TIGAER-DESIGN.COM_.v5

DIGITALPhoto Photoshop hat mich eingeladen einen Digital Matte Painting Workshop zu verfassen für die ausgabe 02/2010. Das magazin erscheint alle zwei monate und ist randvoll mit nützlichen tips zum thema bildbearbeitung. Das bild welches ich zu diesem workshop erstellt habe kann man sich hier mal ansehen. City View war anfangs nur eine inspiration zu einem bild von Kai Bellmann, einem freund der vor kurzem in Vietnam unterwegs war. Dort hat er einige sehr schöne fotos machen können. Unteranderem eben auch diese strasse. Glücklicherweise hat das magazin angeklopft und ich hatte die perfekte gelegenheit etwas mit diesem foto anzustellen. Dabei habe ich versucht dem leser ein paar meiner techniken im feld Digital Matte Painting näher zu bringen.

Vielen Dank an DIGITALPhoto für diese möglichkeit.

Schaut mal rein. Es ist durchaus einen blick wert!

Digital Artist is still a very young magazine that comes from the same publisher like the Advanced Photoshop Magazine. The Digital Artist Magazine focusses on a more wider spectrum of tools though and gives you the chance to explore a wider spectrum of artists. In case of the workshops it shows you how to combine different tools in one artwork and how to seamlessly combine the various elements the different tools give you. In my case i got invited to write a workshop about extending photos. In that particular case i took some Digital Matte Painting techniques to get things done. I took a fairly boring snapshot i took in Berlin and added a sort of futuristic skyline to it. Nothing too exciting too but sexy enough to get the techniques explained. Ultimately i really like the result. Looks cool. Check it out!

Thanks to Jo Cole for the great support.

Regards

FUTURE CITY

The Digital Artist Magazine invited me to write a workshop about extending photos. I decided to go for Digital Matte Painting techniques and searched my archive for a good plate. I found a nice photo i took in Berlin and it turned out to be a great plate. All the other materials were from my archive too. A lot of buildings from the Frankfurt skyline. Not many skylines here in germany though. Nonetheless i tried myself on manipulating what i had, to make it look different to what i already had in the picture. In the workshop i tried to explain parts of the work process and how to push a boring photo to something more interesting looking. It was fun to do.

A creation progress viz: here

I really dig the result here!

Check this article for the magazine.

Regards

CITY VIEW

This is the result of a workshop i wrote for the german ‘DigitalPHOTO Photoshop’ magazine, issue 02/10. The goal was to create a Digital Matte Painting and to explain the various steps that lead to the final product. For the picture i had a really nice plate from a good friend, Kai Bellmann, who recently visited Vietnam. He captured that nice street view and i really wanted to do something with it. Luckily the magazine came knocking on my door and i had the perfect opportunity to create something. Everything done with Photoshop. No Vue this time. I dig the result and it was something different from the things i usually do. I should do more into that direction.

For all german visitors… the magazine is now available and also includes a character painting workshop from my buddy Gary Tonge. A side by side workshop with Gary… never thought that could happen. :)

Plate: here

Hope you like it as much as i do!

3500px high – photoshop – intuos3

Regards

This is a movie i wanted to see on the big screen when it was in theaters. Unfortunately a nasty flu crossed my plans. However. I read a lot of reviews and almost every review had a bad tone. So i had no big expectations when i had the chance to watch it. Sometimes that’s not a bad thing to have. Because i somehow like this movie!

Alright alright. This movie has a lot of flaws. Indeed. But you will get a pretty solid action packed movie when you’re able to overlook them. It’s fun to watch. Even if it’s not what you would expect this sequel to be. It’s not the actual continuation of the series i had in mind when i heard of a 4th terminator movie.

Storywise it’s war. The machines have risen and try to search and destroy the last human being to get the control over the planet. What we see of earth is pretty depressing. A giant desert and destroyed cities. John Connor is a grown man now and leader of a resistance cell near Los Angeles. Christian Bale does play the John Conner in a solid way. Exactly how you would expect him to play Connor. Now he is not directly the focus of the story in this movie. It’s more focused on Marcus Wright, played by Sam Worthington. He’s a machine who doesn’t know he’s a machine. He still feels and thinks like a human. Worthington plays his part really good. Reading his face you never know what exactly he’s up to. Now with him being in Avatar, a leading role too, it’s really nice to see someone new stepping up. I already like to see more of him. Eventually Marcus Wright and John Connor meet up and have to work together. That leads us to some very interesting places.

The VFX are really cool and nicely executed. Not much more to say here. It’s pure fun to watch the destruction and action sequences unfold. I think ILM did a nice job there.

It’s a good fun movie. Check it out if you’re bored!

This movie gets a 7.5/10 from me.

Terminator: Salvation on IMDb

2510

How could a city look like in 500 years from now?

This one resulted from a commission that did not work out as expected. I didn’t want to scrap the picture i did and wanted to use it for a personal project. I decided to create a panorama from it. Which wasn’t an easy task since the original format was portrait, intended for a book.

Technically i took the vue base file and heavily extended it to the left. The Vue file had a few hundred mb in the end. I also did tons of testrenders for it. Even full size and full quality. So there are surely 40hrs work in the setup of the scene alone. 8hrs actual work and the rest render time. 8000px wide can take a while to finish.

