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

Beasts Shall Rise

The initial idea for this one came from a commission I had finished at the time. I took the foundation of that earlier project and expanded on it. Since you can never have enough fantasy stuff in your portfolio, I wanted to go into it full throttle. And even while writing these lines I’m still fixing elements in the picture and tuning colours. I guess it’s one of those where I will always find stuff that could need some touch ups here and there. But at some point you have to stop. Because it looks good already and the stuff you fix are on a pixel level that no one will actually see. So yeah… I’ll stop now. :D DONE.

I guess the inspiration for this one came mostly from the commission but also a lot of Game Of Thrones or Lord Of The Rings of course. These properties kind of set a standard in the recent years. At least when it comes to a more ‘realistic’ look and feel of the fantasy genre. I’m a fan of cities that are built on a mountain cliff and always wanted to explore that theme. There went a lot of work into the fine tuning of the renders I used for a plate here. I used a wide range of tools from World Machine to DAZ3d to C4D to Vue and last but not least Photoshop. Lightroom as the final step of getting the colours and mood right.

Are the dragons attacking or just flying by? I leave that to the viewer. When I had the city pretty much done I felt that there was something missing. So I added some dragons because… ‘because’. They added a level of depth that was missing before. So I decided to keep them.

At the end I had a handful of different colourschemes for this one. I decided to go with a more aggressive and colourful tone instead of a dirty greyish realistic one. I think and hope the overall look, along with the colours, give a nice and epic impression. It at least works for me. =)

I dedicate this piece to two companions I lost over the last 5 weeks. You guys always made me smile when I was down. You’ll be greatly missed.

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

Creative Photoshop Process
Plate 1
Plate 2
Previz/Wireframe 1
Previz/Wireframe 2
Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Fly Me To The Moon

This one was a commission done quite some time ago. It’s done for a young lady who wanted a special gift for her boyfriend’s birthday. She told me that he’s a very big Scifi fan and wanted something personal and special. The sweetest thing ever and the girlfriend we all dream of, don’t you agree? I ultimately was very happy to help her out and together we managed to create something everyone was very happy with. She very early on made clear that the pic should show a moon scene with a base and Earth in the back. I took it a step further and started to build a city.

‘Collins City’ is a mixture of DAZ3d models and modified 3d models. Everything arranged and setup with Vue. The challenge was to create a scene without using atmospherical effects. The moon has a very specific lighting going on and I wanted to recreate that as good as possible. The foreground required some extra time to get the microcomposition right. The lighting was a little tricky too. After rendering the elements I used Photoshop to fix things and overpaint a couple of elements. Also the mood and the lighting received some touch ups.

So in the end we have a neat scene where even I managed to learn things from. And a young couple that enjoys the result very much and has something I created as a symbol of their love. That’s pretty amazing.

6000×3000 – Vue – Photoshop – DAZ3d

Print Detail
Creative Process
Earth Photo Credit

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Comcept 21 – Battlegroup Selcior

This one was a plain just for fun thing, started quite a while ago. When playing around, I started to like it and things fell into place for the final result you can see there now. It was a quickie and nothing overly complicated. Even though I (as usual) got carried away a little. Originally I only wanted some scifi fighters sweeping over a landscape. Soon there was a larger ship added. And I when that ship told me it felt a little lonesome… I added another larger one. So everyone is happy now. However, I wanted to keep it simple. Thus it became a perfect entry into my comcept series.

Now what are we looking at here? Could be a group of destroyers flying off into a battle. Ready to deal some damage! :D Nothing too special.

Created with Vue, Worldmachine, Photoshop & Lightroom

Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Highland Ridge

I started this one very late 2011 and thought I finished it early 2012. Well, not so much. While it was a rare attempt at creating a snow scene, with me actually being rather happy with it, I struggled with it a long time. Everytime I looked at it I found stuff I wasn’t happy with. So I fiddled with it over the years. However, it’s time to finally lay it aside and call it done.

The picture does not have a specific story behind it. I just wanted to try myself on snow. I’m fairly happy with the result and again learned something while working on this project. As usual I started with a plate I created with Vue. Rendered out the scene as well as various additional elements and combined it all in Photoshop. A lot of overpainting and fixing happened there (as usual).

