I was a matte painter for Season 1-3 of Dino Ranch, which has been a really fun and cute show to work on! For this show, I painted mattes and did paint overs of whatever was needed to fix up a shot.  I even had the chance to animate sequences with paint, like a wall crumbling, or ice cracking.  I also had the pleasure of working on marketing elements that would be used on products and on socials. Matte elements were provided to my cg supervisor for setup and there was always back and forth with the art director to make sure everything was just right.  Really proud of this show and am so grateful I got to work on it!

Dino Ranch

I was a background painter for Season One and Two of Corn & Peg.  For a horse lover such as myself, working on a pegasus/unicorn, equine themed show was a dream come true! Being able to paint horseshoes, water buckets, bales of hay, and anything else related to horses was awesome! For this show, a lot of the vegetation, textures and elements were provided to me by the art director, as well as an establishing shot or colour key for me to copy for my final background paintings.  Also, some elements were painted by other painters for continuity and time saving. 

Corn & Peg

I was a background painter on Bravest Warriors which was a fun show to work on, although I only worked on it part time.  Backgrounds were painted according to colour keys provided by the Art Director unless otherwise noted.  I love how the colour palette was different then anything I had worked on before that.  

Bravest Warriors

I Designed the painted style of the backgrounds for Esme & Roy with regards to lighting, technique and colours which were then revised according to notes from Sesame Workshop.  

For Esme & Roy, I got to spend some extra hours outside of my normal work hours to do a style test for how the production crew might want the show to look.  I loved just having fun and trying to meld the character designs and colour with different types of backgrounds.  These are what I came up with as my final interior and exterior paintings.  Unfortunately due to unforeseen personal circumstances, I could not go onto this production as I would have loved to.

Esme & Roy

I was a background painter for Mysticons.  The styling for it was based off old Art Deco elements with a textured finish.  Backgrounds were painted according to colour keys provided by the Art Director unless otherwise noted.  It was a really fun, action packed show to work on!    

Mysticons

I worked as a colour key painter, and occasional matte painter on Season 3 of Bubble Guppies and then became Assistant to the Art Director for Season 4.  As a colour key painter, I used the background designs given by the art department, and had to paint a key that would match what Nickelodeon would want the final product to look with guidance and revisions from the art director.  This included how the lighting, texturing and any prop colours for each set.  Everything on Bubble Guppies had the look of an eraser, so it always had that soft, gummy look to it.  

I also had the opportunity to paint character and prop keys as well as do large colour keys for the pop video sequences.  For the lunch sequence, the colour keys were painted to look like flat planes which surfacing would use to set up on cards in Maya. 

For Season 4 of Bubble Guppies, I was able to do some clean colour keys for the special episode of when the Bubble Guppies are driving to Stylee's concert.  I also got to do a quick colour key of concert lighting of how things would look during the concert.

Bubble Guppies

I did matte painting for Season One of Chuck & Friends, which was the first show I ever worked on as a painter.  The Background design was provided to me, and then I got to design the colour and lighting and made sure it matched the style of the 2d fantasy sequences.  The backgrounds were then set up on a flat card in Maya for the characters to animate in front of.  I am so grateful I got to work on this show, it really was my dream come true, to paint for an animated series. 

I also got to do some prop keys, to show the surfacing artists how the art director wanted them to look

Adventures of Chuck & Friends

Geirald was my independent short film I made in my last year at Sheridan.  When I lived at my parents house, I was always relocating spiders.  I saw one that had five legs one evening and I was curious about it, not realizing spiders could survive even though they were missing multiple legs.  Sadly, due to no fault of his own, he was killed by another member of my family and I regretted not saving him.  I decided to write a story about this spider for one of my college classes, and that became the basis for this film.  It was my tribute to that little spider I neglected to save.  

Geirald the Five Legged Spider

Personal Portfolio of Sam Rusztyn; background & matte painter in the animation industry and pet portraits in pastel