Then, of course, i took it into Photoshop. It was never an intention to work photorealistic. So what i did was to get me textures and slam them across the picture. That’s the fun part. the work part was it then to manipulate and adjust these textures to make them fit. Vue’s multipass rendering also allowed me to add new elements to the pic. Even if i already was completely in the Photoshopping stage. Quite some elements on the left side of the pic got added rather late in the making process. Again a lot of work that i had to do because i wasn’t entirely happy with certain parts. And there goes the time.

8700px wide – Photoshop – Vue – intuos3

That said… i hope you guys enjoy the Wallpaper Pack. 5 different versions of the scene in 1680×1050. Have fun with it!

WALLPAPER PACK

WNDOWS 7 THEME PACK

Windows 7 ‘2510′ Theme Pack -> Here – Just download and doubleclick to install – if you have any additional questions… just let me know! It’s the first time i try this.

All pictures in this Theme Pack are copyrighted by tigaer-design.com and may not used or reproduced without permission. Thank you very much.

Every once in a while it’s good to change something. I said it before and i’ll say it again. For now it’s a new operating system for my workhorse of a PC. Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit). Right now i’m in the final stages of setting up my hard drives and fixing technical issues. Basically everything is up and running. And it’s fast. Even after i filled up my drives with data. Lets see how fast this windows is when it worked for a few months. The past tells us that every windows slows down after a while. However. It’s a new system with some good changes and enhancements that will make the navigation through the data environment much more efficient. Looks like Microsoft got a few things right here. Hope they continue with that. Now i promise that there will be some more artistic stuff coming soon. Just wanted that operating system change done before i add new stuff to the site.

Well… stay tuned!

Regards

In the the past months i did a few concepts for a shortmovie script of a colleague. He wants to use these pics to promote his idea. The script is indeed very good and offers quite some eyecatchers. I got contacted to visualize some of the environments. Technically i can say that i did me a base Vue render i manipulated in Photoshop to get me the right results. Pretty much the technique i’m using on almost every project these days. It was a nice break from the sci-fi’ish things i had created simultaneously for other projects. Now i hope i was able to visually capture some of the ideas from the script. Ultimately i think they work pretty good. Feel free to click on the pics for a larger version.

Regards

Now, finally, i made the movie to grace my eyes with its sheer beauty. It was a torture to get good seats in our imax here. And i wanted good seats for it! Almost desperately. That’s the movie freak in me.

Alright, the movie. Well, what i can i say. It met my expectations… but didn’t blow them away. When it comes to the story then it’s feeling a bit rushed. Even for its 160 minutes playtime. I would have wished myself to see earth. As a contrast to what we’re seeing in the movie and why the humans are so desperately trying to get those minerals. All that backstory is missing. All we know is that there’s this big company who wants these minerals… at all costs. The rest of the story suits just fine. I didn’t want to see a movie with a deeper meaning. I wanted entertainment and great visuals. And that’s something i witnessed on quite a few movie websites the past weeks. Most of them ‘literally’ hate the movie. Gave it a bad rating and such. Of course it’s not a breakthrough starwars (1977) but man… it’s a good movie. It got speed, tons of eyecatchers, nice characters and a somewhat good story. That’s three more than 2012 for example. Some people get lost in their expectations and lose sight of what something, no matter what it is, actually wants to be.

The characters in the movie are divided in typical good and bad parts. The characters are also not particularly deep. But our actors try to make the best of it and i think they succeed. Sigourney Weaver for example plays a smaller part but still managed to make her appearance memorable. The bad guys really are bad guys and you soon learn to hate them for their short-sightedness. The transition Sam Worthington’s character makes is well translated too. Well it all can be done better and so it is here. But again… for what the movie wants to be… it’s doing its job fine. So much for the live action characters. But i guess the same goes for the digital characters. Even though i think they couldn’t have been done better. That includes the acting.

The VFX… well, what to say here. They’re pretty much amazing. For me it’s not the ultimate breakthrough and everything… but what they really did was to push current technologies to the limits. With success! The planet looks like a place i would love to explore. The animals, the plant life and the whole environment feels very real and detailed. Especially the 3D effect does a lot of magic there. It’s the quiet and slow scenes that make the world come to life. It’s like you’re right there, in the middle of everything. Nice experience.

Ultimately this movie represents the perfect so called ‘popcorn movie’. It’s pure entertainment. And with the already open discussion of more movies… i’m sure we will see even more fantastic places of pandora. And hopefully some backstory to why the humans are so desperate for that mineral.

This movie gets a 8.2/10 for me.

Avatar on IMDb

Hey Folks,

i wish you guys a merry christmas and a very happy new year! I hope your 2010 will be one of the best years! Keep it up and thanks a lot for all your support through 2009! Hope to see you again next year!

Regards

Für die 60. ausgabe des englischen magazins habe ich einen workshop zu ‘Artificial’ schreiben dürfen. Dieser artikel ist nun auch in der deutschen ausgabe des Advanced Photoshop Magazine erhältlich. Darin wird erklärt wie man mit Terragen eine gute vorlage zu weiterführenden arbeiten in Photoshop erstellen kann. Wie man eine richtig coole szene erstellen kann. Auf der disc zum heft kann man zudem nachsehen wie die Photoshop datei aufgebaut ist. Ein vorteil an diesem projekt war das man es ohne grafiktablett möglich ist. Das bild ist von 2005 und damals habe selbst ich noch ohne tablet gearbeitet. Also auch für einsteiger interessant. Soviel mal hierzu… :)

Schaut mal rein. Es ist durchaus einen blick wert!

Regards