Matte paintings

So, by now it is clear that I won't be working with Dreamlords anymore, in a few months time, hopefully the game will live on somehow.

That said, I have a few paths I could take after that. One of them, that I will post about here regularly from now on, is matte paintings. 

Basically, there is a workplace for me, if I can learn how to properly render images of city-scapes. But I really haven't done stuff like that for ages... So I will use the contacts and tutorials I have at my disposal to try and learn it.

This right here is a paintover I did, with no real knowledge on what the hell I am doing :-D

But it will serve as a base to understand what I need to do, what I need to improve etc.
Some things I learnt by doing this first image:










* I just did this with no particular thought on WHY, or WHO is going to use this image. This is not really ideal, since I don't really now what details to add, colours to use or anything.  If I had a theme, or was trying to say something with my image, it would probably have been easier

* I have a lot of flat surface, which makes the paintover look very basic and cartoony. I have used some textures, but the lack of detail hurts the image.

* Everything from "feel" to what to include in the scene is depending on what I want to portray, so for the next one, I will try to think of a theme and THEN go image-hunting.

Basically, it looks like shit, but it's ok for learnings sake. In the past, I would probably just have tossed the painting in the bin, but I gotta learn this stuff :-)