TIGAER-DESIGN.COM_.v5 – Digital Art by Christian Hecker

The Invitation Pt.2

This one is actually done/finished for a long long time now. Over the past year I constantly revisited it, to fix a lot of tiny things, I wasn’t happy with and now finally reached a point where I am. It’s the second piece of my ‘Invitation’ series. I tried to venture into a different, more character based, direction and wanted to find out how good Vue works with that. Unfortunately not too good. So I had to find workarounds for my technical issues. Especially rendering the skin. Another goal was to create a scene like that as tasteful as possible. With a flair of what I love so much… Scifi.

Technically I worked with DAZ Studio to create the pose I had in mind. A lot of time went into that part, to make it work as good and natural as possible. Not sure if I succeeded entirely. But it’s close enough to what I want. Exported and imported the character into Vue, where I did set up the scene. The door kind of objects were done in C4D to frame the character and give that scene a scifi touch. Rendering went through several passes that were stitched together in Photoshop. A lot of post work, fixing, color tuning was the next step. Overall I’m fairly happy with how it turned out.

8000×5333 – Vue – Photoshop – DAZ Studio – Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Into The Distance

Here we have a piece I created for webinar shows I held this year for Digital Art Live (sponsored by E-On Software). Two parts in April and two parts in October. I used this project to explain my typical techniques and tried to show some experimental stuff by using JSplacement for the terrain. This gave the overall scene a neat unusual look. In the April shows we took a look into the creation of the scene in Vue and In October we checked out how to efficiently render the scene and get the most out of our post work options for best final results. A lot of time went into the preparation and I was very nervous before the shows. Overall it went all smoothly and I was able to go through all the elements I had planned to show. In the end it were around 9 hours of runtime. I can still feel how dry my mouth felt after more than 2 hours of talking. =) The audience was fun and it was a neat interaction with them and their questions. And the final image doesn’t look to bad too. Even though I admit I did add some extra detail after the shows.

I tried to keep the scene as simple as possible with its setup and look. So I wouldn’t lose myself in explaining something in the shows most attendees wouldn’t have been interested in. So you could argue it looks pretty generic. I tried to give it a more special look by using terrains created from patterns done with JSplacement. I think that helps to move the scene a little out of the ‘generic’ category. Hope you agree! =)

5000×2283 – JSplacement – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Scene with No Depth Of Field
Scene Perspectives: View 1 – View 2 – View 3 – View 4 – View 5

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Bleeding Skies

Now this one is probably a little inspired by that one map in the first Titanfall game. Pretty cool idea they had there. Giant guns targeting enemy ships in orbit. And sure, old idea! Anyway, guess I really needed to try myself on that. What I also did was to work in 16bit depth to get the most out of the colours. But you feel the load when working it in Photoshop. You definitely need some RAM for it to efficiently handle the process.

I’m a little split on how successful I am with this one. I had to leave out some of the original ideas in favour of a good composition and not make the scene appear to cluttered with stuff going on. These ideas aren’t dead though. =D I just hope the intended dynamic feels comes across nicely and sparks some imagination on what’s happening above the clouds. There’s certainly a heavy battle raging!

7684×3508 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – World Machine

Part of Project Aurora: Red – https://www.projectaurora.art/

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

SITE

When I was creating my The Ghost terrain asset (quite some time ago now) I decided to play around with the materials I collected for the asset and experimented. This one is the result of such an experiment. Not too much backstory except that I always liked the natural shapes, patterns that you can see of landscapes when photographed from a very high altitude. World Machine in combination with Geoglyph 2 is able to create these natural patterns. I instantly thought it looked like an eye with all the veins going on and stuff. But also an alien planet surface maybe? I decided to add some ships and give it a more scifi feel with that. This one was fun to play around with.

6000×6000 – World Machine/Geoglyph 2 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Comcept 32 – Halo Over Sunset City

Welcome to SUNSET CITY! This one was a pure just for fun project. I was fiddling around in Vue when I stumbled over some atmosphere settings that created a solar eclipse kind of look. I thoroughly enjoyed that look and started to randomly add some buildings. That quickly turned into kitbashing all kinds of stuff into the scene… which lead to the results we can see in the final piece now. No specific story for this one. From what it looks like it appears to be some sort of space/port hub structure. Surely a place that could easily write its own stories – good and bad.

