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

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

“I’m 29 years old and was born on board of a colony ship that is now on its course for 75 years. It’s heading to a planet that we think is inhabitable. It must be. There is no turning back since our homeworld is dying. No, it’s not our fault. It’s just nature’s course. And our species… in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the biggest endeavour ever taken to create the biggest colony ships to date. I’m one of 25.000 people on board of one of these ships. A lot of precious resources went into these ships. Not everyone was for it. It caused a lot of uprising. But it was important to keep the hope of our species alive. There are more ships. But all heading to different destinations.

We just now reached a good enough distance to our target planet to efficiently probe it. One of the first probes we sent took about 5 years to reach the planet. When they ship wide published the results my first thought was ‘We’re Home!’. All the readings looked perfect. There even was a photo. Man! I can’t wait to get there! It looks like paradise! It looks like heaven!”

This pic was originally a concept art commission I did a few months ago. It got rejected for reasons I can’t exactly understand… since I followed instructions from the Art Director. Weird weird thing. However. Instead of leaving this nice piece to slowly fall apart on my hdd, I decided to do something with it. Much like my ‘Hades’ duo from 2008, this is the first of two pics showing pretty much the same place. This pic was fun to do and certainly looks cool… that’s at least what I think.

Technically it’s a Vue 3d render for the base and some Photoshop to get details and atmosphere right. The weird rock formations were done with Zbrush. Experimenting with that stuff lately. Creating rocks and alien looking formations is pretty easy with Zbrush. And that’s all I’m able to do with it. It can do so much more. However. This Zbrush excursion helped me to learn a few things and will hopefully lead into some more exotic looking landscape pics in the future. We’ll see that…

for now I hope you enjoy the view as much as I do.

Vue – Photoshop – 5000px wide

Plates and Parts

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety

Regards

ENDEAVOURS PART ONE

As a part of the Luminarium Artgroup I had the chance to try myself on an idea that was floating through my mind for a while now. To tell a story with pictures. Now the idea itself is old and absolutely nothing new of course. But I hadn’t done something like this before. The Luminarium topic was ‘Sequential‘. Now that could be interpreted any way you want. I chose a somewhat comic like approach. What I wanted to do right from the beginning was to show how spaceships depart from a planet surface into space. I did not know how to visualize that exactly. Soon I found that, of course, some sort of cityscape thing would be the best way to depart from. Soon enough I also had a nice little story in mind. About a guy who worked in that city. Never saw the sunlight and any joy living there and just wants to get away from there. He decides to begin a new life in the off world colonies. (You get the Blade Runner ref there? Very good! ;))

Technically it’s all done using Vue and Photoshop. In Photoshop I used several filters to achieve a certain comic like flavour. Not sure if that succeeded though. The end result was very satisfying and again I learned a few things while working on the different images.

By the end of the making process I realized that the tour from the surface into space could only be the first part of the adventure. The story needs a better finish and that’s why I decided to add a ‘Part One’ to the title. Now I cannot say when I will create the second half of the series. We’ll see when it’s done I guess. For now I’m happy with the results of part one. And maybe it’s a good thing to leave the actual destination of our two ships to the imagination of the viewers. At least for a while! =)

‘Excitement’

“Do you get that feeling too? That feeling of excitement when you know the next day will be great because you’ll be off into the holidays with the family or something? Now this is not much different. To finally leave this place, start over somewhere else and see your loved ones again. This is the first step of my endeavour and I’m so excited!”

‘Here We Go Again’

“There is surely one thing I will definitely not miss. Working in this heavy industrial environment was a pain. All day long in the shadows of these superstructure towers. Knowing there’s a warm sun… but never seeing it. I hope the colonies will offer a more peaceful working environment. It’ll be hard there too. No doubt. But it will be better! Not just because I won’t feel alone anymore.”

‘Wave Goodbye’

“That’s the dream. At least when you’re looking for it here. Living in the higher levels of these skytowers. I never was so high up but I saw pictures of the most amazing sunsets you can imagine. My dreams lie beyond these towers and this planet. Can’t wait to get there. Can’t wait to see my own sunsets.”

‘Leaving The Fields Of Steel’

“Looking down into this mess of a city it looks almost peaceful. A symbol of how far mankind came the last 500 years. All the magic we are able to do now and take for granted. All these amazing achievements. But we’re sill looking for the things we’ve always been looking for. Peace, family, hope, new goals and a better life.”

