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

A few weeks ago I got asked to write a short tutorial on how to insert/replace sky elements in pictures. No matter if photo or painting. It was on rather short notice and a tight deadline. Especially when there were other things planned already. Nonetheless I sat down and tried myself on it. I used the render plate I had from my “Hadley’s Hope” project. So it ultimately became sort of an alternative take on my original project. I worked pretty rough though since there wasn’t much time for a too detailed approach. Anyways… the short tutorial in the magazine covers how to place a nice sky, that complements the cityscape, into the scene. It’s partly manipulated with photos and partly painted. I had a more photo manipulated approach at first but the magazine requested more painted parts. I hope I managed to cover the basics about it. At this point I also have to thank Adam Smith who had the bad luck to edit my gibberish. =D He was quite a help.

Advanced Photoshop Issue #90 is available now! Check it out!

Regards

After a smaller feature some time ago we now did a nice interview. Again it’s a nice set of questions and hopefully some insightful answers. Generally we’re talking about how I started and how I work these days. Cool read I think. Check it out!

Find the interview here.

Regards

2008, Johne Cooke from raygun revival magazine emailed me for a short interview and the permission to use some of my paintings. Now it’s 2011 and we got another nice interview up and running on the Raygun Revival site. Talking about inpsiration, art and how to always try new things. Overall a surely interesting read there! Find the new interview here.

Regards

HOME HAVEN

This one originally was a concept art commission that didn’t exactly hit the taste of the client. I maintained the rougher look but still tried to polish it up a little more for my own gallery here. It was definitely something new to try and a typical ‘learning’ project. Target was it to create a place where some sort of sea nomads find a haven. The city itself is kinda modular and able to split up to move elsewhere. I personally am not the biggest fan of the pic but i still somehow like how it turned out. No question a worthy submission for my page anyway. Hope you guys like it!

Regards

I’m proud to say that i’m, unexpectedly, one of the winners of the contest. I always was a big fan of the look and design of EvE Online. For years i wanted to try it out and last year i did it. I did not regret it. Even if i learned that it can eat your life away. That’s why i’m currently taking a break from it. So much to see there… so much to do and sooooo much to learn there. It’s a lot of fun. Now when i created my ship design i haven’t played a lot of the game. Only a few tiny glimpses of how big it really is. So i did not have a real feel for the different races and designs yet. Nonetheless i wanted to try myself on it. And so i did. I must admit though that i did not expect AT ALL to win anything… seeing all these great submissions that were posted to the contest. When the confirmation mail came in i almost deleted it, thinking it was spam. Luckily i took a closer look.

With my entry (above) the following designs managed to win:

Alexey M (Winner of the Grand Prize) – Mentor Battlecruiser

Eric A – Oblivion Battlecruiser

Shawn N – Amarr Command Ship Battlecruiser

Eric A – Serval Battlecruiser

Beside my congratulations to the other winning designers i want to mention the 40 designs that made it into the final round of voting. I urge you to check them out if you’re a Scifi fan. All of them look really really cool! Find them HERE.

Technically i created the basic ship design and shape with help of ZBrush. Still a lot to learn there. In Photoshop i added texture and details to the hull. When it comes to EvE specific design then i would say it’s a Caldari or Gallente ship. The background of the pic is one of my Vue scenes. I haven’t released that pic yet. It’s collecting dust here somewhere on my HD.

Regards

CRITICAL MASS

Thousand years ago we only dreamed of the magic we are able to do today. Today we dream of things that may be absolutely business as usual in another thousand years. Drawing energy from nothing… other dimensions maybe? We should only hope that things don’t excalate in all the greed for energy nowadays. If there is one constant in the universe then the fact that energy will always be needed to do amazing things. That could definitely sling back at us and break our necks. As we’ve all seen in recent events.

‘Energy’ was the topic for The Luminarium’s newest art collection release which can be found here – some really cool works among them. Especially the music that comes with the pack. I got invited to the group and thought i’d give it a try. Some very talented folks there. Be sure to check it out!

The making of the pic was pretty much business as usual. I struggled a bit with the structures and the final result may not be the best solution. However, i wanted to show some kind of a futuristic energy generator. Right from the beginning i knew i had to visualize the energy effect by using Apophysis fractals. This was fun. I also used the metablob function in Vue to create that weird mass thingie. A lot of post work in Photoshop again.

Vue – Photoshop – 4500 wide

Hope you enjoy the wallpapers!

Wallpapers: 1920×1200 – 1680×1050 – 1280×800 – 1080p – 720p

Regards

STRANDED

For quite some time now i recognized that i don’t have lots of action pics in my portfolio. By that i mean pics where is really something happening in. Usually it’s quiet vistas and sceneries. Now i managed to do a pic with some action in it and i think it’s not too bad.

The landscape Vue render i used for this pic is actually a couple of months old. A result of my canyon experiments where ‘Red Canyon‘ originated from too. I found it looked interesting right away. It just had something missing and i invested some serious thinking into what it could be. The conclusion was that the landscape alone wasn’t exactly too fascinating to reach my current standards for a project. So i left it alone a while.

A few days ago i picked it up again, trying a few new ideas. Early on i had the idea to put a person on that one cliff there. To suggest the greatness of the actual landscape. Even if that adds a lot, it wasn’t too satisfying. Then i played around with painting and added that ship. Early on it started to look right somehow and i kept on doing it. A crash landed ship, in flames and very unfortunately positioned for any survivor. A pretty desperate situation. Yet you have this amazing alien planet vista. Guess our stranded folks don’t care too much about that.

Technically the base pic was done with Vue and reworked with Photoshop again. Textures, overpainting, color correction… pretty much the usual procedure for pics i’m doing this way.

Photoshop – Vue – 5000px wide

Print Detail

Wallpapers: 1920×1200 – 1680×1050

Regards

Red Canyon

This year’s first art addition to the site is actually a pic i did late last year. To be accurate… it’s actually the result of a test i did early last year. There exists another canyon picture. It was a plain Vue just for fun project, playing with terrains, canyons, lighting and materials. Was thinking about if it’s worth to submit it at all. It’s surely a cool wallpaper for your desktop. That’s why i submitted it now anyway. It’s also a nice moody print with some very nice quality. I’m really not sure why i left it alone so long. =D

Technically it’s pretty much pure Vue. A few smaller changes in Photoshop. Refining textures and lighting issues. If there was a goal to achieve in this just for fun project, then it was that i wanted it to be a quiet and moody pic. A pure landscape. Not too much going on. Ultimately i think i got that down pretty good. So i’m happy with the results here. Clean, simplistic and nothing too complicated for the eye.

Wallpapers: 1920×1200 – 1680×1050

Regards

A little while ago i got asked from Eric Shafer to do a short interview. Again i thought ‘why not’! Eric has just posted the article on his site. Basically talking about how i came to all this arty stuff. Surely an interesting read.

Check Here – Awesome Interview!

Thanks Eric!

Regards

Christmas over, hopefully happy and cheerful for everyone, there is one last thing left to round this year 2010 up. Eversince we crossed the line to year 2000 all new years numbers sound like from a SciFi movie. Now it’s 2011 and the two thousand still sounds odd in my ears. However! 2010 is over and i guess we all take our share of experiences from that year into the next one. I hope mine will come handy and i hope yours will come handy to you too. Nothing shall be without a reason. Even if that’s a dream sometimes. The year 2010 for me has had its uppers and downers. I think i can be happy about how a few things turned out for me and the people i like. So my hope is that the happiness will continue to grow. Therefor lets face this new year with enthusiasm and an iron will to make it all even better than last year!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Regards