The neat thing about Matte Painter Dylan Cole's website, is that you can mouse-over the images on many of his paintings to get a clear idea of just exactly which part of the movie scene is painted, and which part is photographed. Take, for example, this scene from The Return of the King, in which Sam is struggling to carry Frodo the rest of the way up Mount Doom:



Here is the exact same frame without the Matte Painting:



For the full effect, click here and move your mouse over the image. You can see more of his stunning paintings from The Lord of the Rings in context here.

It would be a complex project, but I'd love to see an advanced video class tackle a short project that involved some matte painting. It would do a digitally based class well to get back into some of the more tactile and messy side of art.