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

GATES TO ELYSIUM

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.

Really hope you like what you see.

Intuos3 – Photoshop cs4 – Vue7 – 7hrs Preparation & Concept Phase – 40hrs Rendertime – 20hrs Postwork

Wallpaper Pack contains: 1920×1200 Concept Wallpaper – 1680×1050 & 1280×1024 GTE Wallpaper – Print Details

Print Detail
Progress Viz
Wireframe Bows
Wireframe Ring

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

THE EXPEDITION

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!

Hope you enjoy this world as much as i do!

intuos3 – 10hrs – 3500px wide – photoshop – vue

Vue Plate

Regards

CDS12032009 – Creation Process – High Quality – Here we go with a cityscape kind of thing. We use perspective lines that help us to keep everythng straight and somewhat realistic looking. At least in perspective. The painting, of course, is very loose. I also tried to get in some colors. I kinda like the result of this one! Hope you too. =)

Depending on how the juices flow it’s 30/60mins time in these designs.

Have Fun!

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

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

Last weekend i was in Austria, visiting a good friend. His family has a house on a mountain there and we took the chance to have some nice time there. I can say that i never saw as much snow as i did this year. The sight from up there was great. And i really really appreciate a nice landscape vista. The weather wasn’t perfect, except for one day. All of the panoramas were taken that one day. I took the chance and gathered some nice material for my painting archive. It was a lot of fun up there and i hope i’ll get the chance to get back there sooner than later. Thanks to my buddy for the invitation.

Bazora Nights – This is the sight we had a few meters further from our house. One night we risked a look and had this amazing vista in front of us. It was 2:00am and we decided to take this chance. We needed an hour before we got back to the house. It was worth it. Even if it was damn cold that night! This panorama consists of 10 separate shots. All taken with bulb settings and roughly 45 secs of exposure. Photoshop cs4 did a remarkable job stitching these together.

Bazora Days – Here we basically have the daylight sight of the night shot.

Muttersberg One – This was the perfect weather. The only day we had perfect conditions, we went to the ‘Muttersberg’. Surely not the highest mountain on the block, but nontheless a truly amazing sight. 15+ separate shots.

Muttersberg Two – The sun was already going down when i did this one. I really dig the atmospherics that are going on there. A vertical panorama with 5+ separate shots.

Muttersberg Three – Same position as the first two Muttersberg panoramas. Slightly different angle. I tried to capture as much of the sight as possible.

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