What DVD's to start with?
 

My son goes to a just finished 59 million rebuild of a New haven arts high school that has a New Mac Lab and Photoshop. I've let the arts director know about the free Maya PLE software and about training on this site... but to learn mattepainting.. what DVD's in what order.. and any other training suggestions I can pass onto the arts director? Thanks, Peter.

Dylan Coles's DVDs from Gnomon are the best. Also, Dusso and Chris Stoski both have quality lectures, also from GnomonWorkshop.

if you got cole, scheurer, and dusso. those are great. there are many others, but I started with those and found them very helpful.

a pretty good working knowledge of photoshop helps, as they jump right into mattepainting.

If you're interested in setting up camera projections in Maya then you should check out the gnomon matte painting DVD by Darin Hilton. I found it very helpful with a lot of great info on setting up multi-camera projections.