Matvei Lisitsa - Concept art for films 2023

My name is Matvei Lisitsa. I am 26 years old. A year ago, I signed up for a course “Concept Art for Movies” for beginners in MDP School by Jama Jurabaev. This was the beginning of my journey in Concept Art.

I want to start my presentation with my newest personal project which I have been doing for the last month. I first attended the Swan Lake Ballet in 2013 and it made a big impression on me. I was struck by the music, its power and drama—it sounded so epic, especially in the finale, that I, as a big fan of cinema, immediately began to imagine how spectacular it could sound in a movie. After seeing the announcement of the ROOKIES AWARD, I decided that this would be a great opportunity to implement this old idea and make keyframe concepts specifically for this competition.

I took the ticket libretto as the basis of the plot. The story begins in the castle courtyard, where Prince Siegfard meets his 18th birthday. Bored, he notices a flock of flying swans and decides to hunt them, following them, after which the development of the whole story begins.

For the key scenes, I created 3 main locations in Unreal Engine as a guide for further rendering:

1. Siegfard's castle

2. Swan Lake with the ruins of sorcerer Rothbart’s castle

3. Ballroom

In the process of my work, it was important to me to convey the cinematic feel of the final keyframes. I paid close attention to camera angles, light, and color, using them as special aids for storytelling. Although this is a fairy tale, I wanted to make it realistic and not too fantastic, so the main goal was to emphasize all the drama and mysticism of this story.

I made this project for the Kitbash contest. The objective of the competition was to create concept art using kitbash. As part of the competition, I created a series of keyframes, prior to coming up with a short story:

A distant planet, which is in its first stages of being explored and mastered by people. The main characters see the spaceship crash of their pilot's girlfriend and go through all the natural elements of the planet to help their friend.

As part of this project, I came up with the location of a people settlement, a sandy desert, and snow-covered, unexplored mountains of the planet, along with a creature that the main characters face in the finale.

I want to finish my presentation with my first project, which I created under the mentorship of Jama Jurabaev. I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to Jama for all his tips, a very clear and accessible explanation of the basics of concept art, and just a very interesting time. Since I am a big fan of cinema, I am very happy that by taking a certain approach, now I know the specifics and can express my ideas visually.

As part of this project, I had to work with the Water World theme. After conducting research and brainstorming, we approved the story, the idea of which was based on a special team, the purpose of which is to get into the Louvre by going under water in order to find the coordinates of the “modern ark” on which it would be possible to find salvation—since, according to my idea, the world has only recently faced a cataclysm. I deliberately did not want to show Paris destroyed or overgrown with silt, I wanted to convey a moment of irreversibility in order to emphasize the fragility of our world and show the contrast of beauty and chaos.

To create this project, I carefully studied the urban landscape of the city to accurately convey the surroundings around the Louvre—for this purpose I used Google maps and then built the base of the city in Blender. The halls of the Louvre were also recreated exactly like it is at the real museum. This project opened up the world of concept art for me and I hope that this spark of inspiration will only flare up.

Thank you for your attention!