Digital Art, Paintings, Fractal and 3d work created by Christian Tigaer Hecker. News about the artist and Interviews with Artists like Dylan Cole, Gary Tonge and Syd Mead.
The series continues to Gold. I’m very proud of the Bronze, Silver and now Gold theme in my “Majestic” (I just made that up) series. Yet again a lot of things learned in Blender. The complexity of the scenes became more and more intricate. The extra patience did pay off. I enjoy Gold as much as the other two.
7500×5000 – Blender – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – Lightroom
“I dreamt of trenches. Hundreds of miles long and miles high. Pulsating with the energy of life and opportunites. Now what I see is something different. Waking up to the horns and sounds of the tower crawlers like they did to the church bells in the olden days.” Unknown Writer – Infinity – 2733
Like many other of my projects I started this one with just fooling around. As usual I started to see something at some point and continued on. There was a vague goal of creating a scifi city sort of thing. I ‘sort of’ succeeded I suppose? Imagine a world covered by a sheet of glass. The reason? I leave to your imagination. The cities with their imposing dimensions hovering above with help of an alien technology.
I started this one in late September 2020 with the Summer on its way out and Fall coming in. Even though there still were some wonderful sunny and green days left I must have started missing it already. So this scene became greener and greener and soon I found the right lighting and atmosphere for it to come together. It’s also a training piece for texturing and keeping an eye on scale in regards to plants in relation to each other. Especially the road material was a focus. I have had some fun getting it right and it felt good when it was finally right. I also like that it’s again a rather unusual scene for my catalogue. Just a peaceful nature scene. And right now with Summer 2022 marching in… I’m a little proud of this one.
7000×3196 – Vue – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – Lightroom
Now it’s officially a series. After “In Her Majesty’s Eyes” (which is in a Bronze kind of color theme) we now have a silver queen too! And yes, we will also go for gold! Yet again I learned a lot about how to work with Blender and optimize certain workflows and ways to render out the material for ideal post work in Photoshop. Not too much else to say here other than she seems to be a little over her head, right? Goal was it to give her more of an “I don’t care” attitude. I think I got that down nicely. The lighting was a tricky one as I planned to keep it as natural as possible. Quite happy with it. Especially in context of the series the piece if a part of.
7500×5000 – Blender – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – Lightroom
I started this 2 years ago probably. One of those on and off projects… mostly there to play around and for training. 2 weeks ago I decided to finish it up and quite some things have changed in the scene since then. Aside of that there isn’t much to say. A just for fun generic scifi chase scene with some cool looking spaceships. But not in space! It could be seen as a continuation of this scene. I’ve had my fun and I hope you enjoy the scene! =)
“As the dragons screech echoed through the white mountains and its mighty wings started to move, all birds, hidden and invisible a second before, came to life and filled the cool air with blurry black dots of chaos. My horse got scared and started to become nervous. It took me a while to win contol again. As I gazed over the mountains I decided it was time to quietly move on. I certainly didn’t want to meet a beast like that eye to eye. And neither did my horse.” – Dairy of an Unknown Huntress
2019 was when I started this one. I never managed to get it to a point where I was satisfied enough with it. Although I also kind of enjoyed the scene even early on. I rarely do winter scenes and I had the urge to tackle it again. Dragons are also never a wrong thing to have! Even when I’m writing these lines I’m still doing touch ups. Applying a more dynamic feel. Make it feel less static. And I still don’t know if I’m convinced by it. =D Anyhoo. It’s time to leave it be and release it into the wild.
From a technical aspect I used my usual workflow going through Vue and Photoshop. Assets I used are from XFrog, Megascans and terrains created with Gaea. Quite some overpainting going on. Especially to bring in some imperfections to hide that typical “too accurate” 3d rendered look.
Thanks to my lovely GF for some compositional hints!
