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

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

Endeavours – Port Fenster

“This trip felt like it took 6 years or an eternity! Finally approaching Port Fenster and the town of Valley Call. Imagined it bigger. From what I can see this environment looks very close to what I know from old pictures of the old Earth – except the towers. Look at these towers! They’re gigantic!”

For the most part of our journey we’ve been either in up the air or in space. It’s time to get back to the ground! Here we see our ship in its last appearance during a landing procedure. We see a small town here, which could best be described as a colony. It’s safe to assume that this place is destined to grow quite a bit in the years to come. Therefore I aimed for an established look and not something too fresh. It’s also not the only place we left our mark on here on this planet. There are small settlements all over the place. But this little town is one of the main places, managing the colonization process and all that comes with it. Although not everyone is allowed to just apply for a home there. This planet demands a more selective process. At least for now.

For the scene I used Vue and some assets I bought via DAZ. I modified these assets so they helped me building this little town. It works good enough but I’m not super entirely happy with it. Which goes in line with the more experimental approach of the pieces in this series. Some things work better than others. =) The mountains/landscape was created via World Machine. “This alien planet looks kinda like Earth!”, you say? Yes, it does… there’s a reason for it I hope to explain in an upcoming series of images. For the foreground I used some HQ trees made by Aron Kamolz. Thanks buddy! =)

4500×2054 – 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

Endeavours – A Promise In Light

“Oh wow, I guess this city is a big one! And there is the gate to a new life. I have never done a trip through one of those. Even thinking about the science and xeno-technology that goes into it makes me feel dizzy. See you on the other side!”

When starting this series in 2011 I definitely wanted to show a megacity from farther away (an almost orbital level). Unfortunately my PC power wasn’t strong enough to really do it back then without having it super complicated in the post work stage. What I did instead was my ‘Leaving The Fields Of Steel‘ piece. Which comes close to the original idea I had in mind. And also worked better with the first part of the series showing the progression of the transition from surface level to space.

Now, with a little more power under the hood, I had the opportunity to move farther away and play more with the city and the scale a bit. The ship is about to enter a portal or jump gate. The technology for this isn’t necessarily ours. In this world we discovered an ancient old alien technology and decrypted/reverse engineered it enough to make use of it to a certain extent. Old idea, I know. =) I don’t want to define what year all this plays in but what I can say is that the alien technology is in our arsenal for quite a while now. But by no means do we fully understand it.

The challenge here was to find a good camera angle and some nice landscape shapes that compliment city details. I admit that the overall composition isn’t exactly amazing and the city is pretty far away. My main goal of suggesting a nice sense of scale works good enough for me though. So I am rather happy with the outcome since I did not want to repeat what I already did with ‘Leaving The Fields Of Steel’.

I started developing the scene by opening the Vue scene file of the ‘Leaving The Fields Of Steel’ piece in Vue. I made a bunch of copies of the city and refined parts of it by placing several buildings in different parts of the city. To make it look not too uniform. But before I fully tackled the city I created an infinite terrain (which I haven’t used much yet) for the landscape and looked for a sweet spot to place my city on. I definitely wanted it to sit on a coast. Found a good spot and moved around the city parts. After rendering the scene I did some extensive work on adding life to the city by adding lights. Also added the clouds, which makes the scene look much more natural. I originally tried it without clouds. Just didn’t look right. The jumpgate was done with kitbashing a number of models I already had. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out at well.

6000×2888 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate
Print Detail

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

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

Regards

A New Threat

“Many Bothans died to bring us this information”.

If you grew up with the original trilogy then this sentence may have spawned a whole movie on its own in your head. =D

Well, I guess you can call this piece ‘Fanart’. To celebrate Rogue One I wanted to try myself on something that has its roots in one of the biggest franchises ever created. Instead of going the obvious route and create something that fits the new movie, I wanted to create a fictional scene you could imagine maybe happening between Episode 5 and 6. Two rebel agents spying out the still under construction Shield Generator that protects the second Death Star.

I started this scene quite some time ago and figured it would be worth the wait and release it when Rogue One is out. After having it at a ‘pretty much done’ stage for a while, I even went back and fixed quite a few elements and invested some extra time to make it look more passable in certain areas. Mainly tree stuffs. As always there are parts I’m not entirely happy with but overall I think it works.

