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

Shrine Of The Unknown Huntress

“Many tales, in all kinds of shapes, forms and variations, covered the deeds of this fine lady and ignited a revolutionary fire which the galaxy will tell tales that will echo through the ages – even in thousands of years.”

Cassandra’s Book, 3:29

Here we have something highly experimental (for me) again. Much like my “The Hidden” piece, this one was done with help of Mandelbulb3d. I found a neat scene whilep laying with it, rendered out several passes of it and did some Photoshop magic. I also used Vue to bring in these monumental statues. The look of it is really different compared to my usual stuff and I really enjoy how it turned out.

When working on this piece, I decided to make a loose series, that is based on my “The Unknown Huntress” artwork. What if the lady belongs to an ancient old collective or cult of warrior ladies that kind of work from the shadows and shape the civilizations of the universe. A variation on the Assassins Creed story of sorts and not superbly original, I admit. But more based in a fantasy related universe. I found it tempting and decided to go with it. =D The location we see in this pic definitely belongs to a Scifi setting. Something completely different from the first (The Unknown Huntress) picture. Maybe a gigantic temple, honoring highly decorated members of the past. A place for the members to visit and gather some spiritual energy for upcoming missions or events.

7000×2996 – Mandelbulb3d – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Mandelbulb Plate

Part of AURORA: AURORA Exhibit II

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Parsec City

Not too much to say about this one. Originally a commission, I did have some real fun with it. Earlier this year the rights fell back to me and so I decided to show it to the world! The pic is four years old and the cool thing is that it holds up. I still really enjoy this piece.

Vue – DAZStudio – Photoshop – Lightroom

Concepts

Atmosphere Study

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

The Hidden

The first one for 2018! This project was started in late 2017, when I decided to take a more concentrated look at a tool called ‘Mandelbulb 3d’. It’s a free, open source fractal generator. Over the past years I stumbled over a number of artists who work with it. May it be for purely fractal based images or using the fractals as plates for concept art. I’m a plate guy and love to work with them. And the possibilities of Mandelbulb 3d are sheer limitless. For more info about the tool just check the google machine or youtube. Fantastic stuff to find there!

So yes, this picture was an experiment. And for a first experiment I’m fairly happy with the result! Style wise I wanted to keep it rough and concept arty. What I found is that it’s quite the balance act to use the fine details the fractal render gives you. Sometimes the detail is almost too much. But yeah, I’m still learning the tool and already found ways to handle the fractal detail level.

I will definitely look more into it and see how I can incorporate it into future projects. I’m sure you can agree that it’s fantastic for some alien, weird looking landscapes!

4000×1708 – Mandelbulb3D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate 1
Plate 2

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Comcept 23 – Let’s Take The Boat Out

I started this one quite a while ago. Early 2015 I think. I kept it laying around not really sure what to do with it. AURORA – a collaborational effort of both artgroups The Luminarium & The Cosmosys Collective to do a crossover exhibit, made me go back to it and add some final touches. I’m glad it got accepted into the exhibit and sits along some fantastic work by artists from around the world.

I don’t even remember anymore what exactly sparked the inspiration for this one. Well, it’s part of my Comcept series, so it wasn’t supposed to be a super refined piece and more something quick. No matter my intentions it (of course) turned out more detailed than planned though. I guess my love for exploring futuristic cities surely plays into it. Composition wise this piece is all over the place. Surely not perfect but somehow it doesn’t work too bad. At least in my eyes. =) The clear and obvious focus is the ship that blocks the sun, in the middle of the scene. I’m a little proud of the design of that little guy. The background shows a very industrial style city with a port facility built into the gigantic wall on the right. That one giant ship back there is in the process of docking. Huge holographic guides lead the ship into position to complete the procedure. And that was part of the original inspiration if I recall correctly. Really enjoy how that part turned out.

The scene itself is based on some rougher concepts I did earlier. 3 scenes showing places on a planet called Linestra. So here we have, a more detailed, fourth scene. Also on Linestra.

Technically it’s business as usual. The scene was composed and rendered in Vue. Various additional modelling happened in C4D. Beside own models I used some material from DAZ. Photoshop was used to bring multiple render passes together and add visual effects, overpaint and fix elements of the scene. Lightroom was used to push colours and atmosphere.

5000px wide, Vue, C4D, Photoshop

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Welcome Home

“Finally! I see them waiting for me! Can this shuttle go faster please?”

Of this second part of my Endeavours series I may like this one the most. It’s probably also the one I invested the most time into. I played around with a couple of ideas and elements within the pic. I wanted it to be moody and needed the lighting to be right. Something ‘golden hour’ like. I added a ton of lightsources to get a satisfying feel for the overall scene. Hence the render times went up a bit once it came to redering the final plate. It also marks some sort of a turning point in the little story. We’re finally where our protagonist wanted to go and we meet his little family. This pic was also the one that gave the initial idea spark for the Towers on this planet. And yeah, I didn’t necessarily do the images in order. A lot of jumping back and forth between them kept the creative juices flowing and also produced some neat last minute ideas.

