Behind The Scenes: Matrix (Patreon)

Ah Matrix. I remember watching this move over and over in the early 2000's and I re-watch it occasionally to this day. One could say that it's style is aging a bit, but overall, I still dig it. And it's one of the installements of the cyberpunk genre, that really made it to mainstream and roots and bits of it can be traced all the way to William Gibson's Neuromancer book (I think that's the first use of word Matrix in connection with artificial reality).

So let's say you want to make a movie inspired scene, which scene should you choose? For example, in Matrix, there are lots of epic scenes that could be reproduced from the hallway shootout all the way to some Sentinel scene. But whenever I watch a movie, there are scenes that leave an imprint in my brain for some reason and I always recall that particular scene when thinking of it.

It's probably because they leave some emotional impact and if I remember them that way, there is a strong possibility that there are other people like that too. So maybe less people will recognize the scene, but the emotional connection will be stronger.

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That's why I picked the scene where Neo is waiting under the bridge and is approached by Lincoln Continetal with Morpheus' crew. It just stuck in my head because I love cars and and it was at that mysterious place in the movie's plot.

I've picked few references and while looking for multiple angles of the Lincoln in the movie, I've came across the phone booth and I instantly wanted to include it. It wasn't even present in the scene, but the fact that it's strong element of the whole movie and might as well be hidden outside of that bridge, was reason enough.

When sketching, I started with the car, because it was the strongest and most important element of the scene. I made it a bit larger, and tried to imagine how I could fit in a bridge and a booth on such a small scene.

I tried few versions and finally decided to do a bridge in form of pillar cutout. Something that just suggests the bridge is there, but I actually don't have to do the whole thing and match proportions. After adding a booth to the empty corner, I knew I had a first layout draft.

I think doing sketches like that, even if it's few lines is really essential to get rid of the guesswork and have some basic foundations when going into the 3d software.

You can watch the process video on Youtube
 

So that's it for the latest illustration and I hope it will help you with your own work.

See you in the next one! :)