Digital Art, Paintings, Fractal and 3d work created by Christian Tigaer Hecker. News about the artist and Interviews with Artists like Dylan Cole, Gary Tonge and Syd Mead.
In the the past months i did a few concepts for a shortmovie script of a colleague. He wants to use these pics to promote his idea. The script is indeed very good and offers quite some eyecatchers. I got contacted to visualize some of the environments. Technically i can say that i did me a base Vue render i manipulated in Photoshop to get me the right results. Pretty much the technique i’m using on almost every project these days. It was a nice break from the sci-fi’ish things i had created simultaneously for other projects. Now i hope i was able to visually capture some of the ideas from the script. Ultimately i think they work pretty good. Feel free to click on the pics for a larger version.
I just noticed that it’s far too long since i posted my last picture! It’s been a bit busy here recently. However! The last weeks i’m playing around with Vue 8. And finally i found the time to finish up a pic. There’s no big background story here. I was just testing around. The new clouds in Vue 8 really are a bit better than in Vue 7. It still takes ages to render them… but they look good. In this picture we probably have 75% Vue and 25% Photoshop. I used Photoshop to tweak colours and atmosphere. As well as lighting and fixing some weird render results. Especially edges and such things. Smoothing them out. I also painted a few highlights in and added some subtle textures.
Render Info:
My machine is a i7 920 and 12gb ram. For a 3000px wide render it took 4hrs and 30mins to finish. So yeah. Detailed clouds still are time consuming. And i doubt that will change. The terrain was a procedural. Which needed some time too.
Most of the time i sorta like my work. I’m never 100% happy. And basically, as an artist, you should never be 100% happy with what you do. Just to stay motivated and inspired. Now with this piece i’m almost 90% happy. And that’s a lot. I’m a sucker for backlit, sunset scenes so here we have another one. I would also say that this is pretty much a matte painting quality again. Haven’t tried myself in that for a while. Now the plate i rendered myself with Vue really kicked a**, and i wanted to make it look somewhat photo real. The rendertime needed for the plate was something around 26hrs. I also got some nice photo reference material from a good friend and used some in my painting. Roger…! I love you. :)
Now this one is a Vue render i had on my HD for a while now. Pretty much like my previous Comcept painting. A few days ago i took me a few hours to mess around with it and unleashed a tour of filters on it. As well as textures and adjustment layers and stuff stuff stuff. Quick and dirty. Result ends in a, from my point of view, nice Blade Runner’ish setup.
Basically what i wanted to portrait was a kind of docking station within a huge futuristic city. Now the ships we see have a crew of probably 200-300 people. So the dimensions here are pretty huge. Just the way i like it. All i wanted was to transfer an idea and i hope i do here. Hope you like the vision and style.
Actually this is a picture i had on my HD for quite a while now. At least when it comes to the clouds. Originally it was a plain Vue 7 test render. I really liked how it turned out and wanted to do something with it. Unfortunately i never found the right time for it. So until now it had to wait a binary eternity on my HD. I never wanted to do something complex with it. So i took me a day for it and painted some cool ship that is having a trip there. Man it would be awesome flying that ship through these huge formations of clouds.
Technically it’s Vue 7 for the clouds and sky. I was playing around with filters in Photoshop and, of course, the ship was created with help of my wacom and some custom brushes. All in all 7hrs for the rendering on my Laptop machine and 2hrs to finish the pic up in Photoshop.
Photoshop – Vue – Intuos 3
Since the pic really works as a wallpaper i thought i’d create a nifty pack with it. So people… i hope you have fun with it! This pack contains the following sizes:
Now it’s time to add a big one again. My recent Comcept 11 was a smaller piece and now i’m happy to add another big one to my gallery. I’m on a landscape trip these days. I guess i need a break from the Sci-Fi theme. Now on this project i learned a lot about Vue again. As always. This time i worked with own textures and checked out how terrains handle it, how i can effectively use this technique for my future projects. While, of course, there is Photoshop work in here… it definitely is less than usual. I had to overpaint a few areas that did not come out like expected. I also reworked the colors and atmosphere a bit… as well as changing the clouds. So in the end it’s 50/50 between pure Vue and postwork with Photoshop. While i was indeed targeting a more photorealistic look i couldn’t resist making the atmosphere a bit more vivid than it would actually be in a photo. Ultimetaly it adds a new combination of colors to my overall gallery and therefor also adds more flexibility.