5000×2283 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Part of AURORA: AURORA Exhibit II

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Shrine Of The Unknown Huntress

“Many tales, in all kinds of shapes, forms and variations, covered the deeds of this fine lady and ignited a revolutionary fire which the galaxy will tell tales that will echo through the ages – even in thousands of years.”

Cassandra’s Book, 3:29

Here we have something highly experimental (for me) again. Much like my “The Hidden” piece, this one was done with help of Mandelbulb3d. I found a neat scene whilep laying with it, rendered out several passes of it and did some Photoshop magic. I also used Vue to bring in these monumental statues. The look of it is really different compared to my usual stuff and I really enjoy how it turned out.

When working on this piece, I decided to make a loose series, that is based on my “The Unknown Huntress” artwork. What if the lady belongs to an ancient old collective or cult of warrior ladies that kind of work from the shadows and shape the civilizations of the universe. A variation on the Assassins Creed story of sorts and not superbly original, I admit. But more based in a fantasy related universe. I found it tempting and decided to go with it. =D The location we see in this pic definitely belongs to a Scifi setting. Something completely different from the first (The Unknown Huntress) picture. Maybe a gigantic temple, honoring highly decorated members of the past. A place for the members to visit and gather some spiritual energy for upcoming missions or events.

7000×2996 – Mandelbulb3d – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Mandelbulb Plate

Part of AURORA: AURORA Exhibit II

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Parsec City

Not too much to say about this one. Originally a commission, I did have some real fun with it. Earlier this year the rights fell back to me and so I decided to show it to the world! The pic is four years old and the cool thing is that it holds up. I still really enjoy this piece.

Vue – DAZStudio – Photoshop – Lightroom

Concepts

Atmosphere Study

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Terminal

Mid last year I had the pleasure to create some work for “Seat 14c” – a scifi shortstory event, held by the XPrize folks. This particular image belongs to a short story by Kevin J. Anderson. Now this is very special to me since I’ve read and really enjoyed some of his books in the past. So his name was very familiar to me. Having the honour to grace one of his stories with an artwork of mine is amazing! At first I was a little overwhelmed but after reading the story I quickly kind of knew where I wanted to go with the cover image. A dream world kind of environment. Things started to fall into place and I got a scene that is very different from what I did so far. It definitely leaves a very abstract impression but in context of the story it does make sense. =)

8000×4500 – Vue – DAZStudio – Photoshop – Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Comcept 29 – Victory

I started this one 2 years ago and just wanted to have some fun. Haven’t touched it again until today. Time to release it into the wild! I did not have any specific story in mind for this one. Just some battlecruisers on their way home… celebrating victory over some unfortunate enemy. Pretty basic stuff. =) So yeah, pretty much a just for fun piece – trying myself on a square picture format.

Technically it’s business as usual with a Vue rendered plate to work with in Photoshop. I was playing around with filters to give it a more painterly look. In the end I decided to tone down the filters and highlight the depth of field effect a little more.

5000×5000 – Vue – World Machine – Photoshop – Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

The Unknown Huntress

I started this one ages ago. Originally just for fun to play and learn stuff. Especially in regards to texturing within Vue. I did learn quite a bit and was able to transport my knowledge into later pieces. The reason why I turned this into a fantasy kind of direction was simply because I don’t have much stuff going into that direction in my portfolio. So, time to diversify a little bit! Is there a story to the picture? Not really to be honest. Maybe our character belongs to a tribe of hunters and is returning home from a field trip.

From a technical point of view, beside playing with texturing in Vue, I also looked at Plant Factory a little more. Especially techniques to grow stuff on objects. Which can be seen on the pillars that go along the way in the scene. There is so much stuff you can do! It can drive you crazy sometimes!

Ultimately it’s not a piece I’m entirely happy with but for an exercise it’s good enough. As usual I lost myself in too many details no one will ever notice unless it’s a neat print they look at. =D

6000×2739 – Vue – Plant Factory – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate 1

Plate 2

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards