Matte Painting Challenge #3 "Kung Fu Flashback" (Complete)

  This months challenge has got to be the most fun and most challenging for me so far.  As a big fan of Kung Fu Panda myself I wanted to make sure I didn't just jump straight in this without any planning or thought. 

  I sat down and watch the both the films twice, once simply to enjoy and the second time with commentary with a thought to study and understand their design direction.  During the process I sketch many quick 5 minute thumbnails with pen and paper.  

  I had many ideas in mind but one that stood out was from the intro in the first film during Po's dream.  It mention of a place called Demon Mountain.    

 I also did some quick studies of some Asian rock formations seen in China.  I thought this would help me get in the right mood for this challenge.

Here is an update for this months challenge, I choice 3 of the best compositions that has the most interesting shapes that speaks to me for what I am trying to capture.  Trying to nail down the mood/story and borrowed some color ques from the movie of the dark coolish tones with the red flaming lights for a more unpleasant feel.

Alright time for an update, I spent quite some time trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I concluded with the middle composition.  It has the best story elements and interesting shape arrangement.  I felt there was too much texture detail and I had to remove most of it and went back to the basics.  The army was starting to feel a bit busy and taking the focus away from the landscape.  I took bits and pieces of the story element from the other two composition and included some of that in this update.  I am a lot happier with this work in progress shot but I feel there is still much more to do here.

Happy Holidays everyone, I found some time to refine this piece a little more.  Trying to match the feel of the movie and shaping out the little things that pop to me.  Its always a challenge to balance the visual essence of a environment with many subjects that demand attention.  I did the best I can for this update but will do more before deadline, enjoy.

This is my final, change a few things to support the narrative of this piece.