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

Time flies by! And it seems i say that every year. However… the time is right and i took myself some time to create a nifty calendar for YOUR 2010! Man. 2010 sounds like a Sci-fi movie doesn’t it? Very weird. Now this year the calendar contains completely new works from my 2009 collection. No recycling of older artworks. Even though i’m thinking some of you would have liked it to see some older works in it too. :) In retrospective i’m proud of my work this year. It’s some solid work and the presentation within the calendar looks cool too i think. So if you want to discover a new world every month or you want someone to discover these worlds with you… go ahead and check out the calendar. :) I’m sure it’s something for everyone! Discover…!

Regards

Every once in a while it’s good to change something. After some thought process i decided to go for a new logo. I really like the circles, what they presented and how they looked. That logo followed me for quite a while – 6 or 7 years or so. Now for my concept drawing stuff i had this much more aggressive, almost tribal like, logo design in the pictures. It was the result of playing around with Vue and vectors. Now i always thought it represents the whole idea of my doings a bit better. It has a better connection to the name ‘Tigaer’ and just looks modern and slick. Now ‘The Eye’ logo is the new kid in town and i’m sure it will follow me for the next couple of years. To new worlds and beyond!!! To boldly go where no pixel has gone before. ;p

Regards

After some brief experience with the Advanced Photoshop Magazine in the past i now had the opportunity to write a tutorial for the UK Magazine’s issue #60. I picked my ‘Artificial’ artwork for this tutorial. That’s mainly because i made this picture without a tablet. Which means that theoretically everyone with a standard pc setup can create something like this. Another reason was that Terragen was a request for the tutorial. My artwork has a very unique approach to Terragen. To explain that to a wider range of people surely widens the horizon of possibilities. Even if i switched to Vue now it was fun to go back and revisit Terragen for that tutorial. Beside the Terragen part i’m explaining how i did the Photoshop work in this picture. Back then i worked a lot with blending modes. A lot of playing around what worked and what not. Now with a gfxtablet i more flexible when it comes to transparencies. But i still check out how blending modes can affect the look of a picture. Sometimes it gives some fascinating results or helps you out when you are creatively stuck at some point.

I also packed tons of material from the project on the DVD because i wasn’t able to go into too deep specifics within the tutorial! So if you don’t know further then check the PSD files. I’m sure they can be very helpful. There’s planets, textures and the whole artwork itself with all the layers. I’m sure it’s a fun peek into these files!

Advanced Photoshop Issue #60 is available now! Check it out!

There is also new painting new stuff ahead! That means some nifty wallpapers on the way! =)

Stay tuned! Thank you very much.

Regards

Error 2203

Alright. This is about a usual Windows troubleshooting process i encountered with a problem i had when installing and uninstalling programs… up to failing driver installations. I thought i’d share it with you people. The reason why i’m sharing this bit of info is just because i had a hard time tracking down some info about how i can solve this issue while searching on the net. Maybe this helps other folks out there…

The problem:

For quite a few weeks i had problems updating certain software when it told me “new update available”. I tried to run these updates and always ended up getting errors or failing installs. This was going as far as failing installations of new Nvidia drivers. The drivers DID install… but there were no control panel or anything available. Stuff that usually comes with the drivers just wasn’t there. Also not accessible because of missing files. Very weird. I did try various driver versions. Even older ones. Same problems. I also had a major problem deinstalling the Physx driver. It always ended up saying “Error 2203”. A Java update failed too. The problem was that my Nvidia driver, one that still worked, was a few months old and i really needed to update that one to keep my machine as smooth as possible. The failing driver installs really drove me mad and i started to investigate that mysterious 2203 error.

My solution:

I want to make this short. I really invested several hours into the finding process. What i found out was that my System did not have access to certain temporary folders on my HD. (How can that happen? I seriously don’t know!) Certain install processes need these temporary folders to unload their stuff there for a proper installation. I tried out all the temp folders that i knew windows uses to install things. Nothing worked. Then i found out that there are more temp folders by doing this:

1. Open Control Panel

2. Click on Advanced system Settings

3. Select Advanced

4. Click on Environment Variables (on the bottom)

5. A window opens and on top you see paths to these specific temp folders

Then we find these folders and adjust the rights for our System.

