Sulfur Dioxide Atmosphere - This atmosphere, heavy with unbreatheable sulfur dioxide, as a result of hyper volcanism, her terrain constantly reshaped as lava creates rivers of undulating once molten rock that now lays like long flowing hair. Proxima Centauri illuminates the escaped vapors of gas, our distant sun visible even in the daytime sky.
Icy Grass - Sunrise reveals a coating of freezing water droplets on tropical mountian grass, the beginning of a season and the end of a natural lifecycle.
Modeling & Painting
This is a Matte Painting that I created, the modeling was done in 3ds Max and the principal rendering was done in Vray. I painted over the reference models passes in Photoshop and then composited all the lighting passes and atmospheric effects in Fusion.
Desert Planet - I created this as a pure matte painting with no photo references. The base meshes were modeled in 3ds Max and the maps were displacement, color pass, atmospheric passes, and the composition was done in Photoshop so I could dirty it up a bit. Things in real life are dirty...
ICBM Launch - Matte painting done in Photoshop CS4.
Aeschylus - Matte painting created in Photoshop CS4
Cassini, First Encounter with Jupiter - This is a matte painting of the Cassini Huygens project. I used no photo references, but used CG models as my overpaint guides. The starfield is just a freeform Photoshop painting, as well as the sunrise. It looks much better as its full size and an uncompressed jpeg.