‘All These Worlds Are Yours’

“I travelled into space maybe three or four times and the sight is still the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It must be the saddest thing to work up here. Seeing this grand view but not being able to appreciate it anymore. That’ll never happen to me!”

‘Begin A New Life’

“Oh, I almost forgot that funny prickling feeling when a ship enters the space dock and shifts gravity fields. That must be how true excitement really feels! Can’t wait to get through transition and board the ship to the colonies. I hope so much this endeavour will lead me somewhere good. For me it is quite a risk. I’m sure it will! Someone is waiting there for me.”

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

Undiscovered

This one is probably two years old. I did this one for a colleague of mine who worked on a scifi project at the time. They needed a vista for a specific scene and i tried myself on it. Unfortunately the project got canceled. I left this piece and took parts of it to create my ‘Red Dawn‘ project. I’m sure you recognize the mountains. However, i don’t want this scene to rot on my hard drive since there went a few hrs into it. It also doesn’t look too bad either. I like the desaturated bad weather look.

I also did a short animation test. It didn’t turn out too good but why not submit this one too. =) It’s always fun to see static pics in movement. Well… that’s at least my opinion.

Test Animation 720p (ca. 9mb)

Regards

Valis Licentia

This picture is the perfect example of the famous ‘creative spark’. I never had the intention or plan to do a picture like this one. I never had a concept to this one in mind. I just sat down and worked it out. Everything fell to its place by accident when i was playing with the Vue 9 pre release version. Out of nowhere a creative flow started to happen.

It basically started with trying and playing with Vue again. Creating a nice mountain terrain and adding trees. Playing with atmosphere and lighting. This is actually how a lot of my personal projects come together and start out. Ultimately i had this nice mountain range, atmosphere and forest in front of me and thought… “yes… that’s it… go for it”. At this point no plans for a scifi setting. I also wanted a river in the scene. Some time went into the placing and adding and getting it right of the river part. Then the landscape part was done and i did a large multipass render of it. It took 18hrs to finish. That was early november i think. I really liked the result. The multipass also allowed me to extend the planning for the pic.

I thought around a while and found that some sort of scifi haven/port for ships would be a cool thing. So i added the towers. The original idea was to add one much closer to the camera on the left. But that did not work out well and completely ruined the composition for me. So i decided to move it farther back. That way the atosphere had much more space to unfold its nice detail and lighting. And the eye has a much more pleasant view on the overall scene. I decided to add more towers in the back to get some more depth into the scene. Not sure if that works 100%.

The Photoshop work, or ‘post work’, included refining of the atmosphere and bringing out details that i wanted to pop a bit more. Since a lot of elements, like the towers, were added in the process i had to do some extra integration work to make it all sit right in the image. I also added some atmospheric beams to bring out the atmosphere. I think that works nicely.

Not knowing what i was going to end up with was a nice thing. Even today i made last changes to the pic. Now every pic should have some sort of message huh? I guess what the pic is trying to say is that even highly developed races should be able to merge their structures into a foreign environment without disturbing it. Something ‘we’ are not able to do. The towers in the pic certainly have a very industrial look to them. Nonetheless they’re able to keep the environment untouched.

Photoshop – Vue – 5000px wide

Plates and Progress & Print Details

Regards

Hadley’s Hope

What if kinda sorta maybe Hadley’s Hope in ‘Aliens’ didn’t explode and developed its colony further? But yeah you could say I fell in love with the city I created in ‘Phoenix Rising‘. Since I have built me quite a nice plate in Vue, I had to take another visit. And it could become more in the future. I’m sure you don’t mind as long as some stunning vistas like this one are the result of these excursions. Again I’m wondering why I’m into such megacities. I’m very interested in technology, where it took us in the past and where it may take us in the future. Maybe that’s a reason.

When I started this one I didn’t have a real plan. I was just playing with atmospheres and clouds in Vue and found a nice point of view on the city part we see farther in the back of my ‘Phoenix Rising‘ picture. Started to add more details to that area and moved objects around to find a good composition. Lots of smaller testrenders happening in that stage. When I had arranged everything to a point of satisfaction I started play with the lighting. I really wanted to make it look somewhat photoreal without to lose the usual tension and contrast that I usually get into my pics. I eventually became undecided between a more natural lighted sunset with the light source behind the camera and a real devilish/hellish red backlit situation with the sun shining directly into the cam.

