magnetic that you can hardly believe that it is real, and your are true – it is the magnificent example of mature matte painting.

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Matte Painting created by Dylan Cole for Happiness Factory, Coca-Cola project.

Portfolio here

The illustration that you see is truly a breath-taking piece of art. It pictures in the professional style the overtaking panoramic view of the green valley. The scenery that you will never see in the reality is still so magnificent and so real on this image.

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Matte Painting created by Mathieu Raynault for the film “King Kong”

Portfolio here

This majestic cliff of the huge mountain and the waterfall that is like a thing cord are just splendid. When you look at them you believe that it is the rendering of some real scenery, but it is partially true – photo manipulation and certain digital artwork are the very instruments for the creation of such brilliant sceneries.

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To celebrate the New Year 2009, we would like to bring to your attention the collection of Joomla Christmas templates for your websites. And though, Christmas is still a long way off, all the preparations should be done beforehand. Joomla website templates are available in considerable quantity through hundreds of websites. But we tried to gather only those that have been created especially for this joyous holiday and that are pretty enough. But, unfortunately, we failed to find free and beautiful Joomla templates at the same time. Thus, our collection mainly consists of commercial Joomla Themes.
But if you know where to find not only free but quality Joomla website templates, please leave your comments and we will update the post.

With the help of these Christmas templates you have a good opportunity to create festive atmosphere and easily and quickly change the look and feel of your website, make it brighter and more attractive. So, look through this collection of Joomla Christmas templates, and you will definitely find the perfect solution for you!

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Joomla Christmas Template # 174
Product type: Joomla Template 1.5

This attractive Joomla template conveys the merry Christmas atmosphere in the best possible way. The combination of red with dark colors makes this template more powerful and emphatic like the holiday itself.

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Christmas Joomla
This Joompa web template done in green colors looks very effective. Red is used as an accent colors and brings images to the foreground.

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We’d like to let you know about people we think are doing great work. And this time we present works of five professional matte painters who have colossal experience in film industry. They are: Dylan Cole, Frederic St-Arnaud, Yanick Dusseault, David Luong and Chris Thunig.

What is matte painting? – you ask. Matte painting is a mixture of photo manipulation and digital paintings to create the vision of a place that makes you believe it really exists. Matte paintings are widely used as backgrounds for movies and video games.

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DYLAN COLE.
Dylan Cole is a leading matte painter and concept artist specializing in work for film, television, and video games. He was born and raised in Southern California. He enjoyed drawing at an early age. He mainly drew pictures of comic character. But at the age of 14 Dylan started to paint. He pretty much taught himself traditional painting and it became his obsession.

Dylan attended UCLA’s fine art program. His first real job was with Illusion Arts shortly after I graduated from UCLA. Then he rose very rapidly. His client list seems to go on forever. Dylan collaborated with: Black Box Digital, Blizzard Entertainment, CIS Hollywood, Digital Backlot, Dreamworks, Microsoft, Origami Digital, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Animation and VFX, Warner Brothers Studios, Weta Digital and many others.

Matte painting created by Dylan Cole for the film “The Lord of the Rings”.

Dylan Cole contributed his digital art skills to many blockbuster movies such as: A Sound of Thunder, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Van Helsing, The Chronicles of Riddick, I, Rorot, Sky Captain, World of Tomorrow, The Aviator, The Ring 2, Memoirs of a Geisha, Four Brothers, The Reaping, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Superman Returns, The Last Mimzy, Pirates of the Caribbean: at World’s End, The Golden Compass and etc.

Matte painting created by Dylan Cole for the film “The Chronicles of Riddick”.

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Public Art is arousing our thinking, provoking our curiosity and energizing our public spaces. It possesses a great ability of transforming the place we live in into a special world, into better, friendlier environment. Public art, in the broad sense of the word, is any work of art or design created by an artist specifically to be sited in a public space.

And this blog post is devoted to astonishing and creative pieces of public art. Here you will see interactive towers, gigantic sculptures, surrealistic statues, painted houses, stone, rubber and wooden sculptured figures, original bus stops and even carpets made of flowers. You will visit the annual exhibition of modern and contemporary sculpture in the beautiful Chatsworth garden in Derbyshire, Bruno’s Art and Sculpture Garden in Australia and many other beautiful places that can boast of the matchless masterpieces.

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This amazing piece of public art was designed by artist Lawrence Argent and commissioned by the city of Denver, CO. The project is 42-ft (12.2m) tall. It was installed in Denver with the help of four semi-trucks and a large crane. The original form was first scanned using a Cyberware 3D scanner and then animated into position using Newtek’s Lightwave. This gigantic blue Bear was placed in front of the Convention Center.

Thanks to Deskproto for this image.

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The D-Tower is part of the Tower Project in the Dutch town Doetinchem. It is an interactive art project. The City’s inhabitants can decide which color the tower should have on the following night: Red for Love, Purple for Happiness, Yellow for Fear and Green for Hate. It is the first of total 5 artistic towers (A, B, C, D, E), to be placed on the locations of the city’s five former gates.
This first tower is a creation of the artist Q.S. Serafijn and the architect Lars Spuybroek.

Thanks to Deskproto for this image.

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The annual sales exhibition of modern and contemporary sculpture in the beautiful Chatsworth garden in Derbyshire (England) is the most eagerly awaited annual art show. More than 20 works of famous artists are presented there. Among them is Marc Quinn’s sculpture of a baby entitled Planet. The exhibition is organized in association with Sotheby’s and is open to the public until the 2d of November.

The image was taken from Yatzer.com

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Today we want to introduce a talented matte painter and concept artists from Romania – Tiberius Viris. And though he is only in his twenties, he was an immediate success and gained popularity. Tiberius’s amazing matte paintings looks so realistic and lifelike, so it is hardly possible to distinguish them from photos. His works have been featured in many books and art collections such as Digital Art Masters Vol III, D’artiste Matte Painting 2, Expose 5 and 6 and many others.

For more information, please visit a website of Tiberius Viris.

Lost World – Tample of Nature. Matte Painting by Tiberius Viris

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Please, tell about yourself. When did you first notice that you have a talent of an artist?

Hello! My name is Tiberius Viris and I’m a visual effects artist working for the film and entertainment industry.

To be honest, I dreamed of environments and exotic worlds ever since I can remember, and this passion found its perfect tool – visual art – only much later. For a very long time I tried to express these ideas through writing until one day I discovered, by accident, the wonders of computer graphics. Since then I’ve devoted myself to this technique, trying to learn everything about it and even find some room for improvement.

Usually the talent is propagated. Is anybody in your family related to arts?

Unfortunately, I have to say no, it’s a curiosity for me too. All my family are strong science folks and I personally like science too…but somehow art found a way to entangle with it in a harmonic way

Antarctica. Matte Painting by Tiberius Viris.

What is your main achievement in CG? Do you have a favorite work among works created by yourself? If yes, why is it exactly this one?

Hmmm, I feel it’s still early to talk about a main achievement, because I’m still young and a long road lies ahead But so far I’m very happy with the hyper realism level I’ve reached. Some of my pieces are often mistaken as photos My favorite piece is Lost World, but the most of my friends like Dragon Mist or Hokkaido more.

Hall of the Dragon Mist. Matte Painting by Tiberius Viris.

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