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SG1 - vfxblog - Interview with Kent Matheson

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morjana

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Feb 4, 2005, 1:25:39 AM2/4/05

Kent Matheson is a matte painter, and has worked on various seasons
of Stargate SG-1. His web site is at:

http://www.kentmatheson.com/

Which has some marvelous matte paintings from the episodes Kent
worked on.

>From vfxblog the interview:

http://vfxblog.com/articles/kent_matheson/index.html

(Please follow the link for the complete interview.)

Interview with Kent Matheson

Kent Matheson is a matte painter and art director currently employed
at Tippett Studio. He has worked on films such as Men In Black II,
The Mummy Returns, Attack of the Clones, The Matrix Revolutions, The
Stepford Wives and the upcoming Son of the Mask. Matheson talks to
vfxblog about his craft and about some of the projects he has
contributed to.

Interview by Ian Failes

Can you tell me a little about yourself and your background in matte
painting and design?

Hmmm... I'm 38 and I've been involved in visual effects since about
1998. A late starter. I studied fine art and graphic design in
school, focusing on printmaking and illustration. After graduating I
wanted to be a magazine illustrator and thought I'd move to New York
and do work for all the magazines, but it didn't take - I didn't like
the idea of living in New York and I didn't want to do illustration
for advertising, which is where the money is in that business. I also
found that I didn't really enjoy making art that was close to my
heart and then having to change it in order to make my rent payments.
Illustration was always a very personal thing for me and I hadn't
learned the lesson yet about separating personal art from commercial
art, which I think is a pretty important distinction to make.

Eventually I allowed myself to move past illustration being my
creative outlet and focus, which although was difficult at the time
was ultimately a good thing and an interesting lesson - that the
goals we have as kids don't have to be the goals we keep as we begin
to experience a thing and changing directions isn't necessarily a
compromise if it's not the core values you change, just the outlet
you use to express them. Also that some forums are more suitable than
others for expression... In this case it freed me up to keep my
personal work personal and allowed me to move into into commercial
work with clearer eyes and a fresher approach.

So I started designing for magazines & posters and worked with that
for a few years, one of the last and most interesting being Adbusters
(www.adbusters.org), in Vancouver BC. This lead to Stargate SG1,
where I came on in 1998 to do the computer screens and graphic
animations. Funny thing, friends tell me that they'd never seen me
work so hard as when I was putting together the demo for that job,
which should have told me something. I remember at the time that I
was interested, but felt a bit resistant and kept telling myself I'd
do it for a year, maybe two, then get on with something more
artistic. I found the work to be challenging and fairly cool - it was
fun making the animations for the computers... "detonation in T minus
five, four, three, two...", but it wasn't until I started doing a
couple of matte paintings later in the first year that it really
caught my attention. This was where a lot of my background and
experience seemed to come together in a place that really excited me.
For the second year I talked my way into being the full time matte
painter for Stargate and so now here I am, years later...

**snippity doo-dah**

Can you tell me about the first ever major project you worked on?

That would be the TV show Stargate SG1. It was actually my first ever
project, I was the matte painter for the series from about 1997 to
2000, and in a lot of ways it was probably about the best start I
could have had because of the combination of people and where the
industry was at in Vancouver at the time, which opened up
opportunities that might not have existed in other situations at
other times - I think I was pretty lucky. For example, there was no
one really doing matte paintings in Vancouver at the time and the
show was hiring freelance painters for single shots to do the needed
work. But I was there doing the graphics and I thought "I can do
this" and it worked out that because of the situation and the
openness and the lack of a formalized structure or hierarchy for that
position, it was possible for it to happen.

Then there was the support and general cool-ness (technical vfx term)
of the people on the show that allowed it to happen. The Supervisors,
James Tichenor in particular, were very positive and supportive and
really worked with it. I guess they saw it as a good thing and could
see advantages, and it just generally worked out well for everyone.
For me, definitely, and I think it worked out well for the show on a
couple of levels - financially it was good, but there was also the
advantage of having an 'environments' person around full time which
allowed the show to plan and explore larger and more complicated
things than had previously been possible under the 'distant
freelance' option. Another advantage was that it was a high profile
show with a good budget for vfx, and we were able to get into all
sorts of fun trouble. For example, 3D tracking was explored and we
were able to get pretty whacky at times with matte paintings and
environments. I remember going to my interview with ILM and a few of
the guys were surprised at what we'd been able to do on a tv show.
That was a good start.

**major snippity doo-dah**