Short answer: In animation the same painted-environment work goes by two names. In hand-drawn animation the painted world behind the characters is made by background painters, a craft of its own. In CG and stop-motion films, matte painting means much what it means in live action: painted skies and extensions added behind elements that were built or animated. The difference is whether the painting is the whole world or completes a frame that already exists.
People searching for matte painting in animation are usually asking one of two questions. Does an animated film use matte painting at all, and is the person who paints animation backgrounds a matte painter? Yes to the first, mostly no to the second. The reason matters if you are hiring for either.
Background painting is its own craft
In hand-drawn animation, there is no photographed world. Every frame's environment is a painting, and the people who make them are background artists or background painters.
Wikipedia describes the role as setting the look and mood of "a scene drawn by an animation layout artist". The layout artist designs the space and the camera. The background painter turns that drawing into the finished world. On many productions one painter sets the background keys, the defining paintings for a location, and other painters produce the rest to match.
It is a recognised job with its own place in the union contracts. When The Animation Guild ratified its 2022 agreement, its negotiators noted that, at the producers' request, a written job description would state that "anyone who applies color to a background must be paid the Background rate".
A background painting differs from a matte painting in what it has to match. It matches the film's design: its line and palette, and how stylised it is. A matte painting usually matches a photograph or a render, and its job is to be indistinguishable from it.
Stop-motion uses matte painting the way live action does
Stop-motion films are photographed, which puts them much closer to live action. Sets are built at small scale, and they stop where the budget stops. Beyond them, the sky and the distance are often digital.
Merlin Crossingham, animation supervisor on Aardman's Early Man, told VFX Voice that even a stop-motion film uses "digital set extensions, matte paintings for skies" alongside green screens and other digital techniques. On Wendell & Wild, digital supervisor Heather Abels said some skies were practical but "most of them were matte paintings or set extensions", with only a couple of houses built and the streets extended digitally.
The painter's problem here is unusual. The painting has to match a photographed miniature, with its scale and its handmade texture, without looking more real than the puppets in front of it. A sky that is too photographic makes the set look like a toy.
CG animation paints what it does not need to build
A fully computer-generated film could, in principle, build everything. In practice, most productions paint the parts the camera never gets close to.
Distant mountains or a sky with weather in it: building and rendering these in full detail costs time that a painting does not. So, much as in live action, they are often painted and then projected onto simple geometry so they hold up through a modest camera move. The technique, and where it breaks, is set out in why a painted environment falls apart when the camera moves.
The difference from live action is the target. There is no plate. The painting has to match the film's renders, its lighting model and its art direction, which is often stylised. Matching a stylised look is in some ways harder than matching a photograph, because there is no reality to check it against, only the design.
What changes for the person ordering the work
If you are commissioning painted environments for an animated project, three questions decide the brief:
- Is the painting the whole world, or does it complete one? The first is background painting and needs a painter fluent in the show's style. The second is matte painting and needs someone who matches renders or photography.
- What does it have to match? A style guide and colour script, a photographed miniature, or a CG render. Send that, not just reference pictures.
- Will the camera move through it? If so, the painting has to be delivered in layers, separated by depth, so it can be placed in the scene.
Is a background painter the same as a matte painter?
Not usually, though the skills overlap and some artists do both. Both paint environments, and both think about light and atmosphere. But a background painter works inside a design system and produces the finished image, while a matte painter works inside a pipeline and produces a layer that has to sit invisibly beside other material.
The distinction is close to the one between matte painting and concept art in live action: same tools, different job. And ordering the wrong one costs a round of work.
If the project needs painted distance
Chumak Studio, in Toronto, paints environments for film and television, the matte painting side of this line. The work is described on the digital matte painting and digital illustration pages. If you have an animated project and are not sure which kind of painting it needs, send the frames and the style references and ask.