The scene was created with a variety of tools. Mainly Vue to arrange and compose the scene. Sculptris was used to create a ground foundation. The Plant Factory was used for the trees. Thanks to Aron Kamolz for some tips there. Photoshop was used to overpaint, fix and add details. Last but not least I used Lightroom to find the right mood for the colours.

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

The Star Destroyer, Speedbikes and Shield Generator models are from Scifi3d.com.

Print Detail

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

Regards

Frontier

This time we have a collaboration piece between me and Alastair Temple. He’s a fellow artist from the Luminarium artgroup and mostly into Photography. Every now and then he’s going Scifi or Abstract. Here he combined his abstract technique with some neat scifi and asked me to add some additional magic as well. It mainly the space station. I also added some additional detail to the alien structures and worked on the composition a bit. In the end we both created individual versions of the scene.

I had my fun with this one and the weirdly shaped looking structures add a nice sense of mystery to the whole thing. What specifically these are you ask? I have no clue. I leave that to your imagination. :)

Mandelbulb – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – 4000×2000

Find Alastair’s version and a little background info on Behance
Find his Website here: http://www.alastairtemple.co.uk/

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

Regards

Return To Chronos Keep

I started this one shortly after I finished reading ‘Hyperion Cantos’ by Dan Simmons. Easily some of the best scifi you will ever read. So, go… get it and read it if you haven’t! I decided to try myself on a scene from the book (and there are so many good ones!). Late in the story our group of characters is sorta kinda trapped at a very important place and they need to stay there. Unfortunately food and water runs out and they decide to send 2 of them back to a fortress kind of place to get food and water. So my scene shows one of them on their way. What we see is how I kind of imagined the environment looking like in that part of the book. In the book it’s sort of described as a desert with some neat atmospheric effects. That ‘atmospheric effects’ part got me. In the end it’s not a super exciting scene I guess. I had my fun playing around with it though. =)

Technically it’s a mix of 3d and 2d techniques. Created with Vue, The Plant Factory, World Machine & Photoshop. I used Apophysis renders to visualize the atmospheric effects. After rendering the scene plate I, as usual, did go back to add lots of elements I rendered separately. I also oriented on the descriptions in the book regarding lighting and colours. Got that part good I think. =)

6500×2967 – Vue – The Plant Factory – World Machine – Photoshop – Lightroom

This pic is part of The Luminarium’s 28th Exhibit. Some amazing work by some great digital artists in there. Check it out here!

Plate
Scene Setup
Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Greenland I

Here we have an experiment I did a long time ago. 2011 to be exact. I guess I never really was happy with it. The goal was to create a nature scene. And some parts in here I do really enjoy. But the overall picture is too cluttered and lacks composition. However, I decided to dig it out and play around with the atmosphere and colors a little. In the end I decided to go for a more vivid color scheme to give it some fantasy character. It’s ‘presentable’ now I guess. =D Still no masterpiece though.

Created and rendered with Vue and a load of detail fixing in Photoshop. I also re-rendered a couple of elements to bring in some additional detail here and there. So ultimately it may not be the result I wanted but still, I invested some extra work for it nonetheless. I don’t know exactly why but the water area took forever to render. =D

Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – 6000×3100

Had my fun with this one and hope you enjoy the view. :)

Wireframe
Plate

The artwork on:
Deviantart – ArtstationCGSociety

Regards

Gillian’s Place

I started this one a while ago, after I finished ready “Stranger In A Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein. Early in the story we are in an apartment where the floor is covered with a carpet of grass. I already had the idea before I read this book but the book helped me to flesh out the idea. So the inspiration for this scene came, in parts, from the book. There we also have this lady character Gillian who loved the grass carpet in the apartment of a friend and I wanted to give her her own apartment. =)

I used this project to dig a little deeper into 3d modeling and how I can use it for my ideas. I also tried myself on basic cloth simulation for the sheets. So ultimately there went quite some time into this scene because a lot of it went into experimenting. For the sculpture I also experimented with subsurface scattering to give it a quasi translucent look that captures the light. The modeling part happened in C4D and the scene setup in Vue. Photoshop brought it all together and I refined and fixed a lot of things I wasn’t too happy with in the renders.

6000×3000 – C4D – Vue – The Plant Factory – Photoshop – Lightroom

Had my fun with this one and hope you enjoy the view. :)

Wireframe 1
Plate 1
Plate 2
Plate 3
Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

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