The Matrix Art Print
This year, I finally got the opportunity to work on a licensed art print for a movie that I really love – The Matrix.
I class The Matrix as a perfect movie. It’s a great story built around a great idea where pretty much every element of it is iconic. Seeing it for the first time in 1999, we all knew it was securing it’s place in cinema history as a classic entry in the genre. So, when I sat down to think about how I wanted to portray this movie in one still image, I wanted to incorporate something of the themes of the movie into it. i wanted to draw people in, bewilder them as Neo is bewildered when entering the Matrix, but also revitalise people’s interest in revisiting the film.
This one concept seemed to tick all those boxes, so, with the support of the lovely James at Moor Art, and with the blessing of Sideshow and Warner Bros, all I had to do was figure out how to make it work. Without falling down the Rabbit Hole myself.
The resulting piece is called “I Believe I Can bring Him Back”.
Whenever I draw something, I want to make something I haven’t seen before. And The Matrix has a LOT of art out there – very good art too. I wanted to try and make something that stood out from what I’d found, so I tried to think outside of the box a little.
My influences are legion, but up there at the top of the list are Katsuhiro Otomo and Kim Jung Gi (these are a couple of examples of their skill). Some of the unique viewpoints those guys conjure up are incredible, and I thought The Matrix deserved something unique – something where I felt I was pushing what I could do.
This was the first idea I had. I did pitch a couple of other concepts, but I liked this one the best, as it felt ambitious enough to push me out of my comfort zone – which is always a good thing, so I was pleased when Sideshow and Warner Bros went for it.
James at Moor Art was keen on all my ideas, and great at getting my ideas across on our behalf, but he agreed that this was the strongest.
I wanted to try and see my favourite scene – the lobby shootout – from the viewpoint of the Matrix itself. I sketched a few other angles, but nothing worked as well as looking at the entire scene at once from beneath. There’s just something kind of dizzying about it.
I tidied up the rough sketch so that people didn’t think I was a gibbering idiot who had seen the Lizard God and was trying to translate what grand admiral Zink wanted me to tell the people of Earth.
In other words, I had to make the idea a bit more presentable/understandable.
Thankfully, the lovely people at Moor Art, Sideshow and Warner Bros understood it enough to give me the green light.
And so, the lengthy process of mapping out the lobby itself began. I wanted to have a fisheye effect so I could get as much action in one place as possible.
I may be my own worst enemy, because that decision gave me so many brain-aches, I lost count. Imagine seeing Neo stood at the bag scanner and deciding it’s a good idea to look at him from underneath, then try and position him in the right place in the lobby and draw him from an angle that doesn’t exist. Then multiply that by 40.
I’m an idiot.
Next up – Texture.
I zoomed in on the tiles in the lobby scene and tried to recreate what they would look like at a distance. This bit looks simple, but it took a good few hours to make it feel recognisable from the movie.
Once I had the texture right, I spread it across the room to see if it gave the same vibe as the movie. To make the texture work, I needed to take big slices of it, then bend and stretch them in photoshop to make each individual wall/column side. Took bloody AGES. But I think it worked.
This bit was fun.
Trying to match the lighting in the lobby to what we see onscreen.
That included:-
– Shading on all the columns and walls
– Shading on all the individual wall tiles
– Other light sources (the front door/windows/elevator)
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I’d nailed the colouration properly.
Didn’t feel “Matrix-y” enough.
But thanks to the wonders of Photoshop, I could adjust the hue until it felt just sickly-green enough to hit that sweet spot that we all associate with Neo’s adventure in Digi-land.
Also, it was time to ditch the original red line sketch.
One of the elements that took the longest to get right were the people. There aren’t actually 30 odd people in the room, but I wanted to show the progression of the action in a still image, so I went all weird and drew everyone multiple times.
What was fascinating was that this scene is so tightly scripted and executed that, even after an extra thousand or so watches of it, I can appreciate it even more now.
When Trinity is attacking the guards, she’s doing it to stop them shooting Neo, and Neo is doing the same. Each guard’s position helps both of them advance through the room and every time they shoot one of them, the wave of action gets closer to the exit point – the elevator.
Man, this bit was hard work, but also insanely satisfying.
A bit like the entire project, to be honest.
Last thing I wanted to tackle was placing the entire scene within the Matrix itself. Luckily, the falling green symbols are so recognisable, I could have just dropped the pen and made a bunch of nonsense marks and people would recognise it when the green glow was added. Unfortunately for me, I’m a stickler for detail, so I ended up pausing the movie and recreating a bunch of symbols myself, so I could manipulate them to make it look like we were beneath the lobby, with the Matrix code falling around us.
And there you go! All finished.
I’ll be eternally grateful to Moor Art, Sideshow and Warner Bros for the opportunity to go nuts on a piece like this for a movie I dearly love.
Right. Time for a red pill.
Cheers,
Dave