Right now it’s really cold around here in Germany and a sweet little romantic snowy mountainside scene may lift the mood a bit. Snow can be a cool thing. Not so much in the city though. :)

Hope the pic makes you wish to be there as much as it makes me wish to be there. Winter in the city can be quite depressing. =)

5000×2334 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate
Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Organica

This one started as an experiment. Like many other pics I do for some reason. I wanted to dig a little deeper into a tool called The Plant Factory (TPF). A software created by the guys who also run Vue. After finishing this pic I wouldn’t say I’m an expert in TPF… but I learned something for sure. To a point where it already helps with other projects. However… I used TPF to make roots grow all over the scene. To make it look as if nature decided to overwhelm this place to a certain degree. So ultimately this project was perfect for the then current ‘Organics’ topic of the Luminarium artgroup. It could be seen as a companion pic to my ‘Terraformer’ piece. Maybe it’s even the same planet!!!??? =)

The scene base was created with C4D and Vue. A lot of importing/exporting with The Plant Factory and tons of overpainting and fixing with Photoshop. The last part more than usual. Therefor I decided to play with a more stylized look and made it appear a little more painting like. A lot of time went into refining small elements to make it all look consistent.

Is this experiment a success? I’m undecided. While it sure does show something I had in mind for this scene, there are a couple of technical things I would do different today. Of course I would… because now I know the stuff I leaned from creating this picture. :D

6571×3000 – Vue – The Plant Factory – Sculptris – Photoshop

Plate
Scene Setup
Print Detail

This pic is part of The Luminarium’s 27th Exhibit. The topic was ‘Organics’. Amazing work by some great digital artists in there.
Check it out here!

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Terraformer

What we see here is, what I imagine, an ancient kind of terraforming device. Left on this planet by some ancient civilization. In the back we can see some giant ruins and leftovers of what once may have been a city. Something must have gone wrong and the planet never fully terraformed. Now the big stucture on the left is still working to a certain degree. But it’s not powerful enough. So only the surrounding areas managed to build some sort of ecosystem that over time grew onto the terraforming structure. Imagine that thing to be like 1.5km tall. So it’s huge and massive. And what are these ships doing there? Maybe they’re doing some science work and measurements of the surrounding areas. It could even be seen as a continuation of my earlier ‘Fallen Sanctuary‘ project – where they explore the ruins we see in the background of this scene.

A more exciting scenario could be that this massive terraforming structure has a meltdown. =D And the ships shit their pants and try to get away. Sounds pretty cool too. =D

This piece gave me some headaches. I was playing around with lots of things even though I wanted this pic to have a more reduced look. Without overloading it with detail. Well, that didn’t entirely work. Even if it looks rather open, there still is quite some detail in the overall scene. More than I originally planned. In the end it may benefit the overall scene. It’s not a perfect piece but it has some neat ideas I think.

Technically it’s Vue that has been used to create the overall scene. The terraforming structure is a model by Nora Nirvaluce that I previously used in a different way in the earlier mentioned collab project. The tree/root like things growing on it were done with The Plant Factory. It has a neat feature where it lets you grow stuff on objects. Needed to learn how that works and this project helped. The feature was also used to give the rocks a unique touch with some strange roots all over them. The rocks were created with Sculptris. The fog/cloud bank was rendered in Vue and took (as expected) ages to finish. I needed the cloud plate for a consistent look though. After rendering it all… Photoshop helped to bring in the final touches, fixes and overpaints that were necessary to create the scene I had in mind.

6571×3000 – Vue – The Plant Factory – Sculptris – Photoshop

Alternative Colour Version
Plate
Plate
Print Detail

This pic is part of The Luminarium’s 27th Exhibit. The topic was ‘Organics’. Some amazing work by some great digital artists in there. Check it out HERE.

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Red Sands

This picture started as a project for a movie. They had some scenes on Mars and approached me if I would be interested in trying myself on it. I did some concept work and was playing around with a Marsbase kind of idea. I sent them my ideas and they promised to come back to me on how to go on with it. Well, that was 1 1/2 years ago. Nothing happened. Not a single word. So I decided to not write off the extensive work time I already spent on the project and finished it myself as a personal project. The guys I wrote with obviously had no interest anymore. I finished it up right in time for the Mars hype that’s going on right now! =D Flowing water on Mars. That’s amazing news and opens up great opportunities.

Technically I started this one with Worldmachine and trying to create a landscape that sorta kinda could serve as a Mars landscape. I’m sure it’s not 100% realistic (if at all…) but I managed to get some nice variation into the terrain that works well enough for the eye. I combined various terrains with Photoshop and imported them into Vue. Adding the base was a difficult task. I had to work the terrain quite a bit to make it fit the parts where I wanted to place the structures. I’m not entirely happy with how it turned out… but it’s good enough for me to work. Sometimes you have to make a cut and stop working on something. To make it even more unrealistic I played with the idea of some local terraforming around the base.

Overall it’s one of my more realistic ‘looking’ pieces. At least when it comes to the visual feel and photographic presentation. Hope you enjoy the view and who knows… maybe the pic is at least a tiny glimpse at how our future on Mars could look like.

6000×2740 – C4D – Vue – Photoshop

Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Quest For Eternity

This pic was an experiment. I started it August 2014 and saw it as a prequel to my, earlier in 2014 released, ‘The Eternals’ artwork (hence the rather cryptic title for this one). In said picture you can see rather prominently a ship zipping by. I really liked the look of the ship, so I thought “wouldn’t it be funny to see where it came from?”. And that matched with the experiment I had in mind. I wanted to try and work in 16bit colour depth. It was also a test to see how my machine would be able to handle the load. It did well… but saving a larger Photoshop file in 16bit… literally takes ages. Naturally I wanted to have a quite striking image in terms of colours. So the colour depth would make sense. And I hope I got something neat for the eye with that.

If you ask me what this place is then I honestly don’t have an answer. I was fiddling with C4D when I stumbled upon this spikey shape. It instantly made me want to play with it in Vue. After some trying this and trying that I had a scene. Everything fell into place. In the end it was something like a docking or landing area for ships. The spikey things… well, let’s say it’s some ‘modern’ architecture thing. It adds a nice abstract component to the scene. =D

Usually my work is loaded with detail. That doesn’t always work. So ultimately I wanted to do a very clean cut pic for once. Something that’s simple and yet eyecatching.

6000×2739 – C4D – Vue – Photoshop

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Domes Of Hope

Here we have another collaboration piece. My second in a short period of time. After not doing collabs for a very very long time. Now I do enjoy the outcome of these projects and may do more in the future.

This time I had the pleasure to work with GTGraphics’s very own Tobias Roetsch. He’s also a pretty well known Scifi and Fantasy artist that enjoys some vast and grandiose environment vistas. He explained me his idea and I started to do work in Vue to created a serviceable plate. That includes the landscape and the design of the domes. While working in Vue we both talked about how to bring in a good composition. Then I rendered the material in several passes and combined it in Photoshop. After adding some detail, fx and textures I sent the Photoshop file over to Tobias.

Tobias did his magic with adding the city, additional landscape details and a very neat sunset atmosphere. Then it was my turn again with adding some more little details like the ships and some fine tuning. After that… we pretty much had it. I tried to play a little more with the overall colours but always ended up throwing my adjustments away. The atmosphere Tobias created works pretty much perfect.

Vue, Worldmachine, C4D, Photoshop – 6500px wide

Please check out more of Tobias’s work here:

GTGraphics.de
Artstation
Deviantart
Facebook

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Fallen Sanctuary

The best description for this one would be just two words: happy accident. I had a nice conversation with a fellow artist about 3d stuff, modeling and sculpting. We came to our current projects and I saw a screenshot of a model she worked on for an exercise. She had no further use for it and I asked if she could send me the model so I could play a little with it. I immediately had some fun with that model playing in Vue, which made clear that we got something nice there. So then we decided to do a collaboration piece.

I’m not a big collab artist since I have a very specific set of tools I work with. And combining that with the workflow of a fellow artist can get messy fast. Nonetheless we agreed to try it. I was able to find a good composition and a working scene very fast. It even surprised me how fast I had something that really worked. We decided to keep that and I started render out my usual load of plate material for Photoshop.

I started and combined the different plates, began with adding effects and details. Then I sent it over to my friend and she added her creative magic. She sent it back to me and I did finalizing touches. The result works really well and we’re both pretty happy how it turned out. What does it show? Well, not sure. But it could be some giant ancient mysterious alien ruins of sorts.

Vue, Worldmachine, ZBrush, Photoshop, 3500px wide

Find my colleague here…
Nora Nirvaluce on Behance
Nora Nirvaluce on Artstation

3d model fun render #1 // 3d model fun render #2

Quick Concept

Plate

Regards