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

Concentrating on concept art these days. Trying to find a quick, dirty but yet nicely working technique. I’m playing a lot with filters and texturing within photoshop. Therefor i started ‘hades’. A small project which inspiration comes from, first of all, the 2019 L.A. seen in blade runner. (Got me the 5 disc final cut edition… if you’re a fan… no way around it. GET IT!) Another source was the planet hades in a game named privateer 2 from… 1996 or so? Those were the days! So yes, it’s cityscapes again. Two pieces showing a scene from different perspectives. One shows that it’s a pretty intense, atmospherically voilent environment. The other looks a bit more peaceful, with a perspective from within the city environment. Both made over the last 7 days, which is pretty fast for me. And one of them turned out to be one of my alltime favs. The artworks, along with wallpapers, will be available soon. Stay tuned!

Regards

docu *.pdf & docu *.zip

Here i took myself some time to write a short documentation to the artwork. You can see lots of detail pics as well as explanations to the various shots. I also listed the hardware and tools i used. I’m sure it’s pretty interesting for some of you fine folks. Have fun!

Regards

I’m currently updating the site to wordpress 2.5 and experience some difficulties. I hope to sort them out as soon as possible. All content on the site is still available… just the layout and design of the site may look a bit off here and there. We’ll be back on track soon.

UPDATE: The site should be fully operational again. Galleries, news and all content should work, and be displayed, correctly now. At least on most up to date browsers. ;p Firefox/works – IE7/works – IE6/small gfx issues.

Regards

A few days ago i restructured the site menu on the right a bit. Should be easier to navigate the various news categories now. I also updated my resume list on the ‘Hire Me’ page. There are some new submissions ahead from jobs i recently finished. So stay tuned. I also had a weird dream this night about aliens devastating my old hometown. There were some nifty fx going on in that dream. *nod* =) But that’s a different story.

Regards

Deus Sceptrum is an ‘internet band’. This basically means the band members are living in different places all over the world. It is an interesting concept and it seems to work. Of course it’s more complicated to work on things that way… but it really seems to work. They’re doing a first album at the moment and were seeking for a neat cover. They had very specific plans about the look of it and i’m satisfied that i were able to match their ideas. The cd cover contains the usual front cover, as well as a backcover and a booklet.

www.deussceptrum.com
check out some tunes here

Regards

Yesterday i brought an concept art gallery online. This gallery includes few rougher pictures i did. More sketchy and experimental. A lot of stuff is pretty old but it also includes newer works. Don’t, by all means, expect masterpieces in there. Nonetheless i always find it interesting to browse those galleries on websites of other artists – so maybe here… you do too. For further info please read the introduction of the concept art gallery page. You can find it in the art galleries group in my menu on the right side of the website.

Regards

Of course I tried to find an apprenticeship here in germany for screen/print design over the years. I got a short internship and learned some stuff about basic print and layout there. I got interviews with companies of all kinds. From the typical advertising company to industrial 3d to a games company. Until today there was no company that needed my expertise. Last year I had 3 job interviews. All turned down. That’s why I’m freelancing these days.

Every now and then I get commissioned by people or companies that ‘need’ my expertise. Beside that I work with a friend on an internet store for trendy clothing. Check it out here wear-ever.de (german of course). No it’s not the stuff meee would wear. I’m pretty boring when it comes to that… but that’s a bit offtopic here. =)

Work…

Jobs I did so far were no too big deals. So far there were several concept art things, cd covers, a poster for a presentation and a few architectural visualisation things. Sometimes there are magazines asking for an article about a special theme. I can tell that you can learn a lot about people and how this world works when you do freelance stuff. Often it’s not easy, and I could tell some stories, but so far I got every request done to the satisfaction of the clients. That’s a fact I’m pretty proud of.

Exposure is everything…

Another thing I’m doing these days is to show my work whenever and wherever I can. I want people to see my work. As many people as possible! The more people see my work… the higher the possibility that I get a job for someone to do. Exposure is everything. That became my motto art wise. When you mean it serious, and your work really has a professional level, then show your stuff wherever you can. Get it out there.

