My Experience with Matte Painting on Photoshop

For my Photoshop class, I recently learned many different techniques in order to create a matte painting. Now for those who don't know what matte paintings are..

"A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that is nonexistent in real life or would otherwise be too expensive or impossible to build or visit."

(source: Wikipedia)

So in other words, on Photoshop, I learned to create unrealistic fantasy environment comprised up of many different stock photos, images, and textures that were available to myself online. 

While my instructor encouraged us to be highly creative and imaginative, I suppose I'll always be stuck in the depths of Final Fantasy (sometimes, I find myself wanting to live in a world such as this), which is why I decided to create a scene where Kraken emerges from the depths of "Hell" (or whatever's beneath the ocean floor). Now, I know Kraken didn't originate from Final Fantasy but I recently just killed him in Final Fantasy IX and I love sea monsters so I decided to go with that.

Here's the product: 

Now, I hardly even want to come close to calling it the final product at all. I really just want to call this a draft to be honest. I cut far too many corners and did a really unsatisfying job at colour correction, lighting, and even proportions.. HOWEVER, I am pleased with the concept. I wish to revise this very, very many times until I get it right but I guess it's not too shabby for a first attempt at matte painting right?

So here, as you can see, Kraken's tentacles have elevated from the cracks on the ocean floor, which symbolizes him rising from the depths of hell. You may also notice that there is a lot of rubbish such as old abandoned and sunken ships, buildings, ruins, cars, etc.~ all the while, there are no signs of any other sea creatures or life forms in the surroundings which identifies the location as uninhabitable place in the ocean and yet here Kraken is, spawning in that area.

Like I said, there are many changes I'd like to make but I love the concept and well, just Kraken in general!

Here is a gif of my layering process, I suppose I'm not really experienced with it at all but I find that lighting and colouring is truly key!

Also, this is my first time ever updating any of my projects or works but I think I'll keep doing this in the future if I find myself ever creating anything neat. Thanks for reading!