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

Time flies by! And it seems i say that every year. However… the time is right and i took myself some time to create a nifty calendar for YOUR 2010! Man. 2010 sounds like a Sci-fi movie doesn’t it? Very weird. Now this year the calendar contains completely new works from my 2009 collection. No recycling of older artworks. Even though i’m thinking some of you would have liked it to see some older works in it too. :) In retrospective i’m proud of my work this year. It’s some solid work and the presentation within the calendar looks cool too i think. So if you want to discover a new world every month or you want someone to discover these worlds with you… go ahead and check out the calendar. :) I’m sure it’s something for everyone! Discover…!

Regards

RED DAWN

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. :)

Hope you like it as much as i do!

5000px wide – photoshop – vue – intuos3

Plate can be found here.

Print detail can be found here (Large file).

Camera Mapping Animation here.

Regards

Comcept 13

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.

6hrs – Photoshop – Vue – Intuos 3

Regards

After some brief experience with the Advanced Photoshop Magazine in the past i now had the opportunity to write a tutorial for the UK Magazine’s issue #60. I picked my ‘Artificial’ artwork for this tutorial. That’s mainly because i made this picture without a tablet. Which means that theoretically everyone with a standard pc setup can create something like this. Another reason was that Terragen was a request for the tutorial. My artwork has a very unique approach to Terragen. To explain that to a wider range of people surely widens the horizon of possibilities. Even if i switched to Vue now it was fun to go back and revisit Terragen for that tutorial. Beside the Terragen part i’m explaining how i did the Photoshop work in this picture. Back then i worked a lot with blending modes. A lot of playing around what worked and what not. Now with a gfxtablet i more flexible when it comes to transparencies. But i still check out how blending modes can affect the look of a picture. Sometimes it gives some fascinating results or helps you out when you are creatively stuck at some point.

I also packed tons of material from the project on the DVD because i wasn’t able to go into too deep specifics within the tutorial! So if you don’t know further then check the PSD files. I’m sure they can be very helpful. There’s planets, textures and the whole artwork itself with all the layers. I’m sure it’s a fun peek into these files!

Advanced Photoshop Issue #60 is available now! Check it out!

There is also new painting new stuff ahead! That means some nifty wallpapers on the way! =)

Stay tuned! Thank you very much.

Regards

Comcept 12

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:

800×600 – 1024×768 – 1280×1024 – 1280×720 – 1680×1050 – 1920×1080 – 1920×1200

Regards

And again it’s been a while with concept art gallery additions. I took me some time to add a few new things to it. Transporters, fighters and a scene sketch. I should do more in that direction but time is a precious thing. Hope you get some inspiration there! Have fun.

Regards

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

THE GATES

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. :)

intuos3 – 8hrs – 3000px wide – photoshop – vue

Vue Plate

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety

Regards

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