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

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Now it’s time to add a big one again. My recent Comcept 11 was a smaller piece and now i’m happy to add another big one to my gallery. I’m on a landscape trip these days. I guess i need a break from the Sci-Fi theme. Now on this project i learned a lot about Vue again. As always. This time i worked with own textures and checked out how terrains handle it, how i can effectively use this technique for my future projects. While, of course, there is Photoshop work in here… it definitely is less than usual. I had to overpaint a few areas that did not come out like expected. I also reworked the colors and atmosphere a bit… as well as changing the clouds. So in the end it’s 50/50 between pure Vue and postwork with Photoshop. While i was indeed targeting a more photorealistic look i couldn’t resist making the atmosphere a bit more vivid than it would actually be in a photo. Ultimetaly it adds a new combination of colors to my overall gallery and therefor also adds more flexibility.

No specific story behind that picture except the fact that i wanted to make it look earthly… yet… other worldy in its overall appearence. Hope i succeded! Hope you like it!

Photoshop – Vue – Intuos 3 – 4500px wide – 24hrs

Regards

COMCEPT 11

The first Comcept painting for this year i think. Yes, the series is not dead. It’s also the first bigger painting since my CGChoice Award win. Beside other projects i’m currently wrapping up it is, from time to time, fun to work on more loose paintings. Just smashing together some textures and see what comes out of it. Waiting for the lucky accident that makes you go ‘click’… and start to refine things a bit. That’s what i did here. No specific target in mind. Just had a nice Vue forest render and played around with it. Additionally i was playing around with how to effectively add a lens flare to suggest a more photo like look. Hope you like it!

Photoshop – Vue – Intuos 3 – 3000px wide – 8hrs

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

And another try with HDR and my macro series. This time i really dig the focus that came out rather cool here. Hope you dig it as much as i do!

Captured Beauty XLII

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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

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

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

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