I stuck to the backlit setup because of the tension it created in the scene. Nonetheless I had a problem with visible detail. Since it all was pretty much in shadow. But I wanted lots of details visible! What I did was rendering both lighting situations i had in mind. The one with the sun behind the camera captured all the little details I wanted visible. I took that render pass and layered it above the backlit version and started work both together. That’s a technique I use whenever I want more detail in certain shadowy areas. Of course you can also use the multipass possibilities of Vue to fix those. It all depends on what you want to achieve.

In the end I managed to get a pretty decent result together that can walk hand in hand with my ‘Phoenix Rising’ project. It shows another side of that megacity. A bit darker and dense… almost like you could swim through the atmosphere. Another view I would die for to see for real.

Vue – Photoshop – Wacom – 4000px wide

Vue Approaches & Print Details

Two versions of wallpapers in the pack: 1920×1200/1080p – 1680×1050 – 1280×1024 – 1280×800/720p

Regards

My Kingdom Awakes

This project was a lot of fun. Partly because it ended a personal creative blockade after the finish of my ‘Phoenix Rising’ project. Again i was playing with Vue and certain lighting settings. I think i found a good base for future projects now. Rendertimes went skyhigh though. However the image quality certainly speaks for itself. My goal here was to setup (or find a way) to light the scene as realistic as possible. That succeeded and after tons of hours for the render to finish… i eventually had a great plate to play with in Photoshop.

The final result is 65% Vue and everything else Photoshop. Of course i added quite some extra textures to get in the needed details. As well as extra painting in areas that did not turn out too good. The overall Photoshop postwork was done fairly fast. So i’m really happy with the outcome.

Vue – Photoshop – Wacom – 30hrs Render – 10hrs Postwork – 4500px wide

Vue Plate & Print Details

Regards

THE ABYSS

Here we have a picture i created last year for an experimental shortfilm by Chris Bouchard. He’s the guy who made that fairly successful ‘Hunt for Gollum’ LotR fanfilm that created quite a buzz and generated millions of hits. However… what he needed were a few backgrounds and i tried myself on some. We also used my ‘Epica‘ painting, with quite some extensions, as the general background. This picture here was not used like intended but still found it’s way into the film. I really like this one a lot and it’s my favourite of the ones i created. Maybe because it reminds me of that famous Blade Runner scene at the end of the movie.

CLONE Shortfilm Here

Before/After
View from the back

Regards

Comcept 16

Yet another comcept piece for the series. Like comcept 15 it’s a test with Vue and some new plant models. Again i tried to bring in variety and chaos without to lose the eye for a somewhat good composition. All this just for fun. I like this more than the pevious comcept piece. I think the lighting works better here and the overall look feels a bit magic. Maybe my imagination plays tricks on me here. I used the multipass images Vue created for this one to get more detail off the shadowy areas. That worked very nice and created more volume on the textures… if that makes any sense. =D However… i like this one.

That said… i hope you guys enjoy the Wallpaper Pack. 1680×1050 & 1920×1200 version of the scene. Have fun with it!

WALLPAPER PACK

Regards

Comcept 15 – Ruins

A while ago i updated my 3d package with a few new plant models for Vue. AsileFX has quite a nice collection there. It’s also easy to modify and allows me more creative freedom and variety. This picture represents my first work with these new plant species. I really threw them in there to get a feeling for them. How they work in composition… how they look… how they react with my workflow. Due to the higher detail of the plants the rendertimes went up a bit too. But still alright for my machine. I learned a lot patience over the last years. The result of this little intermezzo my not be the most exciting but the wallpaper looks pretty nice. That’s why i decided to put it up for you.

I can’t deny that i was inspired a bit by the Avatar movie. I wanted thick foliage and decided to put some exotic looking structure into the mountain in the back. Maybe it’s some old alien building of sorts. Thousands of years old. Waiting to be discovered. *dark voice* Waiting to unleash its secret daaaark powers! */dark voice* Whatever that means. =D

That said… i hope you guys enjoy the Wallpaper Pack. 2 different versions of the scene in 1680×1050. Have fun with it!

WALLPAPER PACK