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.
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. :)
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!
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.
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!
This project started as a commission and ended as a personal project. I had some wonderful photo plates i started to fiddle around with. Then the client jumped off and i continued on it myself. No big story behind it actually. Just another scene that i would love to witness with my own eyes… ‘for real’ so to say. I have had this ‘big alien monolith’ kind of theme in previous paintings too… and i guess it follows me. Let’s just say we colonize other planets and happen to find these huge structures. Scientists are trying to analyze them. Soon they find out that they’re some alien relic. They emit some sort of energy to the planet atmosphere. But what exactly is happening? It could end in a surprise…
Maybe a bit inspired by the mass effect game again. But it was more the opening sequence of wing commander III. There was this huge spaceship crashed into the sea and the name of the place was ‘mistral’. I always liked that name and the idea of a beach scene on another planet.
Technically i worked with digital matte painting techniques to get it done. I wanted to have a photoreal look for it. I did not do a photoreal painting in a while… so i wanted to have something done again. Stocks used for the beach, own photo material used for other elements. The monoliths and some vegetation done with vue. All combined in photoshop. I took myself some with this one so the work took place over a period of two months. Maybe 40hrs of work in it.
Stormhaven was in, kind of, production for surely 2 months now. Every now and then i did a bit on it. Tried tons of things. Not everything worked out as expected. Nonetheless i hope the long time did not hurt the overall impression of the image. At first i made the environment fit together with a nice lighting. Rather in the end i added this city like element which is kind of a haven for all kinds of flying vehicles. It’s clearly fantasy and i like the wideness of it. Pure photoshop work this time. No help of 3d elements.
Alright! Here we are. This is the largest project i did for quite a while. A lot of experimenting went into this monster. Trial and error… as usual. The scene shows quite an epic futuristic cityscape. Actually no too big story behind it. Just the imagination of mine that always wants to see such big and amazing vistas. ‘City of lights‘, an earlier project of mine, was a first try at such scenes. The light scheme is almost the same too. Just love this lighting setup.
I started this project in c4d and used some basic models for futuristic looking buildings and modified them. Then i moved the objects into vue and arranged the scene. Quite some work went into the setup there, where to place what, and so on. Also, a very important thing, was the lighting of the scene. As usual i did go for the drama… a backlit situation with some cool contrast going on. I don’t even know anymore how long it took too render. Something like 15hrs to render the base picture. Rendered several times until i got it right. In photoshop i added the lights, windows and atmosphere. And i tell you people… i’m done with lights and windows for now. You can be assured that 85% of the lights in there… are placed and revised by hand. A lot of precision work went into that stage. Also altered the buildings with details to make them look not too uniform. Long story short a lot of work went into this. Basically worked on it since february. With longer breaks though.
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 is the basic cover art i created for the deus sceptrum ‘sojourn of faith’ album, which will be available soon. Target of this commission was it to create a kind of emotional lonely feeling even in a city where you’re probably surrounded by living things. Dark and depressing. Main character in this scene is the bridge that builds the key between our lonely person and the city. I guess we would love to know what the person is thinking. Even i don’t know.
Technically it’s photoshop all the way through. Photo plates, painting and manipulation.
Big thanks to Julia for playing the model ;p and to Nuremberg and Frankfurt. Awesome cities. Also thanks to Daniel from Deus Sceptrum.
This basically is a side project to a bigger picture i’m working on. Maybe a quarter of the left side of the full picture. I cropped the area off the big pic and thought the composition and atmosphere looked great. This had to be a pic on its own. This pic gives you a glimpse of how detailed the complete one will be in the end. I still have to do a lot of work on it so it will not be out any time soon. Also have to finish other things off within the next weeks.
The pic was done with matte painting techniques… but i decided to give it a painterly look in the end. So it’s far away from being photorealistic. Rendered in vue desprit and detailed in photoshop.
Wallpapers will be available as soon as the full image was completed. It’ll be quite a nice cityscape with some sweet atmospheric lighting going on. Stay tuned!
Original Specs:
3400px high – 10hrs ps work – intuos3 – vue – photoshop
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