The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

On the 2008 feature, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, I created several desert backplates for the film. Shown here is a still from the film featuring two zombie armies charging towards each other, including the original backplate. The matte painting was projected, and re-rendered in 3D by another artist.

Another of my duties included creating clean backplates for many of the desert fight sequences. In other words, removing the actors and dudes in green pajamas so that they can be replaced or integrated with the visual effects. I worked on over 20 such shots. Shown here are stills from the film, the clean plates I created, as well as the original plates.  One may ask, why weren’t clean plates simply shot during production?  But then we wouldn’t have movie magic, would we!