It never stops…

Technique wise I moved from playing with filters in photoshop to doodling around with 3d software for beginners to first artistic projects creating places I would love to see one day to serious, professional artwork creation and even animation. There was a long process of learning and trying out how I could bring my ideas into a picture. Lots of sideprojects came up too. Like photography. There was even a period where I focused more on space art. Everything I did helps me today to understand what I’m doing and what I have to do when I start a new project. I think it is very important to have your own experiences when it comes to artistic things. Of course schools help you with the basics… but creativity and how to use your creativity is a complicated thing which can’t be taught on schools. So at the end of the day, when I look at what I created… I’m pretty stunned. I’m somewhat happy with the stuff I do in general. Yet I’m far away from a quality level I will be really satisfied with. Then again, as an artist, you never seem to be happy. You always see stuff and you want to do it better and better and better… it’s a never ending story.

Tig(a)er…

“Dude, you wrote it wrong!”
“No I didn’t.”
“Man it’s tiger, with an e… not ae!”
“I know…”

A lot of people are asking me where I got the name from. It’s quite a story actually. Back in the days, yr 2000 if I remember right, there was a lady. A lot of people call their cats ‘tiger’… old hat… so did this girl. In the german language we have our world famous ‘umlaute’ like ä ö ü. The ä sounds amlost like an e. So the name of her cat was not ‘tiger’… no she called the cat ‘tigär’. It’s a very cute thing in the german language to use the umlaute instead of the actual letters. It sounds cuter when you speak it. So I liked that ‘tigär’ thing and used that for a while as a nickname.

We all know that umlaute don’t work on the net. So there are other ways to write them out… like: ä =ae – ö =oe – ü=ue. When I wanted to build me a website to show my, back then pretty poor, art on I needed a domain name. So since we cannot use umlaute… I had to take the ae for the ä. And whoops – tigaer-design was born. I like the ae instead of the ä… not only because of the fact that it would work on an international basis… it also looked cooler. It’s a unique name a think and I like it. And that’s how it all started. =)

The End

If you read through all 3 parts then you should understand now that certain things need some time. The decision alone “I want to be a painter!” is just one tiny step you are doing on a very long road.

Hope you guys had some reading this little journey. Now you pretty much know everything about where I came from and where I am now.

This concludes the diaries. For me it was nice to recapitulate what I did over the time. A long road which I’m still walking down.

Thank you.

PS: All typos are mine and copyrighted! Get your own typos. ;p

Regards

For the last couple of days i’m working myself a bit deeper into after effects. I must say that it’s a very very powerful tool. For my endeavour i decided to animate my latest ‘citizen erazed’ painting. I want to let it look very ugly and dirty. Like there really nothing is alive anymore. Devestated and destroyed. I will release the clip soon. It will be 35secs long. Sure no big thing. Nonetheless a lot of work went into it. Learned a lot and enjoy the result so far. =) Hope you’ll too. Stay tuned!

Regards

In the years between 1995 and 1998 I did not know what I should do with my life. The only thing I did know was that I wanted to work with computers. But I never programmed anything… or did anything else that you could consider ‘useful’. Then I met a person online. We became very good friends. And that person told me about digital imaging stuff. I was hooked.

Ever since I got my first pc in 1996, as well as a corel photopaint version (6 if I remember right), I was fascinated about the possibilities. I doodled around with corel without to produce anything good or useful. Just playing with filters. I guess we all started that way. First my online contact poked me into the right direction. I soon learned basics about webdesign and screendesign. And I’m eternally thankful for the help I got. We are still friends and see each other on a regular basis… like… twice a week.

Back then I realized that this would be something I could truly dedicate myself to. Something I could see myself doing even in 20 or 30 years. Still… at that point I did not know that I would do what I am doing today. It must have been around 2001 or 2002, when I made my first experiences with print orientated jobs, learned a lot about basic 3d stuff and started to experiment into a more artistic kind of direction. I discovered programs like ‘bryce 3d’ or ‘vue d’esprit’ and, not to forget, ‘terragen’. Tg is a basic 3d landscape creation program. I always was a big fan of landscapes and started to play around with terragen. The first time I tried out tg was in 1999 I think. But I did not have a powerful machine back then. So the render times were crazy. Later in 2001/02 I rediscovered it. Right at the beginning I took my renders into photoshop to tweak colors. A bit later then I added multiple tg renders to give my pics some depth. A few months ago I used tg as a base for painting. Tg renders, to me, always looked empty. Since it was not able to render trees or other objects. That’s why I immediately moved into photoshop with my renders. To add life and more depth.

The PING of an idea…

I knew that I needed to heavily expand my knowledge about stuff to get where I wanted to be. The LOTR movies came to the big screen and the work there was amazing. SW Episode 3 came to the big screen and I was blown away by the city of coruscant. The 3d, depth and detail was just amazing. These movies kind of marked the point for me. I want to create such worlds too. The detail. The depth. I wanted to show people places we do not have on our planet. So I looked out for tutorials about matte painting… the digital way. How to combine 3d with 2d. How to work with photo plates. Etc etc etc.

