In this two disc traning DVD, concept designer Christian Lorenz Scheurer teaches viewers how to create matte paintings and high-end conceptual art for motion picture and game development. This review focuses on the first DVD in the set.

Christian Lorenz Scheurer has a very unusual and varied background which no doubt contributes to his talent and view of the world. He was born in Bern, Switzerland, and grew up in many countries, from the bush in South Africa to the Seychelles Islands. Influenced by his artist mom and stories of his great-grandfather, a theatrical set designer and well known artist; he developed an early passion for art. His father, a zoologist infused him with a love of science and math. As a young adult he studied art and mathematics practically antithetical subjects. Few people can master in both, but Christian has. He's also one of the very few artists you'll learn from who has been struck by lightning and survived. I don't know what that adds, but it has to be something.

Christian creates imaginary worlds for the movies, games and commercials. He's also one of our best digital matte painters. He's created many of those captivating visuals we see and love. He is particularly well known for his fantastic architectural designs for movies like: The Fifth Element; and his concept art for The Matrix and Titanic to the moody, other worldly dreamscapes of Dark City, What Dreams May Come, Final Fantasy, Animatrix and The Day After Tomorrow.

Recently he art directed the important AE game Return of the King. Later he developed the concept art for Maxis' game Spore, a visually stunning game of epic proportions. He is currently freelancing and working on his book: 'ENTROPIA: A Collection of Unusually Rare Stamps' (Design Studio Press). Christian and his lovely wife Laura live in the Hollywood Hills, California. You can find out more about his current work www.christianlorenzscheurer.com

Scheurer tackles three fun, ambitious projects in this volume. I was frankly surprised at how well I did. His instruction is thorough, organized and well presented; and I liked his voice (not always the case). In each project he starts out with a digital photograph which he opens in Photoshop and then starts painting on in layers. He puts in perspective lines, explaining the principles, and then he experiments with brushes, picking up paint colors from the photo using the eye dropper tool.

In Project one, he takes a digital photo shot near Malibu and turns it into and idyllic Scottish coast with a castle overlooking the sea. In the process he creates mountains using the lasso tool to make mountain shaped selections which he fills with gradients in a very effective technique. With different brushes he paints in massive foreground mountains and vegetation and mid ground mountain ranges. He layers in a little misty light and in a few minutes he's converted the Malibu seascape to an imaginary Scottish coast where he begins to paint in an old castle/church. Here he introduces roof textures etc from photos, showing you how to cleverly fit and blend them. He doesn't take the image to completion because he's only trying to teach us basic design and matte techniques. He implies that by tweaking the image carefully over a few weeks we can finish it to the level of a fine matte painting. Maybe he can, but I doubt that I would be able to. Strangely, I am not disappointed at all. I've learned so much that I feel very satisfied and my image looks pretty tolerable.

Project two is a night time space port. Christian starts with a shot of Honolulu Harbor at sunset with a big crane in the bg. Building on concepts taught in the first project he creates a stunning spaceport and damned if I don't create one almost as good. In fact, I'm a lot more careful than he is perhaps not a good thing. One of the points he stresses is that you need to not correct yourself too much or you might interrupt the flow of visual ideas. I need to loosen up a little. In this image, he expands on how you can incorporate photo material in the images by taking bits and pieces of photos and cranking them to fit using the distortion and translation tools in Photoshop.

I kept working on this exercise by using Google to find all sorts of night port images that I used to embellish the image. At this point I couldn't wait to go off on my own and play around. But I stuck it out for the third exercise which turned out to be my favorite.

Project Three visualizes a bombed out city. Christian says this is a common request. Here he takes us through a fascinating journey of creating one. Along the way we learn a ton of techniques building on the first two project lessons. Although I followed his work very closely, I was confident enough to go off a bit on my own, so instead of showing you his final image, I'm showing you mine. After following his instructions to the letter, I backed up and redid parts and added others. It's a lot of fun and I believe that if you have the creative eye, you can use this DVD to launch yourself on a very fulfilling journey. If you're talented enough and have the creative eye, you may well start a whole new career from this.

This is not an overall Photoshop tutorial in any sense. You really should have a reasonably solid grasp of Photoshop before you start this series. You’ll learn to use familiar tools in new and useful ways. I learned several tools I never even noticed before, and I’ll use them now forever.

Christian guides you through the process with a sure hand in several ways. He shares his thinking and visualizations as he works. Explaining his inner process is very helpful and freeing. His idea of free combinatory play tells you to have fun with it and don't sweat the details. His final images have lots of little things in them that I would have cleaned up because of my slight OCD tendencies. But he's the pro and he left them alone, so it must be alright.

As for the technique, Christian has his own style of working. In the end, I found doing things my own way, while integrating many of his ideas, tools and techniques into my personal workflow was best. At several points I felt like grabbing him and saying: "There’s an easier way to do that!" But don't take that as a criticism. Ultimately the blending of my techniques and his proved very effective.

If you need the ability to quickly and expertly develop sophisticated visual production concepts or matte paintings, AND you have some talent for design, you're going to learn a lot from this DVD. Even if you just want to learn advanced Photoshop techniques for digital painting you'll find this DVD very enlightening.

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To read the review on Disk 2, The Techniques of Christian Lorenz Scheurer: Advanced Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop Click Here.

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