Mostly what a matte artist does is make special effects for video using green screens or other materials. They take real pictures or settings and enhance or combine them to look better, more enhanced or to look however their employer wants them to. Their employers could be directors of a movie or commercials that need special effects or realistic looking unreal backgrounds.

For this field there is no required education. It would be helpful to take computer graphics courses at college or trade schools that involve using specific programs that are needed to produce the needed effects. Some of the programs that would be necessary to know would be standard Adobe programs, as well as Cinema 4d, Maya, 3DS Max, VUE, and Shake 4. An understanding of art, color and three dimensional space is also important.

A portfolio is the most important thing to keep and have handy if you are trying to make it big in this field. This portfolio should contain previous scenes from movies you have done or, if you haven’t done a movie before, it would include a demo reel. This is something you would have to produce yourself. It needs to show all of the things you can do in all of the programs you use and be interesting because grabbing the attention of movie producers or commercial producers is the key. Also this portfolio should contain a list of all the programs you used and how you used them in the demo reel.

Depending on the popularity of the production a matte artist gets signed to, they can make very good money. Some artists that are very good can make up to 6 figures. It all depends on how good you are at your skill or trade and how big the movie or commercial you are working is about to be. Projects for beginning artist or jobs can still pay pretty good money.

This is a rapidly growing industry as special effects are becoming more and more common and realistic. In the future more and more programs will be used producing greater and more realistic effects than ever before. A day in the life of this job has a very broad description. Some days if you are signed with a big movie production or commercial you could be working all day and trying to make a deadline. However if you are not good enough you will not find a job in this area. In other words you could be looking for work more often than you have work. Once you get your name out there and start producing good results you will be awarded with more job offers and higher pay.