I started to learn with the stuff i was familiar with at that point. Photoshop, terragen. I never want to copy things I read in tutorials. That doesn’t work anyway. It’s very important for me to develop something that belongs to ‘me’. That’s the ego asshole in me I guess. I want my style to be MY style. I’m always saying that I ‘would like to be’ an artistic mix between Gary Tonge and Dylan Cole. But it’s very important to me that you understand that I don’t copy these artists. And I think I manage that very good so far. Despite the fact that I’m still lightyears away from being a mix of these two formidable artists. Maybe I’m not even close and my technique looks very different. It’s very important that you do your ‘own’ thing. Don’t copy. Even if the line of being inspired by something or copying something is very thin. You know what I mean.

Artificial…

Some of you must be tired of hearing this but ‘Artificial’ was a real milestone for me. It did showing me that, no matter what other people try to tell me, I can pull off some outstanding work. Even if it took me ages to end that project. In the end it was something that really really satisfied me. And that’s hard to have when you’re an artist. Generally you never really like your work. I’m very satisfied with Artificial though.

Today I would make so many things different. Everytime I look at the pic I wonder about how it would have looked when I would have created it with the knowledge of today. Then I ask myself why I’m thinking about that. The pic is good the way it was done. The way it looks was necessary to get me where I am today. It also made me realize that I have to get away from terragen. Projects like ‘The Wall’ and ‘A New Hope’ took far too much time to get done.

A Tablet For A Change…

I decided to get me one of these graphic tablets. That kind of changed a lot for me. I learned a lot about painting. I never did that before. I had some basic knowledge about lighting because of my 3d work but that was it. I was working on ‘A New Hope’ when I got my tablet and used that project to make me familiar with the behaviours of the tool. I read a lot of things about tablets before I invested that sh’itload of cash into it. Beside the fact that truly every pro works with one… I also read negative things about them. The biggest problem they mentioned was, of course, the time you need to get used to it. And I can agree. It really takes a lot of time until you are able to efficiently use a tablet. For me it took almost 8 weeks to get me to a stage where I could say “yes, I finally got the basics”. Today, after using it for more than 2yrs, I have to say that there is no way around it. If you do digital imaging work I can clearly recommend a tablet.

I moved away from terragen and focused more on how to manipulate photos and work with them in my paintings. That, again, was helping me to make me even more familiar with the possibilities of the tablet. As some of you guys know I’m also doing some photography. Whenever I see something interesting I could need for a painting I have my cam with me to shoot it. I collected quite some nice stuff over the years that will come handy in the future. In this phase, early 2006-2007, I mainly worked with photography plates to realize my ideas. Now I’m completely away from the good old terragen.

Replacement…

Today, besides using photo plates, I’m focusing more into a professional 3d direction with using cinema4d and vue d’esprit to create me basic pictures to work with. I collected basic experience with vue d’esprit back in 2002 I think. When I had my 3d days so to speak. 3d offers you so many possibilities when you know how to work with it. Now you might ask yourself “this guy is talking about painting all the time… but what he does isn’t what I would call painting”. That’s true and I agree. I don’t even know why people call it painting when they combine so many different mediums. Maybe it’s because you work with digital brushes in photoshop to get certain areas in the pic right. Sometimes you overpaint a lot of areas in the pics which justifies the ‘painting’ description again. However, yes I have some true digital paintings too. Where I only worked with photoshop and it’s brushes.

This marks the end of part 2 and I hope you had an interesting read. You now know from where I came and to where I did go.

Thank you.

PS: All typos are mine and copyrighted! Get your own typos. ;p

Regards

Diaries are cool…With this idea I want to, kind of, show you guys what it took to make me doing what I’m doing artistically today. It’s been a long way from there to here and now. The most important thing I want to show with this is that you cannot learn stuff within a few days. It all needs a natural process called… ‘time’.

