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

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

The Hidden

The first one for 2018! This project was started in late 2017, when I decided to take a more concentrated look at a tool called ‘Mandelbulb 3d’. It’s a free, open source fractal generator. Over the past years I stumbled over a number of artists who work with it. May it be for purely fractal based images or using the fractals as plates for concept art. I’m a plate guy and love to work with them. And the possibilities of Mandelbulb 3d are sheer limitless. For more info about the tool just check the google machine or youtube. Fantastic stuff to find there!

So yes, this picture was an experiment. And for a first experiment I’m fairly happy with the result! Style wise I wanted to keep it rough and concept arty. What I found is that it’s quite the balance act to use the fine details the fractal render gives you. Sometimes the detail is almost too much. But yeah, I’m still learning the tool and already found ways to handle the fractal detail level.

I will definitely look more into it and see how I can incorporate it into future projects. I’m sure you can agree that it’s fantastic for some alien, weird looking landscapes!

4000×1708 – Mandelbulb3D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate 1
Plate 2

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Endeavours – Things To Come

“Finally being where I belong, I cannot wait to discover what this new world has to offer!”

Here we go with the final piece of part two in my Endeavours series. I don’t have too much to say about this one except that I wanted a final scene that shows our small family finally united again. Along with a (maybe a little too obvious) hint of where the journey might go next. I have some ideas. Although I’m not sure how and when I’ll tackle those. As usual there are parts in the scene I’m more happy with than with other parts. But that’s just how it goes I guess. =)

I did use the base scene I used in the previous three parts of the series and changed the camera angle and lighting a bit. There might be elements that are a little adjusted and changed but I tried to keep it minimal to not ruin the continuity. In Photoshop I played around with a more stylized/dreamy look and found it works nice to conclude part two of the series.

Overall I’m happy with how part two turned out and it gave me two or three pictures I really like. With this picture concluding my year 2017, I hope you enjoyed the ride so far too!

To be continued…

5000×3333 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

ENDEAVOURS Part Twelve

ENDEAVOURS Part Thirteen

ENDEAVOURS Part Fourteen

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Reunion

“I’m overwhelmed seeing you two again. Holding my little girl in my arms again. Seeing my wife’s warm smile. Finally reunited, it’s time to build something new and discover all the secrets of this place!”

This one is probably the scene, of part two of my Endeavours series, I’m most unhappy with. I played around with it a lot and it’s probably my first ever square format scene. Maybe it’s just the format. I definitely wanted to show a reunion scene with all the characters. To bring the series of images, from a more distant point of view, to a more closer (maybe even emotional) level. A part in me says it works and another part is still missing something. However, I put far more time into this one than I originally intended and ultimately I think it serves its purpose just fine.

I worked with the same scene I created for picture #13 and used a different angle/position for the camera. Due to the changed angle I had to work in some additional details. Especially on the house. Rendering went fine and bringing the scene together in Photoshop was fun. As usual I had to do some additional renders to fix stuff. The characters were also rendered in a separate pass. Overpainting and added optical effects helped to define the overall look a little tighter. In the end I decided to give the scene a (fake) depth of field blur to guide the focus to our characters and not have the eyes distracted by other detail in the scene.

4500×4500 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

ENDEAVOURS Part Twelve

ENDEAVOURS Part Thirteen

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

New Los Angeles 3019

Looking through my artwork collection you might have guessed that I am a Blade Runner fan. Like pretty much everyone working in my field, it’s almost a given. A very influential film on so many levels. I started this project over a year ago and just wanted to have some fun with it. Exploring some composition ideas. The ‘just for fun’ aspect comes also into play with where I decided to set the world in. 1000 years after the original Blade Runner on a different planet with a city kind of (but not really) similar to what we know from the film. Naturally I took me some liberties with the design and look but hope to have captured that dystopian feel at least.

Plate created and laid out in Vue. I started out with a much smaller scale for the project but decided to go for a bigger render when I found that the scene has some potential. Also originally didn’t have the bridges between the towers. When playing around I kind of liked the idea and kept them in. Rendered with multipass for best flexibility in the Photoshop post work stage. There I overpainted quite some elements, added lights and detail to make the city feel alive. Last but not least I used Lightroom to push the atmosphere and feel a little more.