As usual I used Vue to set up the scene. The characters were done with DAZ3d. The house I created from scratch in C4d. The renders didn’t come out ultra clean so I did go in an fix quite some stuff in Photoshop. There I also enhanced the lighting and atmosphere. I ended up using some photo plates and painting here and there to add/suggest additional detail in the landscape. Final mood tuning happened in Lightroom.

6000×2739 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

ENDEAVOURS Part Twelve

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – I Shall Pass

“Almost there! Like giants protecting a treasure. My wife told me that every tower comes with a different pattern. They suspect that these patterns can even change, which must be quite a sight! I just spoke to her and she suggested not to forget to breathe when seeing the towers up close! A sight to behold. The shuttle needs at least 5 more minutes. Very long 5 minutes. Almost home!”

Now this one is a little special as it wasn’t part of the original second leg of artworks for the series and slipped in while I worked on something else and got inspired. I loved the look and scale and definitely wanted to add it to the series as an complementary piece. To show the towers a little more. I was creating a preview piece for my 8k heighfield terrain freebie when inspiration hit me. I liked how the lighting of the scene complimented the detail of the terrain and started playing around by adding the towers. A small stream of light suggests our small little planetary transport pod, zipping through the air. I really wanted to show the dimensions here and the scale works great. I’m also happy how uncomplicated (compared to my other stuff) the scene comes across.

Created, as usual, with Vue, to create a base to work from in Photoshop. I used my freebie The Ghost terrain and its materials and masks to create the landscape. Layout of the scene was done fairly quickly. Invested some detail work here and there nonetheless. In Photoshop I fixed some parts of the render, added some textures and atmospheric effects.

6000×2739 – Vue – World Machine – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

ENDEAVOURS Part Eleven

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Endeavours – Towers Of Entropy

“We started the descend and entered the outer atmosphere. I remember from history class how the first ‘Astronauts’ always had a pretty rough ride through the atmosphere, down to the good old Earth. Now it’s a smooth transition. We still have to fasten our seatbelts though. Must be a traditional thing. And there they are, the mysterious Towers of Entropy. Can’t wait to learn more about them!”

For this one I decided to go for a more loose style. Main objective was to visualize the ship approaching the lower parts of the atmosphere of this planet. As well as showing the celestial environment with the planets. It may be a little cliche but I wanted our planet/destination to not just be a random planet. Since I plan to continue this series at some point. So I decided to add these towers. At this point we know nothing about them and I haven’t even mentioned them in the previous parts. So I hope to spawn some more interest by the sudden reveal of this element. Even though I’m not entirely sure where I want to go with them yet, I plan to investigate them at some point for sure.

Technically it’s a very basic scene. In Vue I rendered a plate for the landscape and an additional plate for the clouds. I tried working without clouds but the pic felt off. With the added cloud elements it came together much better. Especially the scale started to look more impressive. Photo textures and painting enhanced the scene. In Lightroom I found a nice colour landscape to go with as well as adding a grain effect which I really liked for this one.

4000×2163 – Vue – C4D – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate

ENDEAVOURS Part One – Six

ENDEAVOURS Part Seven

ENDEAVOURS Part Eight

ENDEAVOURS Part Nine

ENDEAVOURS Part Ten

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Frontier

This time we have a collaboration piece between me and Alastair Temple. He’s a fellow artist from the Luminarium artgroup and mostly into Photography. Every now and then he’s going Scifi or Abstract. Here he combined his abstract technique with some neat scifi and asked me to add some additional magic as well. It mainly the space station. I also added some additional detail to the alien structures and worked on the composition a bit. In the end we both created individual versions of the scene.

I had my fun with this one and the weirdly shaped looking structures add a nice sense of mystery to the whole thing. What specifically these are you ask? I have no clue. I leave that to your imagination. :)

Mandelbulb – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – 4000×2000

Find Alastair’s version and a little background info on Behance
Find his Website here: http://www.alastairtemple.co.uk/

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety – Behance

Regards

Greenland II

Here we have just 4 fun piece. Just wanted to test some rock assets in a neat nature scene. While playing around it clicked with me and I had a really nice lighting setup. I wanted to use it and invested some extra time into the scene. Not too much though since I just wanted to play and test around for fun. =)

Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom – 5000×2812

Had my fun with this one and hope you enjoy the view. :)

Wireframe

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Gillian’s Place

I started this one a while ago, after I finished ready “Stranger In A Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein. Early in the story we are in an apartment where the floor is covered with a carpet of grass. I already had the idea before I read this book but the book helped me to flesh out the idea. So the inspiration for this scene came, in parts, from the book. There we also have this lady character Gillian who loved the grass carpet in the apartment of a friend and I wanted to give her her own apartment. =)

I used this project to dig a little deeper into 3d modeling and how I can use it for my ideas. I also tried myself on basic cloth simulation for the sheets. So ultimately there went quite some time into this scene because a lot of it went into experimenting. For the sculpture I also experimented with subsurface scattering to give it a quasi translucent look that captures the light. The modeling part happened in C4D and the scene setup in Vue. Photoshop brought it all together and I refined and fixed a lot of things I wasn’t too happy with in the renders.

6000×3000 – C4D – Vue – The Plant Factory – Photoshop – Lightroom

Had my fun with this one and hope you enjoy the view. :)

Wireframe 1
Plate 1
Plate 2
Plate 3
Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards