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

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

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

From time to time i’m trying myself in more abstract Photography. This picture here is the result of one of such tries. It has a very industrial feel and look to it, which i, for a long time, wasn’t sure about. Now i rediscovered the pic and decided to give it some exposure.

Regards

Comcept 10 – Hunting Party

This is the last painting for this year 2008. I have had a productive year and, like the years before, i learned a lot! The painting itself evolved from a test render i did months ago. I started to fiddle around with some brush strokes and soon got some nice shapes going on. I also started to design some flyers for the scene to add an action element to it. Worked out very well. In the end it is a nice addition to the comcept series… and a nice conclusion for 2008.

Enjoy this new world and the wallpapers!

3500px wide – 1 week – photoshop

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – Drawcrowd – CGSociety

Regards

BURNING SKIES

A painting commission i recently got finished. As you can see it’s definitely settled in the fantasy regions of literature. And the painting, obviously, is a book cover for a fantasy novel. For this project i started with a 3d concept of the landscape, made with vue. I tried to match the ideas i got told and over the time i matched the idea nicely. Then i rendered the scene and started to add my postwork to it. Main goal was it to let it appear very moody and almost ghostly. Not a place where you would want to stay at night. Once the landscape was done i concentrated on the tower. Created the base of that in 3d again and integrated the tower into the mountains. All the postwork was done in photoshop. This commission was fun to do and relatively quickly done. I like it when that happens.

This pic is copyrighted by Chris Belbin and Tigaer-Design.com. Like all the other images on this site, this image may not be reproduced or used without permission!

Regards

SOJOURN OF FAITH

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.

Check out the bands new site: http://www.deussceptrum.com

Check out what they’re working on: here



copyrighted material by
www.deussceptrum.com & www.tigaer-design.com

Regards

D³SCR!PTION

Imagine a distant planet or parallel world where there is only forests, mountains and exotic animals. And all life springs off mysterious mile high mountains that can bind the energy of the planets inner forces to create an ecology that is unique throughout the whole known universe.

TECHN!CAL DETA!LS

Here we have another digital matte painting. This time i worked a lot with photos and less with 3d or painting. It was quite a task to get all the photos look right with the lighting etc. I don’t think i succeeded 100%. Nonetheless it’s, for me, a quite nice result. Something different for my gallery.

35hrs – intuos3 – photoshop – 5500px wide – 300dpi

Wallpapers can be found in the gallery.

Special Widescreen 1680 Wp.

See here for Print Detail.

See here for various concept stages.

See here for plate i started plate with.

Regards