Digital Art, Paintings, Fractal and 3d work created by Christian Tigaer Hecker. News about the artist and Interviews with Artists like Dylan Cole, Gary Tonge and Syd Mead.
This is the result of a workshop i wrote for the german ‘DigitalPHOTO Photoshop’ magazine, issue 02/10. The goal was to create a Digital Matte Painting and to explain the various steps that lead to the final product. For the picture i had a really nice plate from a good friend, Kai Bellmann, who recently visited Vietnam. He captured that nice street view and i really wanted to do something with it. Luckily the magazine came knocking on my door and i had the perfect opportunity to create something. Everything done with Photoshop. No Vue this time. I dig the result and it was something different from the things i usually do. I should do more into that direction.
For all german visitors… the magazine is now available and also includes a character painting workshop from my buddy Gary Tonge. A side by side workshop with Gary… never thought that could happen. :)
This one resulted from a commission that did not work out as expected. I didn’t want to scrap the picture i did and wanted to use it for a personal project. I decided to create a panorama from it. Which wasn’t an easy task since the original format was portrait, intended for a book.
Technically i took the vue base file and heavily extended it to the left. The Vue file had a few hundred mb in the end. I also did tons of testrenders for it. Even full size and full quality. So there are surely 40hrs work in the setup of the scene alone. 8hrs actual work and the rest render time. 8000px wide can take a while to finish.
Then, of course, i took it into Photoshop. It was never an intention to work photorealistic. So what i did was to get me textures and slam them across the picture. That’s the fun part. the work part was it then to manipulate and adjust these textures to make them fit. Vue’s multipass rendering also allowed me to add new elements to the pic. Even if i already was completely in the Photoshopping stage. Quite some elements on the left side of the pic got added rather late in the making process. Again a lot of work that i had to do because i wasn’t entirely happy with certain parts. And there goes the time.
8700px wide – Photoshop – Vue – intuos3
That said… i hope you guys enjoy the Wallpaper Pack. 5 different versions of the scene in 1680×1050. Have fun with it!
WALLPAPER PACK
Windows 7 ‘2510’ Theme Pack -> Here – Just download and doubleclick to install – if you have any additional questions… just let me know! It’s the first time i try this.
All pictures in this Theme Pack are copyrighted by tigaer-design.com and may not used or reproduced without permission. Thank you very much.
And again it’s been a while with concept art gallery additions. This time i added 7 new pics. Ships, stations, scenes and speeders. I’m also thinking about redoing this gallery. It looks a bit clunky right now. On the other hand i don’t have too much time recently. We’ll see! :) For now i hope you can find some more inspiration in that gallery.
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.
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.
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. :)
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!
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.
Thought it’s about time for a little photo update. Haven’t had one in ages and i still got tons of things in my archive. It’s hard to sort out which ones are really worth some exposure. But here we have a few selected pics. The Captured Beauy additions have some wallpapers too. Have fun!
A book cover commission i recently finished. The project was a slow burn. But as soon as we figured out what exactly we wanted and how i could realize the idea… everything went fine. I have had a very hard time with the characters, since i’m not a character designer at all. The base, as you might be able to see, was 3d. Then i moved into photoshop and refined all the details and the lighting. I really dig the architecture i came up with. All in all i’m very happy with the outcome. Thanks a lot to ciprian dobra at editura alexandria. He was very helpful regarding the background information of the book. He knew exactly what he wanted, which made it a lot easier to get the project done.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie Settings & InfoACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. All submitted personal data (through email, comments or the contact form) will be treated confidential. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
