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

SOJOURN OF FAITH

This is the basic cover art i created for the deus sceptrum ‘sojourn of faith’ album, which will be available soon. Target of this commission was it to create a kind of emotional lonely feeling even in a city where you’re probably surrounded by living things. Dark and depressing. Main character in this scene is the bridge that builds the key between our lonely person and the city. I guess we would love to know what the person is thinking. Even i don’t know.

Technically it’s photoshop all the way through. Photo plates, painting and manipulation.

Big thanks to Julia for playing the model ;p and to Nuremberg and Frankfurt. Awesome cities. Also thanks to Daniel from Deus Sceptrum.

Check out the bands new site: http://www.deussceptrum.com

Check out what they’re working on: here



copyrighted material by
www.deussceptrum.com & www.tigaer-design.com

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

HELL

This basically is a side project to a bigger picture i’m working on. Maybe a quarter of the left side of the full picture. I cropped the area off the big pic and thought the composition and atmosphere looked great. This had to be a pic on its own. This pic gives you a glimpse of how detailed the complete one will be in the end. I still have to do a lot of work on it so it will not be out any time soon. Also have to finish other things off within the next weeks.

The pic was done with matte painting techniques… but i decided to give it a painterly look in the end. So it’s far away from being photorealistic. Rendered in vue desprit and detailed in photoshop.

Wallpapers will be available as soon as the full image was completed. It’ll be quite a nice cityscape with some sweet atmospheric lighting going on. Stay tuned!

Original Specs:

3400px high – 10hrs ps work – intuos3 – vue – photoshop

Regards

Citizen Erazed

“It’s rotten, it stinks and there definitely happened something bad!”. That would be the best description of what we see here in this concept painting. A commissioned concept piece where i had to create a ruined destroyed cityscape. The pic will also be used in an animation. The pic itself again is something i always wanted to do. A nice addition to my portfolio.

Thx Michal.

15hrs – photoshop – vue – intuos 3

Check here for an 2.5d matte painting animation of the pic.

25hrs – after effects – photoshop

Regards

The Legacy

My first painting in 2008. After a few more quiet settings in my paintings I had to create an ‘action’ piece for my portfolio. A painting which contains some eyecatching elements. Generally I would say this painting was not a planned one. It evolved while I played with it. The longer I worked on it the more detail I explored within the picture. I constantly got ideas on how to make it even more interesting. I guess you could interpret this painting as a recapitulation of my last years experience, just in case you want to have an explanation of a deeper meaning in this painting. In the end, once again, I worked too long on it. But the overall result is satisfying. It’s a nice addition to my collection… and very different to my usual works so far.

Technique wise I worked with a matte painting mixture again. I would settle the pic more into’paintings’ though. It is worked out very rough since I wanted a concept art like look. The new thing I tried in this painting was to use filters. A lot of filters. Mainly to create a certain kind of look for the brush strokes and other elements like textures. I still have to work on that technique and I think it will help me with a few things in the future. To add interesting foliage i used vuedesprit to create some stand ins.

30hrs – photoshop – vue – intuos 3 – 5200px wide

This wp pack contains 2 wp versions in different sizes:

1600×1200 – 1280×1024 – 1024×768 – 800×600 – ca 4mb

Detail shots to see the influence of the filters i used: link

Wallpapers can be found here.

Regards

Northern Oak, a band based in Sheffield, UK, hired me to create a cover for their upcoming album. 3 weeks ago i completed work on it and finally found some time to add the cover to the site here. I’m pretty proud of the outcome. It’s not what i had in mind when i started the project but nonetheless the result really satisfies me, as well as the band. Check out their myspace site for more info about the band and their music. It was a pleasure to work with you guys. Good luck with the music!

Regards

D³SCR!PTION

This actually started as a pure just for fun project. I really needed something to do for my head since the recent time was a plain pain in the ass for me. That kind of explains the dark title. This picture helped me a bit. I found that castle/fortress stock on deviantart.com and asked the owner for permission to use it.

I got permission to use the following stocks:

The-Gothic-Door

The-Arches-6

The-Postern-Tower

Thanks to causticstock.deviantart.com

So I accidently found that tower photo and started to play with it. Check some rough first steps here – somehow I got a drive for that pic and continued working on it. I did not go for my typical accurate way to work here. I wanted to keep it rough and sketchy. I made the pic for the atmosphere… not for the details.

When I came close to completion a friend mentioned “why not trying a night version”… I picked up the idea and worked out a second, slightly different, night version. The title here was chosen to help the viewer getting the right impression when looking at the pic. It’s night, dark, gloomy… you definitely don’t want to be outside at that god forsaken time. Then the cliché hits you with that howling wolf element. I think that brings together everything I intended for that night version.

