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

The goal of everyone, who takes his craft seriously (especially in the art world) should be to get featured or write for a magazine that is completely aimed at professionals. I have written for magazines in the past and while they were surely aimed at professionals as well, none of them were quite as focussed as the german ‘Digital Production’ magazine. So yeah, I can scratch something off my to do list when it comes to my artistic work. I had the pleasure to write a six page article about Vue and how it works. An introduction basically. It was a lot of fun to talk about the tool and how I use it. Using my ‘Memories Of Ascalon‘ piece to explain my workflow a bit. If you are fit in german language then I can only recommend this magazine. It’s completely aimed at VFX and CG stuff and a quality read.

Find the magazine here: Digital Production

Regards

SITE

When I was creating my The Ghost terrain asset (quite some time ago now) I decided to play around with the materials I collected for the asset and experimented. This one is the result of such an experiment. Not too much backstory except that I always liked the natural shapes, patterns that you can see of landscapes when photographed from a very high altitude. World Machine in combination with Geoglyph 2 is able to create these natural patterns. I instantly thought it looked like an eye with all the veins going on and stuff. But also an alien planet surface maybe? I decided to add some ships and give it a more scifi feel with that. This one was fun to play around with.

6000×6000 – World Machine/Geoglyph 2 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

DIVIN

Another, more experimental, piece that actually belongs to my ‘Splacement 1+3‘ series. The result of playing around with a nifty pattern generator. The tool is called JSplacement and free. I can only recommend checking it out. A lot of fun. Aside from that there is not much to say here. No big story when it comes to the meaning of the picture. A just for fun piece, created to just look kinda cool. =) In a square format that I’m not really used to working with.

The piece was first published in the online exhibit AURORA II – RED

8000×8000 – JSplacement – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Behance

Regards

Stewart McSherry (founder of XFrog) asked me to do a short video about the Ecosystem materials that are offered by XFrog and how easy they make it to create a forest with a lot of variation and a very natural and real looking appearance. So I sat down and recored this video to explain the process a tiny bit. I wanted to keep it short and didn’t go into super crazy detail but it’s deep enough to convey how it all works. It also shows how easy the XFrog material make it to create a rather natural looking forest.

E-On Software – Website
XFrog Website

Regards

Comcept 32 – Halo Over Sunset City

Welcome to SUNSET CITY! This one was a pure just for fun project. I was fiddling around in Vue when I stumbled over some atmosphere settings that created a solar eclipse kind of look. I thoroughly enjoyed that look and started to randomly add some buildings. That quickly turned into kitbashing all kinds of stuff into the scene… which lead to the results we can see in the final piece now. No specific story for this one. From what it looks like it appears to be some sort of space/port hub structure. Surely a place that could easily write its own stories – good and bad.

5000×2283 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Part of AURORA: AURORA Exhibit II

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Shrine Of The Unknown Huntress

“Many tales, in all kinds of shapes, forms and variations, covered the deeds of this fine lady and ignited a revolutionary fire which the galaxy will tell tales that will echo through the ages – even in thousands of years.”

Cassandra’s Book, 3:29

Here we have something highly experimental (for me) again. Much like my “The Hidden” piece, this one was done with help of Mandelbulb3d. I found a neat scene whilep laying with it, rendered out several passes of it and did some Photoshop magic. I also used Vue to bring in these monumental statues. The look of it is really different compared to my usual stuff and I really enjoy how it turned out.

When working on this piece, I decided to make a loose series, that is based on my “The Unknown Huntress” artwork. What if the lady belongs to an ancient old collective or cult of warrior ladies that kind of work from the shadows and shape the civilizations of the universe. A variation on the Assassins Creed story of sorts and not superbly original, I admit. But more based in a fantasy related universe. I found it tempting and decided to go with it. =D The location we see in this pic definitely belongs to a Scifi setting. Something completely different from the first (The Unknown Huntress) picture. Maybe a gigantic temple, honoring highly decorated members of the past. A place for the members to visit and gather some spiritual energy for upcoming missions or events.

7000×2996 – Mandelbulb3d – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Mandelbulb Plate

Part of AURORA: AURORA Exhibit II

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Parsec City

Not too much to say about this one. Originally a commission, I did have some real fun with it. Earlier this year the rights fell back to me and so I decided to show it to the world! The pic is four years old and the cool thing is that it holds up. I still really enjoy this piece.

Vue – DAZStudio – Photoshop – Lightroom

Concepts

Atmosphere Study

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

A while ago I was approached by none other than one of the (if not THE) biggest websites for digital art professionals. In the recent past they ventured out a little and try to also bring people tutorial/walkthrough videos to certain software packages. Now it seems I’m known for using Vue quite a bit. =) So they were asking for a quick run through the tool and what it’s able to do. I sat down and took “Port Fenster“, one of the projects in my Endeavours series, to help me explain the strengths of Vue. Maybe I’ll get the chance to cover some more detailed stuff in a later video. For now we have the basics. Enjoy! =)

Find the video: here

This video is sponsored by the fine folks at E-On Software, the creators of Vue! And, of course, Artstation. Big thanks to both!

Regards

Here a couple of infos to the upcoming Digital Art Live Webinar next Saturday & Sunday. In our past webinars we used to go for a more theory based approach. I talked about the creative process of how one of my artworks was done. In the upcoming Webinar we decided to for a more organic and practical approach. Not just talking about stuff… but also showing how it’s done. Therefore we scheduled two shows since it will definitely take a little more time to go through the various things. There will be a couple of shortcuts here and there but we will cover the main aspects of the scene in detail. Of course feedback and questions throughout the show are welcome and will be covered and discussed if possible.

The best thing about it? It’s FREE!

If you are interested and you want to participate go here and register for the event. The webinar will take place in a Fuze meeting and you will get all info via email. You need to install the client software but you don’t require an account to attend the Webinar! You will also get the room number via email before the show starts.

Find the registration page: here

Part One – Start Time: 20:00 BST (London)/21:00 GMT (Berlin)/12:00 PDT (Los Angeles)/15:00 EDT (New York) – The duration is estimated to 1.5 to 2hrs. Saturday, April 21st 2018!

Part Two – Start Time: 20:00 BST (London)/21:00 GMT (Berlin)/12:00 PDT (Los Angeles)/15:00 EDT (New York) – The duration is estimated to 1.5 to 2hrs. Sunday, April 22st 2018!

This event is sponsored by the fine folks at E-On Software, the creators of Vue! Big thanks to them!

Introduction:

The Artist, Project Info, Used Hardware

JSplacement:

Creating abstract heightfields

Vue:

Importing heightfields, Setting up the terrain, Ecosystems, Adding buildings, Additional detail... and more

Photoshop:

Compositing, File Setup, Exploit hidden detail with Multipass renders...and more

See you there!

Regards

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