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

New Los Angeles 3019

Looking through my artwork collection you might have guessed that I am a Blade Runner fan. Like pretty much everyone working in my field, it’s almost a given. A very influential film on so many levels. I started this project over a year ago and just wanted to have some fun with it. Exploring some composition ideas. The ‘just for fun’ aspect comes also into play with where I decided to set the world in. 1000 years after the original Blade Runner on a different planet with a city kind of (but not really) similar to what we know from the film. Naturally I took me some liberties with the design and look but hope to have captured that dystopian feel at least.

Plate created and laid out in Vue. I started out with a much smaller scale for the project but decided to go for a bigger render when I found that the scene has some potential. Also originally didn’t have the bridges between the towers. When playing around I kind of liked the idea and kept them in. Rendered with multipass for best flexibility in the Photoshop post work stage. There I overpainted quite some elements, added lights and detail to make the city feel alive. Last but not least I used Lightroom to push the atmosphere and feel a little more.

6000px wide, Vue, C4D, Photoshop, Lightroom

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Behance – CGSociety

Regards

Comcept 23 – Let’s Take The Boat Out

I started this one quite a while ago. Early 2015 I think. I kept it laying around not really sure what to do with it. AURORA – a collaborational effort of both artgroups The Luminarium & The Cosmosys Collective to do a crossover exhibit, made me go back to it and add some final touches. I’m glad it got accepted into the exhibit and sits along some fantastic work by artists from around the world.

I don’t even remember anymore what exactly sparked the inspiration for this one. Well, it’s part of my Comcept series, so it wasn’t supposed to be a super refined piece and more something quick. No matter my intentions it (of course) turned out more detailed than planned though. I guess my love for exploring futuristic cities surely plays into it. Composition wise this piece is all over the place. Surely not perfect but somehow it doesn’t work too bad. At least in my eyes. =) The clear and obvious focus is the ship that blocks the sun, in the middle of the scene. I’m a little proud of the design of that little guy. The background shows a very industrial style city with a port facility built into the gigantic wall on the right. That one giant ship back there is in the process of docking. Huge holographic guides lead the ship into position to complete the procedure. And that was part of the original inspiration if I recall correctly. Really enjoy how that part turned out.

The scene itself is based on some rougher concepts I did earlier. 3 scenes showing places on a planet called Linestra. So here we have, a more detailed, fourth scene. Also on Linestra.

Technically it’s business as usual. The scene was composed and rendered in Vue. Various additional modelling happened in C4D. Beside own models I used some material from DAZ. Photoshop was used to bring multiple render passes together and add visual effects, overpaint and fix elements of the scene. Lightroom was used to push colours and atmosphere.

5000px wide, Vue, C4D, Photoshop

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Welcome Home

“Finally! I see them waiting for me! Can this shuttle go faster please?”

Of this second part of my Endeavours series I may like this one the most. It’s probably also the one I invested the most time into. I played around with a couple of ideas and elements within the pic. I wanted it to be moody and needed the lighting to be right. Something ‘golden hour’ like. I added a ton of lightsources to get a satisfying feel for the overall scene. Hence the render times went up a bit once it came to redering the final plate. It also marks some sort of a turning point in the little story. We’re finally where our protagonist wanted to go and we meet his little family. This pic was also the one that gave the initial idea spark for the Towers on this planet. And yeah, I didn’t necessarily do the images in order. A lot of jumping back and forth between them kept the creative juices flowing and also produced some neat last minute ideas.

As usual I used Vue to set up the scene. The characters were done with DAZ3d. The house I created from scratch in C4d. The renders didn’t come out ultra clean so I did go in an fix quite some stuff in Photoshop. There I also enhanced the lighting and atmosphere. I ended up using some photo plates and painting here and there to add/suggest additional detail in the landscape. Final mood tuning happened in Lightroom.

6000×2739 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

ENDEAVOURS Part Twelve

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – I Shall Pass

“Almost there! Like giants protecting a treasure. My wife told me that every tower comes with a different pattern. They suspect that these patterns can even change, which must be quite a sight! I just spoke to her and she suggested not to forget to breathe when seeing the towers up close! A sight to behold. The shuttle needs at least 5 more minutes. Very long 5 minutes. Almost home!”

Now this one is a little special as it wasn’t part of the original second leg of artworks for the series and slipped in while I worked on something else and got inspired. I loved the look and scale and definitely wanted to add it to the series as an complementary piece. To show the towers a little more. I was creating a preview piece for my 8k heighfield terrain freebie when inspiration hit me. I liked how the lighting of the scene complimented the detail of the terrain and started playing around by adding the towers. A small stream of light suggests our small little planetary transport pod, zipping through the air. I really wanted to show the dimensions here and the scale works great. I’m also happy how uncomplicated (compared to my other stuff) the scene comes across.