6000px wide, Vue, C4D, Photoshop, Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety

Regards

Comcept 23 – Let’s Take The Boat Out

I started this one quite a while ago. Early 2015 I think. I kept it laying around not really sure what to do with it. AURORA – a collaborational effort of both artgroups The Luminarium & The Cosmosys Collective to do a crossover exhibit, made me go back to it and add some final touches. I’m glad it got accepted into the exhibit and sits along some fantastic work by artists from around the world.

I don’t even remember anymore what exactly sparked the inspiration for this one. Well, it’s part of my Comcept series, so it wasn’t supposed to be a super refined piece and more something quick. No matter my intentions it (of course) turned out more detailed than planned though. I guess my love for exploring futuristic cities surely plays into it. Composition wise this piece is all over the place. Surely not perfect but somehow it doesn’t work too bad. At least in my eyes. =) The clear and obvious focus is the ship that blocks the sun, in the middle of the scene. I’m a little proud of the design of that little guy. The background shows a very industrial style city with a port facility built into the gigantic wall on the right. That one giant ship back there is in the process of docking. Huge holographic guides lead the ship into position to complete the procedure. And that was part of the original inspiration if I recall correctly. Really enjoy how that part turned out.

The scene itself is based on some rougher concepts I did earlier. 3 scenes showing places on a planet called Linestra. So here we have, a more detailed, fourth scene. Also on Linestra.

Technically it’s business as usual. The scene was composed and rendered in Vue. Various additional modelling happened in C4D. Beside own models I used some material from DAZ. Photoshop was used to bring multiple render passes together and add visual effects, overpaint and fix elements of the scene. Lightroom was used to push colours and atmosphere.

5000px wide, Vue, C4D, Photoshop

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Welcome Home

“Finally! I see them waiting for me! Can this shuttle go faster please?”

Of this second part of my Endeavours series I may like this one the most. It’s probably also the one I invested the most time into. I played around with a couple of ideas and elements within the pic. I wanted it to be moody and needed the lighting to be right. Something ‘golden hour’ like. I added a ton of lightsources to get a satisfying feel for the overall scene. Hence the render times went up a bit once it came to redering the final plate. It also marks some sort of a turning point in the little story. We’re finally where our protagonist wanted to go and we meet his little family. This pic was also the one that gave the initial idea spark for the Towers on this planet. And yeah, I didn’t necessarily do the images in order. A lot of jumping back and forth between them kept the creative juices flowing and also produced some neat last minute ideas.

As usual I used Vue to set up the scene. The characters were done with DAZ3d. The house I created from scratch in C4d. The renders didn’t come out ultra clean so I did go in an fix quite some stuff in Photoshop. There I also enhanced the lighting and atmosphere. I ended up using some photo plates and painting here and there to add/suggest additional detail in the landscape. Final mood tuning happened in Lightroom.

6000×2739 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

ENDEAVOURS Part Twelve

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – I Shall Pass

“Almost there! Like giants protecting a treasure. My wife told me that every tower comes with a different pattern. They suspect that these patterns can even change, which must be quite a sight! I just spoke to her and she suggested not to forget to breathe when seeing the towers up close! A sight to behold. The shuttle needs at least 5 more minutes. Very long 5 minutes. Almost home!”

Now this one is a little special as it wasn’t part of the original second leg of artworks for the series and slipped in while I worked on something else and got inspired. I loved the look and scale and definitely wanted to add it to the series as an complementary piece. To show the towers a little more. I was creating a preview piece for my 8k heighfield terrain freebie when inspiration hit me. I liked how the lighting of the scene complimented the detail of the terrain and started playing around by adding the towers. A small stream of light suggests our small little planetary transport pod, zipping through the air. I really wanted to show the dimensions here and the scale works great. I’m also happy how uncomplicated (compared to my other stuff) the scene comes across.

Created, as usual, with Vue, to create a base to work from in Photoshop. I used my freebie The Ghost terrain and its materials and masks to create the landscape. Layout of the scene was done fairly quickly. Invested some detail work here and there nonetheless. In Photoshop I fixed some parts of the render, added some textures and atmospheric effects.

6000×2739 – Vue – World Machine – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards