So I'm going to start off by saying that this is a slightly different interview than we normally would have. In fact, this is more of a shameless punt for a website I've found on Artstation and I thought we simply HAVE TO write about these guys on Pixelsmithstudios.
MattePaint.com is an online library that launched in September 2017 and has grown substantially, to say the least. It is a platform that provides high quality stock images (I can vouch for this, as I've downloaded and used a few myself from here) at a fraction of what you would expect to pay for so much awesome.
I got in touch with Conrad and he agreed to let us write about them… Super Woot!
1. What was the biggest influence that drove your team to kick this concept off the ground ?
2. What would you say has been the biggest success to date for MattePaint.com?
3. What are some of your goals for 2018 and what would you like to see more of in regards to what your platform is used for?
When I started work in the VFX industry it became apparently very quickly that a product like this was missing. Most artists resorted to google images which has issues with quality and resolution (not to mention questionable legality), or personal collections taken over the years. There are a few resources for artists and copyright free repositories but none of them had the breadth of content and quality.
Probably the response from the industry, we haven't reached agreements with our studio clients to name any particular studio, but we have many of the top VFX houses as clients – and the feedback is stellar. But I think this just stems off the back of our product, the site functions really nicely and the photography we have is top notch (and we have a lot more to come!) .
In the Artstation article, it says that your images had been used in Warcraft. What was the experience for the team upon this news?
This was actually something which happened before we even had a gallery! I reached out to my friends in the industry and personally provided them with an offline gallery to play around with. So we're talking REALLY early days as the product has been in development for 2 years. It's a different feeling to working on it yourself, we get a kick out of helping the artists/studios create their work. I'd compare it to a teacher being proud of their students work-class work.
We launched early in 2017 with a functional product, but not a fully featured one. We have a lot more coming, we're developing a texture library, photogrammetry sets and 3D models. It's hard to say when this might be released as everything always takes longer than you think. We're also implementing an option for people to upload their personal images to our gallery for storage and search. Personal images are free to download too so it's like a personal, searchable gallery you can take anywhere! You'll also have the option to give back to other artists by making your own images public so other users can use them.
I'd also like to see our MattePaint Academy grow through this year into a community. It's a secret facebook group reserved for active subscribers to our site. We have 4 mentors (including me) who are recording videos, hosting live sessions and providing guidance to the artists on the group. The group comes free for subscribers so it's a really nice added benefit for students who might not be sure if they should grab a subscription to the site.
Check out some of the work by our members to the Academy!
Now before we get carried away and have you read a super long post without any awesome eye-candy to look at, we've been given a code, a very easy code, to share with you. This code will make sure that you get 250 free credits when you sign up, using this code, so that you can also buy some images to start off your projects with.