Prep/paint artist
The job of a prep artist consists of cleaning up the live action footage background for further work on it by a compositor. Examples of their tasks range from removing unwanted dust and scratches, boom microphones, tracking markers, wires, cleaning up seams of blue/green screen to colour correcting the prepped area to match the plate. The plates could be both moving or still, usually would not contain any foreground action or players. The prep artist would use specialist VFX software, such as Nuke, Maya and Silhouette.
A prep artist must have good artistic skills, such as drawing and painting using a graphics tablet, a keen eye to see where they images are required to be cleaned, patient and organised. They should be able to handle the pressure and produce high-quality result to strict deadlines. They work with the compositors, as the prep artists’ work is handed down to the compositors. In a smaller company, the work of a prep and roto artist is combined.
Compositing Artist
In post-production, a compositor works at the final stage of shot creation. They take different digital elements, e.g. animations, graphics, special effects or background plates, which were received from various sources, and put them together to make a believable picture. It is important that they take care of the composition of images and shots, via the correct placement of digital art assets and elements. Compositor enhances the lighting, creates believable shadows, matches blacks and other colour levels and adds motion blur where required. They also need to make sure that the art from different sources and artists looks the same, i.e. to ensure continuity of the image. They must have a keen eye to spot the mistakes and choose to either correct them or send the work back through the pipeline to be fixed. It is their responsibility to ensure the overall style of film to be consistent and in line with the director’s vision.
A compositor must have a good eye and be attentive to details, they must be able to work to deadlines and have a knowledge of the production pipeline. Even though it is mostly a 2D role within the 3D world of CGI, they need to have a thorough understanding of the CG process combined with relevant artistic skills. Compositor works in a wide range of software, such as After Effects, Blackmagic Fusion, Nuke, Maya and Photoshop. They work alongside the artists they create all the different elements, the lighting artists and they would communicate with the director as well.