No specific story behind that picture except the fact that i wanted to make it look earthly… yet… other worldy in its overall appearence. Hope i succeded! Hope you like it!
The first Comcept painting for this year i think. Yes, the series is not dead. It’s also the first bigger painting since my CGChoice Award win. Beside other projects i’m currently wrapping up it is, from time to time, fun to work on more loose paintings. Just smashing together some textures and see what comes out of it. Waiting for the lucky accident that makes you go ‘click’… and start to refine things a bit. That’s what i did here. No specific target in mind. Just had a nice Vue forest render and played around with it. Additionally i was playing around with how to effectively add a lens flare to suggest a more photo like look. Hope you like it!
This is my benchmark painting for 2009. Much like my pervious big ones like ‘Artificial‘ or ‘Epica‘ this painting marks something special for me personally and in a technical way. I also used it to check out how much my, currently, new machine can take. I used Vue to render the basic 3d plate. I also rendered each part on a standalone pass. So the ground complex was done within a single Vue file, as well as the ring part. The small ships and the clouds were also rendered with single takes. That gives you the most freedom in the postwork. The hero render with the ground stuctures, landscape took about 28hrs to finish. A first try to render it failed after 8hrs with a corrupt Vue file when I tried to resume the render later. That was fun. All the other elements got rendered in a much shorter time. I also used quite some quality settings for the hero render.
I used Dystopia City Blocks to create the structures and techy elements. Before I could use them I had to split the original files apart with c4d to pick me the most interesting models off the pack. Required quite some time. In Vue then I used the models to create the structures. It’s much like the modellers who worked on the first starwars movies who did use old battleship modelkits to create their spaceships. I’m doing the same with these 3d models of the buildings. Take something that’s already there to create something new. Did that with my ‘Epica’ painting too but I was not as deep into 3d as I am now. Not saying that I’m a 3d specialist… by – no – means! =)
Inspiration could be, once again, Mass Effect. I think the lighting, colors and style goes the same direction the game does. It’s also my wish to have a chance to see such things with my own eyes. That would be quite a sight I guess. Of course the usual suspects like the Coruscant cityplanet from starwars and other sci-fi movies and books.
Vue is your friend! When you’re not exactly the most talented painter then Vue really helps you to create a base for your idea. The weird rock formations/mountains were quickly modelled in C4d and imported to Vue. Ecosystems added a plantlife quickly and kaboom… it’s rendered. Then the fun can happen in Photoshop. This painting is, again, some sort of training piece. Basically i wanted to create a strangely familiar, yet exotic, looking place. It’s also a different colorpalette. Surely a nice addition to my portfolio. When you check the plate (link beneath the description) you will notice how much work was done in Photoshop. Basically i used digital painting to extend different elements and got me some good photo textures to add the level of detail i wanted. The ships were added late in the process and are completely painting. Now i would love to explore this planet with one of those ships!
And another starwars inspired try in cityscape environment design. No big story for this one. Just fiddled around with vue and photoshop – just for fun. That’s why the basic look of it is kinda dirty and gritty… concept arty. I kinda like the result that offers a nice depth to the eye. Technically i was messing around with texures and brushes in photoshop. The difference in this painting basically is the perspective that hopefully makes the viewer feel as if we’re flying into the city. So… i hope you enjoy the trip. :)
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In the the past months i did a few concepts for a shortmovie script of a colleague. He wants to use these pics to promote his idea. The script is indeed very good and offers quite some eyecatchers. I got contacted to visualize some of the environments. Technically i can say that i did me a base Vue render i manipulated in Photoshop to get me the right results. Pretty much the technique i’m using on almost every project these days. It was a nice break from the sci-fi’ish things i had created simultaneously for other projects. Now i hope i was able to visually capture some of the ideas from the script. Ultimately i think they work pretty good. Feel free to click on the pics for a larger version.
