Responding to a heightened demand from commercial and feature film producers for digital matte painting, Santa Monica-based R!OT has hired two senior matte artists: Michele Moen and Kenneth Nakada. Moen, whose recent credits include Gladiator, Bedazzled and Red Planet, has worked freelance for the past five years. Nakada arrives from Los Angeles matte specialist firm Illusion Arts, where his credits included Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps and D-Tox.
The pair join matte artists Rocco Gioffre and Deak Ferrand as senior members of R!OT’s digital matte painting department, which in 1999 earned an Academy Award (as POP, which was later consolidated into R!OT) for its work on What Dreams May Come.
According to R!OT managing director Richard Cormier, the rise in requests for matte-painting services has been driven primarily by the TV ad market. "Advertising agencies and commercial producers are becoming increasingly reliant on matte painting to create sets, extend sets, create futuristic environments, et cetera," Cormier explained. "Not only are our artists being asked to become involved in more projects; they are being asked to become involved earlier, often during the conceptual phase." Cormier cited the current Budweiser spot "Little Red People," which Ferrand directed for DDB Chicago, and the Volkswagen spot "Dreamer" for Arnold Worldwide, Boston, as prominent recent examples of commercials that involved R!OT matte painters from near the point of conception. On the latter, Gioffre and R!OT staffer Renee Rabache served as matte painting artists.
Cormier attributed the increased demand to improvements in technique and technology that have made digital matte paintings powerful tools. "Matte paintings are far more sophisticated today than they were even five years ago," he said. "They are no longer static images, but can be controlled and detailed to work with complex camera movements."
Moen landed her first job as an apprentice matte painter on Blade Runner, then spent the next 14 years at now defunct Boss Film, eventually supervising its matte painting department. Her credits there included such titles as Ghostbusters, 2010, Cliffhanger, True Lies, Multiplicity and Outbreak. She left Boss in 1996 to go freelance, and since then has worked with many of the industry’s top visual effects producers. She worked at Venice, Calif.-based Digital Domain on The Fifth Element; with The Mill, London, on Gladiator; with Los Angeles-based Rhythm & Hues on Red Planet; and with Sony Pictures Imageworks, Culver City, Calif., on Stuart Little.
Moen’s work on Batman Forever is part of a traveling exhibition from Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Her work is also featured in the books A Day in the Life of Hollywood and Film Architecture.
Nakada has more than three dozen feature film credits, including Mystery Men, The Mask of Zorro and Six Days and Seven Nights. He has also contributed to the television series The X-Files and Star Trek: Voyager, as well as to commercials for Sony, Dodge, Ford and Logix Communications.
Nakada came to matte painting via an improbable but propitious route. He holds a master’s degree in physiological sciences, and as part of a study of animal locomotion accepted an internship at Los Angeles animation house Duck Soup Productions (now Duck Soup Studios). He became enamored of animation and visual effects and promptly changed career course.
Nakada, who has experience in compositing and 3-D animation, as well, observed, "People may not realize it, but there is a lot of physics to understanding natural phenomena. I have always been grateful for my knowledge of science. It is also very useful to have knowledge of animation and compositing. It helps in managing multi-planning and perspective changes."
Both Moen and Nakada have previously worked with R!OT’s Gioffre, and it was that relationship along with the company’s plans to take a stepped-up role in digital matte painting services that led them to their new staff posts. "I was very impressed with the work Rocco and Deak did on What Dreams May Come," Moen explained. "I see it [R!OT] as a place where I can continue to grow professionally and develop as an artist."
