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

VAN DIEMEN’S RETREAT

Here we have the first painting i did on my new machine. I had the actual cave background plate render on my disk for a while now and used this project to see what the new machine can do. I’m pretty happy with the results i got from this project. Computer speed wise as well as painting result wise. I really used Vue a lot here to render out different elements for the background and foreground. The crystals, ships and trees were implemented with help of multipass rendering. Due to the speed of my new machine i finished the painting in a very good time.

This is a painting that, after lots of storyless pieces, has a story again. Some of you might know that U2 song ‘Van Diemen’s Land’. One of the most beautiful songs ever btw. In fact i listened to it when i was looking for a painting title. I always liked that name ‘Van Diemen’ and used it here. Now lets say this base we see here is some sort of hidden pirate base. Hidden within some sort of planetoid/super asteroid.

The Story

A rock large enough to develop some sort of atmosphere where plants can grow. But only on the inside caves of the asteroid. On the surface you’ll find plain death. Downcrashing asteroids. Deadly subeams. Extreme temperatures. Due to a special magnetic field the base cannot be spotted. You can only get there with the right coordinates! The base was once founded by a space pirate legend named (you guess it) Van Diemen. After one of his biggest coups he had to flee before a huge fleet that tried to hunt him down. His last chance was to hide in an asteroid field! He and his men made the brave decision to hide within an immense large weird splitted/cracked open rock, carefully maneuvering his massive ship, while the fleet searched everything for him. Soon he started to wonder why they did not pick up the energy signature of his ship and found out about the specialty of this place. He started to make plans… to build a hideout! That was 200 years ago. Now this place became a massive outpost for all sorts civilizations. The place now is named after its founder but it’s no more a place for criminals and other scum of the universe. It’s still very tricky to find this base and even with automated landing procedures there happen accidents every now and then. So when you plan your trip there… better pay some extra for a good ship and an even better captain!

4800px wide – photoshop – vue – intuos3

Plate can be found here.

Print detail can be found here (Large file).

Regards

CRYSTAL LAKE

This one was in the works for quite some time now. I’m not entirely happy with the results but i did my best to make it look somewhat interesting. Again it’s a try in digital matte painting combining rendered elements with photo. A friend of mine always said that i need something snowy for my portfolio and so i did it. I did not have any specific concept in mind for this one except the fact that i wanted crystals in there. The photos i used are none of the ones i shot while visiting a friend in austria. Those will come handy in later projects. The crystals were modeled in C4d and imported into Vue. There i created an eco system and painted them onto the landscape. Worked pretty good! Only the integration process in Photoshop was quite difficult. Some pieces are fun to work on and others can become quite heavy work. This one was work. Nonetheless i hope the stormy mountain atmosphere works and you’ll get some goosebumps from the cold the image shows!

5160px wide – photoshop – vue – intuos3

Plate can be found here.

Print detail can be found here(Large file).

Regards

Here we have some concept paintings i did a while ago. The first two were done for a company in beverly hills to visualize some futuristic structures and places. More of less successful i managed to create some stuff for them. I, for my part, am pretty happy with the outcome. The third painting was done early 2008 for a movie project. All three of them were pretty small projects but nonetheless i learned some stuff on them.

Solar Pole 1 – This one was fun to do. It was a first try of myself to create something icy, cold and snowy. The basics were rendered in vue and heavily overpainted in photoshop.

Solar Pole 2 – Here we’re looking, from above, onto the structure we see in the first painting. This is the one i’m not too happy with. Nonetheless, as usual, i tried a lot of things and catched up some new stuff.

Eisental – A friend of mine is a screenwriter and was working on a project. He was asking me to visualize a place and i tried myself on it. Problem was that it had to be done rather quickly. I’m happy that i managed to do something half decent here. The overall image isn’t a blast but it contains some nice spots and a good looking lighting and depth.

Hope you can get some inspiration off of these. =)

Regards

ÆMPYREAN DECADENCE

Imagine cities, that large that it all is built in levels. One on top of another. Like it’s kind of happening in Hong Kong today. Your position in society is reflected by on what level you live. Now this society has risen up so high that it couldn’t stand on its own feet anymore. Society, as well as the architecture, starts to fall apart. The ignorance of wanting it all more bigger and larger than large doomed them to break apart. Only a few search and rescue teams, all volunteers, mustered up the strength to go out there. Millions of people trappend in this catastrophe, finally realizing the downfall of their, once so strong and inspiring, empire.

Well, that could be one of many interpretations of what’s going on in the picture.

This one surely made it into the top ten of my fav paintings so far. It all started with a concept i made from the ship/transporter. I, earlier, had a small concept of a ruined futuristic city. Unfortunately never connceted to it. So i left it. First when i had this ship concept done i thought about creating something for the background. Much like on my ‘Descent Heart’ painting i started to see shapes i really liked. So this painting became a larger project. Above the basic painting i added tons of photo textures to suggest detail. Without wasting too much time on perspective. I tried to align everything very quickly… and good enough to make it work. Also used parts of the destroyed city concept i made earlier. So basically you could say that i was just throwing stuff together here… and looked how the cocktail may taste. Most of the time it was good. Sometimes not so much. Trail and error as usual.

The final result is pretty rough but still gives a lot of detail for the eye. The painterly style adds a lot and gives the eye something to do. I like it that way.

5760px wide – photoshop – intuos3 – 1 week

Regards

Mark Lovett, from UK, asked me to create a nice and slick cover for his musical endeavours. His concept was really appealing and something that fits right to my style. So i had this project done pretty fast. I really dig the outcome and hope it’ll help Mark to get the recognition he’s hoping for.

The pic itself started as a Vue render. After laying out the overall composition i moved into photoshop to refine the overall detail. Added painted elements and some good looking textures. Last but not least lighting fixes and a wonderful atmosphere. For the backside of the cover i basically took the front cover and manipulated it to make it look like we’re having the same peaceful scenery in a different daytime scenario/mood.

This project was fun! Oh and before you start to wonder… the song titles on the back cover are placeholders and from me. =)

Regards

Comcept 10 – Hunting Party

This is the last painting for this year 2008. I have had a productive year and, like the years before, i learned a lot! The painting itself evolved from a test render i did months ago. I started to fiddle around with some brush strokes and soon got some nice shapes going on. I also started to design some flyers for the scene to add an action element to it. Worked out very well. In the end it is a nice addition to the comcept series… and a nice conclusion for 2008.

Enjoy this new world and the wallpapers!

3500px wide – 1 week – photoshop

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety

Regards

BURNING SKIES

A painting commission i recently got finished. As you can see it’s definitely settled in the fantasy regions of literature. And the painting, obviously, is a book cover for a fantasy novel. For this project i started with a 3d concept of the landscape, made with vue. I tried to match the ideas i got told and over the time i matched the idea nicely. Then i rendered the scene and started to add my postwork to it. Main goal was it to let it appear very moody and almost ghostly. Not a place where you would want to stay at night. Once the landscape was done i concentrated on the tower. Created the base of that in 3d again and integrated the tower into the mountains. All the postwork was done in photoshop. This commission was fun to do and relatively quickly done. I like it when that happens.

This pic is copyrighted by Chris Belbin and Tigaer-Design.com. Like all the other images on this site, this image may not be reproduced or used without permission!

Regards

DESCENT HEART

This piece was done by me using a very different technique than usual. It clearly is a digital painting. The painting started as a just for fun design like the ones you can find in my concept art gallery. I created a nice flyer and wanted to have a cool background for it. I started and… got into a flow. I really liked what was happening on my screen. The rough shapes becoming more and more detailed. Ending up in being a painting that shows a truly amazing environment. Sometimes you are surprised by yourself when you see the end product of a project. That’s the case here. Really like the result of this project. The rough look really adds to it as well. Working with custom brushes can really boost imagination. This painting was done in a very good time. I needed a good week to get it done. That’s pretty fast for me.

A work in progress picture can be found here.

The actual flyer design can be found here.

Enjoy this new world and the wallpapers!

5000px wide – 1 week – photoshop

Regards

Comcept 7

This comcept piece took me a while to finish. Even if i wanted to keep it loose in style i also wanted to maintain a somewhat, more or less, clean look. I tried lots of lighting things and composition wise i think it really stands out and it all comes together very well i think. At least that’s what my eye tells me. It’s one of these pics where immediately stories begin to spawn in my head. “What’s happening there? What’s the guy waiting for? Is he coming or going… and why?!” Etc etc. =) I like this kind of pic. Hope you too.

4500px wide – 20 hrs – vue – photoshop

Regards

MISTRAL COAST

This project started as a commission and ended as a personal project. I had some wonderful photo plates i started to fiddle around with. Then the client jumped off and i continued on it myself. No big story behind it actually. Just another scene that i would love to witness with my own eyes… ‘for real’ so to say. I have had this ‘big alien monolith’ kind of theme in previous paintings too… and i guess it follows me. Let’s just say we colonize other planets and happen to find these huge structures. Scientists are trying to analyze them. Soon they find out that they’re some alien relic. They emit some sort of energy to the planet atmosphere. But what exactly is happening? It could end in a surprise…

Maybe a bit inspired by the mass effect game again. But it was more the opening sequence of wing commander III. There was this huge spaceship crashed into the sea and the name of the place was ‘mistral’. I always liked that name and the idea of a beach scene on another planet.

Technically i worked with digital matte painting techniques to get it done. I wanted to have a photoreal look for it. I did not do a photoreal painting in a while… so i wanted to have something done again. Stocks used for the beach, own photo material used for other elements. The monoliths and some vegetation done with vue. All combined in photoshop. I took myself some with this one so the work took place over a period of two months. Maybe 40hrs of work in it.

intuos3 – 40hrs – 5800px wide – photoshop – vue

Print Detail // Progress Viz

Regards