In the beginning…

…there were movies. Movies like starwars episode IV. I remember when I first saw it. I was born 1982 and this made it impossible for me to be part of that lucky generation that had the chance to see it on the big screen in 1977. So when I saw it… it was sometime between 1991 and 1993. Unfortunately I don’t know exactly when. But what I still do know is that I watched it with my grandpa. It was a summer. A soft wind came through the opened window when we both watched ‘a new hope’ on vhs. When the deathstar blew up and the movie was finished, we both were kind of stunned. What a story! What great fx! A wonderful movie. It was one of the moments that started something in me. I started to be interested in special fx. That evening with my grandpa was one of the most peaceful moments I ever had the pleasure to enjoy. He was always there to watch a good movie with me. Later it was Jurassic Park. For me, even today, the visual effects they created for this movie, are still some of the most realistic ones. Remember that raptor jumping on the table in the kitchen, with the two kids trying to hide there, at the end of the movie? Awesome! That was the time when I started to be interested in digital special effects. That movie kind of changed everything. The first time I watched it was with my grandpa on the big screen. I remember it like yesterday. We both were amazingly fascinated about how realistic everything was. And… I couldn’t sleep that night! lol

I’m a fan of movies…

Magic moments in cinema history. Magic moments for me. Today I wonder what my grandpa would say to what I’m doing now. Creating all these worlds in my paintings. He died in the late 90s. For me the 90s were a very very hard period of time. I lost a few people. And I miss them a lot. This decade changed a lot of things…. life and interest wise.

Movies and games…

Beside the movies, that obviously fascinate me, there were pc games. I always was, and still am, a big fan of the wing commander series. Not necessarily the movie, even if it has some glorious moments. Back then I was blown away by the fact that there were games that come along in shape of a MOVIE. And the best thing was you were able to manipulate the story of the movie with decisions you make within the game. Another interesting fact that came with wing commander were the actors that took part in these ‘interactive movies’. Actors like Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker from the starwars movies), John Rhys Davies (known from Indy Jones and later the fantastic Lord of the Rings trilogy playing Gimli), Tom Wilson (the bad guy in the Back to the Future movies) or even a very renowned actor like Malcolm Mcdowell (Clockwork Orange and other Movie classics). All these high class actors playing these amazing characters… with you right in the middle. Wing Commander III – Heart of the Tiger and Wing Commander IV – Price of Freedom really influenced me to a certain point. Not only the quality they brought up… it was also the design of the games. The design of the fighters, carriers and places. For Wing Commander (v) Prophecy they even hired a renowned Concept Artist Syd Mead to create the very organic looking aliens and their ships. I really miss the series and would love to see a new game with the newest technology of graphics they have now with directx 10. Another game which, with both the design and the production quality, blew me away… Privateer 2. The character you played in that game was given by an actor named Clive Owen. Today we see him in Elizabeth II and saw him in movies like King Arthur, Sin City, Children of Men and and and. In todays games they got away from live action sequences. Today they use the game engine itself. And they really got something going over the last 5 years. The experience of playing Crysis recently really gave me an insight on how games will look and be made in the future. Same with the Unreal 3 engine. It allows so much freedom. You could create entire movies with these engines, with graphics on a very high quality level and that’s quite a powerful thing if you ask me.

As you can see there’s some ‘interactive media’ history lesson going on up there. And I guess all that it is what results in me going into lots of movies and wasting a sh’tload of cash for the cinema. I can’t help myself studying the movies I love. Into detail. You’ll find almost no dvd case in my dvd collection that does not say ‘special 2-4-6 disc awesome mega ultra edition’ in its title. And I watch everything. All the ‘making of’ discs and everything else. Just recently 3hrs production diaries from Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Pretty awesome. And no… I’m not going so far to play all the movies in slowmotion just to see every pixel of every sfx in a movie. Unfortunately no time for that. lol

It’s inspiration. It makes me appreciate the movie even more. To know how much work went into it. I experience it myself. The paintings I do. It’s fun sure… but it’s work too. It definitely is WORK too.

All these things marked the beginning of what I’m doing today and i could go on forever talking about movies, games and what/why i like them so much. And if you’re asking me who’s the best movie director out there… then I have to answer with Ridley Scott. It seems like every scene in his movies are paintings. He manages it to sign all his movies with an overwhelming composition.

Movies recently watched. Incl extras on most titles (last 4 weeks):

King Kong
The Empire Strikes Back
Shawshank Redemption
Batman Begins
Capote
Das Boot
Death at a Funeral
Mimzy
Superbad
The Astronaut Farmer
AvP 2
Punk!
I Am Legend
Michael Collins
The Machinist
BSG – Razor
1984

This marks the end of part 1. A hellish load of text here. Lets see how much I’ll get together for part 2. ;p To waste even more of your time! It was nice to look back. To remember a few things. :)

Next time we will review the time when i seriously started my venture into digital imaging.

Thanks for your interest.

Regards