1. Right click on the temp folder and ‘Properties’

2. Select Security

3. Check out the ‘Groups or user names’ for ‘System’

4. Click on ‘System’ and check the hooks beneath it. We need ‘Full control’ activated

5. To activate ‘Full control’ click on ‘System’ and ‘Edit’.

6. In the new window again click on ‘System’ and set a hook on ‘Full control’

7. We confirm that and Everything should be in order again.

Since i’m pretty much sure that i missed something… feel free to check here. That’s the page that helped me solving this issue. Thanks goes out to them.

That ends this rather unusual entry on my site. =) I’m just happy that i managed to get my drivers updated.

PS: No, i have no idea how and why this problem started. It just was there somehow. There must be a reason but i don’t know what i did to make all this crap happen. Very weird but solved! Good good.

Regards

It’s been a while since i updated the WordPress core of my site. It’s always a rollercoaster ride to update since i have quite some modified things happening in the original WP files on my webspace. But so far all updates worked out correctly. Thank god! Everything uptodate now.

Beside that mandatory stuff i had quite some stuff happening the last weeks. I was in Austria visiting a friend on his birthday, had some fun there… and shortly after that i went to Berlin to see U2 performing in the Olympic Stadium. Absolutely mindblowing. If you have the chance to see their 360 Tour then… DO IT! Maybe i’ll post some photos later. :) Right now i’m a bit busy with learning Vue and Camera Mapping. It’s quite some fun… but a lot to learn before you master it completely. I’m also working on two movie projects. By no means anything big! Smaller things where i just take the chance to learn something while working on my parts for these projects. Also a tutorial in the upcoming issue of the Advanced Photoshop Magazine. More on that later. =)

Until then! Have fun on the site!

PIXELARTS is a Digital Art Magazine that focusses on individual artists as well as Production and Studios. It’s rich of pictures and inspiring artwork for everyone who is interested in the matter. Most importantly… it’s free! I had the honour to be featured in this latest issue 13. I just checked out this months issue and again it holds some very inspiring work on its pages. Check it out online or download the full (heavy) version!

Regards

And again it’s been a while with concept art gallery additions. I took me some time to add a few new things to it. Transporters, fighters and a scene sketch. I should do more in that direction but time is a precious thing. Hope you get some inspiration there! Have fun.

Regards

Oh dear! That were quite some nice 2 weeks. Three awards for my ‘Gates To Elysium’ piece and now the flu. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the support! That cgchoice award really was a dream of mine. Now i got that and can scratch it off my list. Due to the flu and lack of motivation i am not really working on something right now. Except a painting i got commissioned for. My brush video should have been done right now but this damn flu rendered me useless over the last few days. So the video is set to a ‘when it’s done’ status now. Aside of that i’m trying to get that flu behind me as soon as possible. So i can finally finish up the things i have on halt now. Crazy anyway, it’s 30°c out there and i’m sitting here with a running nose and headaches! =D That are the things that make you feel alive…

Regards

If you are a serious digital artist then this award is on your list of things you want to receive someday. That is at least how i see it. I’m a long time member of CGTalk now and i have seen some really really breathtaking artwork there. I always looked up to these people and their work. I can remember a time when i was very fresh with digital art and photoshop generally. When i looked through the Cgtalk forums i dreamed of being such a great artist with such amazing vision. I never thought i could get there too. Today i made it and it means so much to me. I almost missed the mail from Paul Hellard. But then i saw his name and checked the subject line and ‘boom’. I just got up from bed and my day was already made! Hard work pays off! You just need to hold on to it and it really can pay off. =)

Thanks to the people who supported me over the last few years as well as the great digital artists on this planet who create new worlds and places that inspire people like me to create their own worlds!

Find the cgtalk post here.

This is one happy day for me!

Regards

Basically not much happening. I actually would have tons of photo stuff to submit but i’m crazy lazy. The people who follow me on twitter know that i’m currently working on my personal benchmark painting for this year. My ‘artificial’ or ‘epica’ for this year. A lot of vue stuff in it. Sci-Fi theme. Truly mesmerizing depth. While a friend of mine can’t stand this painting… i, on the other hand, really dig it. I’m excited what you guys will say. It’ll be submitted next week. Includes wallpapers and stuff. :)

The brush video is still alive but i did not find the right time to get it done. Before i’ll finish it up i want to complete my current painting. Which is basically done already. Still fiddling around on some details. It’s basically a video where i explain how i create the custom brushes for the ship concepts i do from time to time. I setting myself a two week deadline to get the video out. Check my twitter for specific updates.

Regards