We found the matte paintings featured in this 2020 Coop Christmas advertisement as enchanting as the children found the titular last snow monster. We spoke to the artist behind them, Marc Zimmerman of Epicscapes, to learn more about him and how these realistic renders came to be.
Interview conducted by Katly Hong.
Marc Zimmerman (MZ): I’m a digital artist from Germany specializing in matte-painting, visual effects, and CG environments for film and commercials. I also create personal projects in the form of artwork, short films, and VR experiences in which I control the entire pipeline, from concept to sound design. I use digital environments to tell stories and provoke emotions.
Katly Hong (KH): What inspires you most about environments? How long have they been your focus?
MZ: Most of my personal projects explore a common theme: how we, as both humans and artists, can thrive by fueling our minds with inspiration from the beauty and grace of the natural world. Putting someone into an environment with a dense, immersive atmosphere and mood can be a powerful experience. It can have wonderful effects on the beholder’s mind, ranging from simple amazement to deep emotions and a joy in being alive. These experiences have fascinated me since my teen years, so about half of my life now.
KH: How long have you been using SpeedTree?
MZ: I’ve often come across SpeedTree, but had never used it before this project because I saw it more as a tool for bigger companies and budgets. Instead, I relied on simpler plug-ins that haven’t developed as much in recent years. For this project it was important to have a higher level of quality, detail, and flexibility, so I treated myself to a SpeedTree subscription.
KH: When did you decide to take the leap into freelancing? What do you enjoy most about it and how do you structure your time as an independent contractor?
MZ: For me it was clear early on that I wanted to work from home as an independent freelancer instead of working in a VFX company. This has to do with multiple factors like lifestyle preference, my personality, and health considerations. It was also important for me to be able to work on personal projects for a few weeks here and there; to be completely absorbed in the creation process, where time sometimes seems to lose all structure.
Breaking down “The Snow Monster’s Cave | Full-CG Forest Matte-Painting”
Based on a rough black and white thumbnail sketch, I started laying out the elements and composition in Cinema 4D, heavily utilizing its sculpting and MoGraph tools.
With the rough composition established, I created some basic lighting and atmosphere using Redshift to get a feeling for the mood.
After additional iterations on the composition and depth of the scene using dummy/low-res objects for rocks and trees, I slowly replaced them with higher resolution photogrammetry versions. I maintained a manageable LOD workflow to switch back between low and high resolution versions.
With custom shaders, I generated a mossy look for the rocks and ground, then refined the scene by scattering small assets like logs. The small plants and trees in the foreground are mostly hand-placed while I relied on random scattering for assets farther away.
When all of the geometry work was finished, I placed additional spotlights, and sometimes multiple directional sun lights, to highlight certain spots and tweak the lighting to my liking later in compositing.
In my workflow, I treat the multi-pass 3D renderings like raw material that I breathe life into in After Effects, balancing and masking the different light sources and atmosphere layers – like painting with light.
KH: What advice do you have for aspiring environment artists?
MZ: I often struggle to give concrete, meaningful advice to other artists since a lot of what I do is experimenting: trying out things, keeping what I like, removing what I don’t like, and iterating, iterating, iterating – until it feels good.
Surrounding yourself with valuable inspiration (aka references) is key, I think; the brain has a remarkable ability to soak up everything like a sponge, a lot of it happens subconsciously.
This and having a clear focus on the specific concept you’d like to convey or emotion you want to provoke are likely to lead to a good outcome.
Thanks again to Marc Zimmerman for making time to talk with us and breaking down,
“The Snow Monster’s Cave | Full-CG Forest Matte-Painting”