TECHN!CAL DETA!LS

Technically there is not much to say here. I found a photo which seduced me to work something out with it. Like I mentioned earlier, I have a very kind of sketchy look going on in this painting. I made this painting not wasting too much time on details. I wanted to create a certain atmosphere with colors, shadows and lighting. So the pic is, of course, far away from photorealistic. Even if I used photo elements to work with.

When I was done with the pic I decided to create different color versions of it. I was not sure how I wanted to have the painting look in the end. I think I decided myself for that golden shine one because I don’t have anything similar in my gallery yet… and the colors generally fit, the idea I had in mind, most.

30hrs – intuos3 – photoshop – 5000px wide – 200dpi

Wallpapers can be found in the gallery.

See here for various concept stages.

Regards

D³SCR!PTION

Long way home is a picture that truly deserves its title. For several reasons. One of the main reasons is the way i started to work on this monster. I got a picture/photo plate from detail24 since we both decided to do some collab thing for a dmchat mixed media challenge on deviantart.com. I asked for something with water. I got something with water. Not exactly what i expected to be honest. (check plate here: plate) The pic, nonetheless, was/is useful. I started to doodle around but only crap came up. I needed/wanted a waterfall in it – that was the deal. I left the project for a few days and restarted. I soon found out that i approached my idea from the wrong side. As soon as i had the right path for my idea i started to play around with my resources.

I’m not doing a lot of concept work when i work on my paintings… i’m just working them out. And while i work on them… it is like i’m discovering a completely new world. Every new detail i add… adds more life to the world i’m exploring. I guess that’s why i invest so much work and time into my ideas. I want these worlds to be tangible. May sound weird but that’s it.

Recently i really enjoy it to stretch my paintings over both of my screens to see them in full beauty. And it opens my heart. It truly looks like a window to a different world.

TECHN!CAL DETA!LS

Digital matte painting for the win. Once again. Did i mention that i love it? I started with rough work to get myself an idea about the picture setup. The first thing i blocked in was the waterfall. The second part were the mountains. Then the detail work started. Layer for layer i added details, highlights, shadows, foliage to the picture. Made the different photo implementations match the lighting i needed. Added the planets and played heavily with the colors. The planets were an issue that one day. Check the concept stages link below… you’ll see what i mean. First the planets make this pic really look otherworldly/off earth. They add so much wonderful depth.

Damn, how crazy beautiful must a sunrise look there? =)

I even got the suggestion to add water to the bottom of the waterfalls. I tried the idea but it did not work out as expected. It took off a lot of the mysterious look. So i kept the depths in there since it kept alive the feeling of the unknown… “where are the falls leading to…?” – “what’s down there…?” – you know what i mean.

In the end… it really was a challange for me to create something magic off that photo. But i did it. Mission Accomplished.

25hrs – intuos3 – photoshop – 5300px wide – 240dpi

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Wallpapers can be found in the gallery.
See here for Print Detail.
See here for various concept stages.
See here for plate i started plate with.
Special Widescreen 1680 Wp.

VISIT HIM – detail24 – be careful, he bites – but has some tasty photography!

Regards

D³SCR!PTION

Imagine a distant planet or parallel world where there is only forests, mountains and exotic animals. And all life springs off mysterious mile high mountains that can bind the energy of the planets inner forces to create an ecology that is unique throughout the whole known universe.

TECHN!CAL DETA!LS

Here we have another digital matte painting. This time i worked a lot with photos and less with 3d or painting. It was quite a task to get all the photos look right with the lighting etc. I don’t think i succeeded 100%. Nonetheless it’s, for me, a quite nice result. Something different for my gallery.

35hrs – intuos3 – photoshop – 5500px wide – 300dpi

Wallpapers can be found in the gallery.

Special Widescreen 1680 Wp.

See here for Print Detail.

See here for various concept stages.

See here for plate i started plate with.

Regards

D³SCR!PTION

This one was actually planned to be a collab piece. Unfortunately nothing happened. Even with the lost collab i thought it could become a cool piece if i would finish it up alone. So i did. There is no big story behind it. I just thought i would play a bit with composition and lighting.

TECHN!CAL DETA!LS

As you can see it is a not too detailed painting. In terms of photorealism. Most of you know that i never seriously try to work photorealistic. With this pic my only goal was to create a good composition and a striking lighting. I maintained a concept art like look since i was thinking that it could help the overall atmosphere to come together.

30hrs – intuos3 – photoshop – 6000px wide – 300dpi

Wallpapers can be found in the gallery.

A special 1680×1080 wallpaper version.

Regards