Workflow and Skillset
Through the growing need for 'moving' mattes camera projection mapping has been implemented into the matte painting pipeline. Although ILM CG Supervisor Stefen Fangmeier came up with the idea of projecting Yusei Uesugi's aerial painting of Neverland onto a 3D mesh modeled by Geoff Campbell while working on the motion picture 'Hook' in 1991, projection-mapping based 3D environment matte art was until recently, like its predecessor matte painting has been, the industry's best kept secret. The involvement of 3D in this until then 2D art form was revealed by Craig Barron from Matte World Digital in 1998 after completing their work on the feature film 'Great Expectations' when they introduced this technique as a 2.5D matte to the public. In production today this combination of 2D and 3D is part of every Matte Artist's bread and butter.
Because of their high artistic skills digital matte artists are often also involved with the creation of concept artwork.
Read more about this topic: Digital Matte Artist