Matte painting: Viking village

Viking village matte painting by The Noble Artist, Jamie Noble Frier

A serene Viking village scene

After my admission of foolishness, for ignoring matte painting for so long, I have become quite addicted. This Viking Village is the second piece I showed to my client to showcase my skills in matte painting which actually won me the job. Really pleased with this. I think I’m just a really big fan of lighting things in a dynamic, epic way. I feel like it comes through in my illustration as well. The more I work professionally, the more I’ve realised how essentially art is just light and shadow, and if you can do those well, you’ve essentially won.

This Viking village scene make me want to live in here, I can’t wait to make more I can escape to in my head!

I grabbed a lot of the source images I used within this illustration from free to use (including commercially) site Unsplash. I also used a cool little (if somewhat buggy) 3D builder called Flowscape. Flowscape is fiddly, but is worth a look, I quickly stopped building scenes in it, and just took screenshots of buildings I wanted to reference for angles/perspective etc.

If you need fantasy art

If you’re looking for a fantasy artist, feel free to snoop through my illustration portfolio or head straight over to contact me for work, where you’ll find my email address and some handy forms which guide you through some of the starting info I’ll need to be able to quote for you. Typically I’m booked up a month ahead of time, but do drop me a line if you have anything time sensitive, sometimes I’m able to move things around in a pinch. Hope to hear from you!

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I love my job. I’ve always wanted to be an artist working on fantasy settings, creating world that give people real escapism and suspend their disbelief. One of the things I absolutely love though, is the interaction with people who are following along with what I’m doing. Hearing comments, and seeing my work make it’s way around the world makes me so happy!

So, if you’re enjoying my work, and you think others will too, please use the handy share buttons below, or paste the address to this article anywhere you know folks will like it! Thanks for reading.

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