Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy was Marvel Studios first movie of nearly unknown superheros and at the same time some of Marvel Studios most successful after the first Avengers movie. Doing that time Tony moved to London and started working at the award winning visual effects studio Framestore. For Guardians of the Galaxy, Tony created concept art and digital matte paintings under the lead and Head of Matte Painting Department of Jason Horley (now art director at ILM).

Streets of Knowhere

The connection of plate and full-cg background

The streets of knowhere was the biggest sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy Tony worked on. This sequence had a shot count of more than 14 shots. Tony was asked to connect the full-cg background; that came from the environment and modelling department, with the plate. Which means that the mid-ground elements needed to be painted and textured. Because of the fight that happen on the street between Drax and Ronan, Tony had the create matte paintings that capture a nearly 360 view of the street. For that Tony used two of the main views of street to fill the space and help to tell the story.

Digital Matte Painting

2D digital matte painting on simple 3D geo

To help the story telling of this feature film. At first Tony was responsible for creating the moody view from the Brooklyn Bridge into the New York Skyline. besides creating the extention of the bridge entirly in 3D using Houdini and Maya. Was I also responsible for the research of the bridge doing that time as well as the concept design of it. The concepts were pitched to the director and vfx supervisor. Once it was approved I went go on to create it in 3D. I also created a slap-comp in Nuke which later got shared with the compositing department to finalize the shots.

Escape of Kyln

From concept to the final matte painting

Kyln is a galactic prison that holds the bad of the galaxy. Doing the production Tony was responsible for creating some smaller matte painting backgrounds. The challanging part was to not only create the matte paintings, but also start from scratch.

Drax Drone Destruction

How does it looks like inside a drone?

In one scene, Drax has to destory a drone to help the other Guardians of the Galaxy to escape from Kyln. Tony was asked to create a quick 3D concept art for this scene which can later on be hand of to the 3D department for the final touchups for the movie. See below a before and after of the concept.