Matte paintings aren’t just limited to fantasy and sci-fi. They can be buildings, cityscapes, and even the Titanic in all its doomed glory. The very best ones don’t even look like paintings. “Alfred Hitchcock did a great job with matte paintings to the point where, unless you’re really looking for it, you can’t tell it’s a painting,” says illustrator Jonathan Case. “They’d get these really great oil painters to do a giant painting they’d place in the background.” Characters looked like they were in a vast library or outdoors but in fact were standing in front of a two-dimensional image.