Created, as usual, with Vue, to create a base to work from in Photoshop. I used my freebie The Ghost terrain and its materials and masks to create the landscape. Layout of the scene was done fairly quickly. Invested some detail work here and there nonetheless. In Photoshop I fixed some parts of the render, added some textures and atmospheric effects.

6000×2739 – Vue – World Machine – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Port Fenster

“This trip felt like it took 6 years or an eternity! Finally approaching Port Fenster and the town of Valley Call. Imagined it bigger. From what I can see this environment looks very close to what I know from old pictures of the old Earth – except the towers. Look at these towers! They’re gigantic!”

For the most part of our journey we’ve been either in up the air or in space. It’s time to get back to the ground! Here we see our ship in its last appearance during a landing procedure. We see a small town here, which could best be described as a colony. It’s safe to assume that this place is destined to grow quite a bit in the years to come. Therefore I aimed for an established look and not something too fresh. It’s also not the only place we left our mark on here on this planet. There are small settlements all over the place. But this little town is one of the main places, managing the colonization process and all that comes with it. Although not everyone is allowed to just apply for a home there. This planet demands a more selective process. At least for now.

For the scene I used Vue and some assets I bought via DAZ. I modified these assets so they helped me building this little town. It works good enough but I’m not super entirely happy with it. Which goes in line with the more experimental approach of the pieces in this series. Some things work better than others. =) The mountains/landscape was created via World Machine. “This alien planet looks kinda like Earth!”, you say? Yes, it does… there’s a reason for it I hope to explain in an upcoming series of images. For the foreground I used some HQ trees made by Aron Kamolz. Thanks buddy! =)

4500×2054 – Vue – World Machine – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Towers Of Entropy

“We started the descend and entered the outer atmosphere. I remember from history class how the first ‘Astronauts’ always had a pretty rough ride through the atmosphere, down to the good old Earth. Now it’s a smooth transition. We still have to fasten our seatbelts though. Must be a traditional thing. And there they are, the mysterious Towers of Entropy. Can’t wait to learn more about them!”

For this one I decided to go for a more loose style. Main objective was to visualize the ship approaching the lower parts of the atmosphere of this planet. As well as showing the celestial environment with the planets. It may be a little cliche but I wanted our planet/destination to not just be a random planet. Since I plan to continue this series at some point. So I decided to add these towers. At this point we know nothing about them and I haven’t even mentioned them in the previous parts. So I hope to spawn some more interest by the sudden reveal of this element. Even though I’m not entirely sure where I want to go with them yet, I plan to investigate them at some point for sure.

Technically it’s a very basic scene. In Vue I rendered a plate for the landscape and an additional plate for the clouds. I tried working without clouds but the pic felt off. With the added cloud elements it came together much better. Especially the scale started to look more impressive. Photo textures and painting enhanced the scene. In Lightroom I found a nice colour landscape to go with as well as adding a grain effect which I really liked for this one.

4000×2163 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Anticipation

“There was nothing but darkness! I heard stories of ships that never made the passage complete. Poor souls. The captain just did let us know the passage went fine and we are about to enter the atmosphere. I always wondered why the passage costs the traveler a week though. It felt like just a second. However, the passangers started cheering and clapping. Guess I wasn’t the only one wetting his pants.”

For this one I was playing around a little more than usual. There are a couple of ways to read this image. At least to me. This wasn’t planned though. First after I got done with most of the work for it, I recognized that there is probably more going on than I thought. However, the main goal was to find a way to illustrate how that ship we’re following since the beginning of the series, drops out or exits the jump gate. I played with a couple of ideas and ended up with what we can see now. The slight blue glow on the bottom was added to suggest that we are about to enter the atmosphere of the planet that will lead us to the finish line of this part of the series.

Technically it’s again business as usual with using Vue to layout and render the scene. Photoshop to bring together the rendered material and detailing elements. Lightroom helped me find a nice colour composition since, in all honesty, the plain Photoshop result looked kind of boring. So I went through Lightroom twice until I got the colours I was happy with.

8000×5333 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate 1
Plate 2
Print Detail

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – A Promise In Light

“Oh wow, I guess this city is a big one! And there is the gate to a new life. I have never done a trip through one of those. Even thinking about the science and xeno-technology that goes into it makes me feel dizzy. See you on the other side!”

