Chaos Control by Marc Simonetti

Marc Simonetti has painted the Iron Throne, the worlds of Dune and Discworld, and environments for Aladdin and Aquaman 2 — and he does it fast. This course is about the messy, practical part of that job: getting an idea out of your head, keeping momentum, and pushing a painting to a finished state without noodling it to death. Expect speed painting as a discipline, not a stunt, plus a tighter Photoshop pipeline you can actually reuse.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Use fast-paced painting sessions to break creative blocks and stop overthinking the first pass.
• Generate complex visual concepts from a blank canvas instead of waiting for inspiration.
• Build a repeatable ideation process: thumbnails, rough value blocking, and quick shape design.
• Push your overall digital painting technique and pipeline in Photoshop.
• Stage light and composition early so a scene reads before you render the details.

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Comfort with the Photoshop interface and basic digital painting fundamentals (brushes, layers, values).
• Tools: Adobe Photoshop with a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet and stylus.
• Hardware: A machine that handles large canvases and many layers smoothly, plus a second screen or space for reference if you have one.

📝 Description

Most artists do not have an idea problem. They have a finishing problem. Marc’s approach starts from the opposite end of the usual tutorial: instead of rendering a beautiful eye for three hours, you learn to block in a whole scene fast, judge whether it works, and commit. Speed is the tool here — it forces decisions, kills hesitation, and exposes which parts of your painting actually carry the image.

The course walks through idea generation the way it happens on a real production: a brief, a rough, a lot of throwaway versions, then a pass that locks the composition and lighting. You will work in Photoshop, so brush management, layer structure, and how you split passes matters. Marc talks through his own habits — what he sets up before touching the canvas, how he keeps his color choices simple, and where he stops.

Then there is the taste part, and this is what separates Marc from a generic speed painting demo. He has spent years staging dramatic lighting for film and book covers, so much of the material is about reading a scene: silhouette, focal point, contrast, and making sure the eye lands where you want it. If your paintings look flat or busy, that is usually the missing piece, not brush technique.

By the end you should have a workflow you can run on any brief — personal work, client concepts, or portfolio pieces — plus a stack of fast studies that prove the process works.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Concept artists and illustrators who can paint but keep stalling out on new ideas.
• Digital painters who want a faster, cleaner Photoshop workflow for visual development.
• Students and hobbyists aiming for film, game, or book cover work who need to produce concepts on a deadline.

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Marc Simonetti is a French concept artist and illustrator, best known for his artwork for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire — including the visualization of the Iron Throne that most readers now picture. His covers span some of the biggest names in speculative fiction: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Robin Hobb’s Royal Assassin trilogy, Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth, and Frank Herbert’s Dune saga.

Beyond publishing, he has worked with game studios including Activision, Ubisoft, EA, Square Enix, Magic: The Gathering and King Isle Entertainment. On the film side he spent ten months on Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, covering environments, vehicles, characters, props and weapons, and later contributed to Aladdin, Dolittle, Maleficent 2, Aquaman 2 and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

He also spent over a year designing Le Premier Royaume for the French theme park Puy du Fou — a show that took Best Show in the World from the Themed Entertainment Association, Best Show of the Year at the Park World Excellence Awards, and European Top New Attraction 2019 at the Parksmania Awards. He is currently an Art Director at DNEG.

🏁 Final Result

• A set of fast speed-painting studies showing you can take an idea from blank canvas to a readable image in a single sitting.
• At least one finished concept piece built with staged lighting and a clear focal point, ready for a portfolio.
• A documented personal Photoshop workflow for blocking, refining and stopping at the right moment