Quite proud of this one. Originally I wanted to apply my usual workflow to this. Going through Vue for the scene layout and render. I decided to go with Blender though. For a couple of reasons. I need to learn Blender. I needed to understand how the DAZ to Blender bridge works. I wanted to know how rendering in Blender works. In short… I wanted to see how I can work with Blender for a scene like this. Vue is for landscapes and open vistas. And it’s designed for that. It’s not exactly made for scenes like this. Although I really miss a couple of Vue things within Blenders workflow. Aside of that I kept my workflow of rendering out passes and combining them in Photoshop.
The creative process was fun. Even with the constant checking “how do I do this or that in Blender”. I also used my Abstract Objects collection to give it an otherworldly look. The scene underwent quite some changes during its creative process. It took me a long time until I found a good setup that didn’t crush the centerpiece of the scene. The queen. I definitely wanted her to stand out. So I also played around with lighting the scene properly. As well as adding a depth of field effect to lead the viewers attention directly to her. Treating the scene kind of like a photoshooting.
5000×7500 – Blender – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – Lightroom
“The only thing making me do graveyard shifts are these incredible sunrises in the Trenches and Calvin and Hobbes waiting for me.” Jenna’s Diary – Calista – 2733
This is one of the projects that seriously intimidated me after a while. I noticed how much work it would need until I’d be somewhat happy with the end result. I have had a couple of these projects in the past. “The Eternals” for example. Of course it worked out once I got into that certain flow state where all things kind of fall into place by itself. The work of getting there is what’s scary sometimes!
The initial idea for a scene like this came to me almost 14 years ago. I was strolling through my city and noticed that corner on the side of a building. Immediately got that idea and took a photo of it for later reference. When I was trying myself on a scene later at home I understood that I wasn’t ready. Technically and skill wise. I was kind of frustrated and left it – fore years. I never forgot though and I surely could have gotten back to the idea earlier when I finally had the skills. Somehow I never found the drive to tackle it again. Until late last year when I started to dive deeper into Blender. Kitbashing around. Trying out features and learning how to move around within Blender. When that famous creative spark hit and made me remember that age old idea. I kept bashing and created this long bar of detailed techno shapes. Learned some Blender stuff along the way and exported that huge unoptimized model. Of course I would use Vue to set up the scene and render it. Luckily I didn’t end up having any problems importing the object. The scene, of course, ended up insanely heavy and I had to optimize the scene at least in Vue to free up resources for proper rendering. Needless to say – the creative process took a long time. After finishing the model and trying to find a basic scene setup I took a break. Reached that point where I understood that this will be a bigger project. When I picked it up again I started to play with ideas on how to fill the scene and add life. It began to become very complex. Then when I had the city done I noticed I needed something for the foreground. At first I thought about a landing platform. Even modelled one! But it looked kind of wrong when in the scene. So I opted for a building roof kind of part for the foreground. What followed was the usual post work and refining via Photoshop and Lightroom. A lengthy process as well. But it paid off. I’m very happy with the view we got here. Once again a view I would love to see for real!
I started this in the summer of 2020 and finished it by the end of it. I needed some extra ‘breeding’ time for it. =D Now I know it’s done. Another entry to my growing ‘Unknown Huntress’ series. It seems I’m having fun building a little world there. Playing with different ideas. And sure… pictures like these have been done to death I suppose. Still… I hope I managed to give it a unique look and feel nonetheless. I like the result. The atmosphere creates a nice moody feel while still maintaining a kind of uplifting impression with the lighting and colours. Life goes on. Even in this imaginary fantasy world.
My scenes continue to become more and more complex for some reason. Vue, Plant Factory, XFrog, Gaea, World Machine, DAZ Studio… tools that have been used here. Not even counting the 2d tools. I used this project to refresh my knowledge about certain techniques I used in the past and haven’t used in a long time. During the creative process I had to run through several technical troubleshootings – as usual with 3d. I ultimately managed to bring it all together. But not without having to optimize several parts of the scene before rendering. Photoshop brought all the rendered elements together and helped fixing and adding stuff. A lot of work but fun to watch all of it come together.
7000×3784 – Vue – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – Lightroom
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