When starting this series in 2011 I definitely wanted to show a megacity from farther away (an almost orbital level). Unfortunately my PC power wasn’t strong enough to really do it back then without having it super complicated in the post work stage. What I did instead was my ‘Leaving The Fields Of Steel‘ piece. Which comes close to the original idea I had in mind. And also worked better with the first part of the series showing the progression of the transition from surface level to space.

Now, with a little more power under the hood, I had the opportunity to move farther away and play more with the city and the scale a bit. The ship is about to enter a portal or jump gate. The technology for this isn’t necessarily ours. In this world we discovered an ancient old alien technology and decrypted/reverse engineered it enough to make use of it to a certain extent. Old idea, I know. =) I don’t want to define what year all this plays in but what I can say is that the alien technology is in our arsenal for quite a while now. But by no means do we fully understand it.

The challenge here was to find a good camera angle and some nice landscape shapes that compliment city details. I admit that the overall composition isn’t exactly amazing and the city is pretty far away. My main goal of suggesting a nice sense of scale works good enough for me though. So I am rather happy with the outcome since I did not want to repeat what I already did with ‘Leaving The Fields Of Steel’.

I started developing the scene by opening the Vue scene file of the ‘Leaving The Fields Of Steel’ piece in Vue. I made a bunch of copies of the city and refined parts of it by placing several buildings in different parts of the city. To make it look not too uniform. But before I fully tackled the city I created an infinite terrain (which I haven’t used much yet) for the landscape and looked for a sweet spot to place my city on. I definitely wanted it to sit on a coast. Found a good spot and moved around the city parts. After rendering the scene I did some extensive work on adding life to the city by adding lights. Also added the clouds, which makes the scene look much more natural. I originally tried it without clouds. Just didn’t look right. The jumpgate was done with kitbashing a number of models I already had. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out at well.

6000×2888 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate
Print Detail

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Forget The Way We Lived

“It’s finally happening. Barely sleeped last night. Boarded the ship that will take me to my loved ones. My new home. Can’t wait to get there. Can’t wait to welcome that new life. The view from up here is stunning. It really gives perspective. I wonder, will I miss this place?”

In 2011 I started an open ended series of pieces, trying to tell a (even though really basic) open ended story. These were done for The Luminarium. The artgroup had picked a topic for their 15th release which was titled ‘Sequential‘. So I tried myself in creating pictures that could also be comic panels. Now we have 2017 and I finished the second part. Again I used this project to play around and try a couple of new things. Some more, some less successful.

So I took off where I left so many years ago by opening up the scene file I kept of the space station. As usual I used a Vue render as a plate and took it into Photoshop. There I added textures and played around with it quite a bit. I did not work super pixel perfect and wanted to keep it a little rough. I wasn’t happy with it for a long time. I originally approached it by going with a widescreen/cinematic format. Whatever I tried, nothing convinced me. Since the point of this whole series is to play around and try new things, I tried rotating the image. Suddenly it worked for me. I understand that it’s probably a taste thing and the overall composition is very unconventional. But rotating it 90° counter clockwise was the solution I needed. Last but not least I moved the picture into Lightroom and fiddled with the colours. Ended up with a high saturated mix that really worked for me. So in the end the piece does have a rather unusual format and I thought about cutting parts on the bottom, but ultimately decided against it.

Hope you enjoy the view too. Let’s see where it leads us!

4500×2054 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

Plate 1
Plate 2

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

The Invitation Pt.1

The first one for 2017 is an experiment from early last year and something quite different from my usual stuff. Normally I focus on the environments and add characters to make these environments feel alive. So they are usually just an addon. With this one I wanted to focus on a character instead of the environment. Without making the environment too boring though. I must also admit that I did not sculpt the lady by hand. I used DAZStudio for it. So I definitely admire people who can do that stuff from scratch. However, I did not use a DAZ pose or character preset! There went a lot of work into posing and the proportions of that lady. Tons of testrenders for lighting setup and material checking. A lot of detail work that went into this lady. I wanted this to by sexy, treating the pic like a fine art nude photo shoot of sorts. Everything as tasteful as possible, without it to appear too ‘revealing’. Hope I got that part right.

Technically the figure and its pose was done in DAZ Studio and then exported for use in Vue. There I did some heavy material tweaking and tried to get the light right. The render happened in 9000×6000 and even if it is a quite simple scene, there went some extra time into the Photoshop process. Mainly to fix things and to overpaint small areas. I also rendered multiple passes of the scene and even worked with an HDR pass. The latter helped to get the skin tones right. In the last stage of creating this one, Lightroom helped me to get the colour I had in mind right.

This pic is the first one in a three part series. And, probably the best one. But that is a definite taste thing. :D

9000×6000 – Vue – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – Lightroom

Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety

Regards