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 picture is the perfect example of the famous ‘creative spark’. I never had the intention or plan to do a picture like this one. I never had a concept to this one in mind. I just sat down and worked it out. Everything fell to its place by accident when i was playing with the Vue 9 pre release version. Out of nowhere a creative flow started to happen.
It basically started with trying and playing with Vue again. Creating a nice mountain terrain and adding trees. Playing with atmosphere and lighting. This is actually how a lot of my personal projects come together and start out. Ultimately i had this nice mountain range, atmosphere and forest in front of me and thought… “yes… that’s it… go for it”. At this point no plans for a scifi setting. I also wanted a river in the scene. Some time went into the placing and adding and getting it right of the river part. Then the landscape part was done and i did a large multipass render of it. It took 18hrs to finish. That was early november i think. I really liked the result. The multipass also allowed me to extend the planning for the pic.
I thought around a while and found that some sort of scifi haven/port for ships would be a cool thing. So i added the towers. The original idea was to add one much closer to the camera on the left. But that did not work out well and completely ruined the composition for me. So i decided to move it farther back. That way the atosphere had much more space to unfold its nice detail and lighting. And the eye has a much more pleasant view on the overall scene. I decided to add more towers in the back to get some more depth into the scene. Not sure if that works 100%.
The Photoshop work, or ‘post work’, included refining of the atmosphere and bringing out details that i wanted to pop a bit more. Since a lot of elements, like the towers, were added in the process i had to do some extra integration work to make it all sit right in the image. I also added some atmospheric beams to bring out the atmosphere. I think that works nicely.
Not knowing what i was going to end up with was a nice thing. Even today i made last changes to the pic. Now every pic should have some sort of message huh? I guess what the pic is trying to say is that even highly developed races should be able to merge their structures into a foreign environment without disturbing it. Something ‘we’ are not able to do. The towers in the pic certainly have a very industrial look to them. Nonetheless they’re able to keep the environment untouched.
DeviantPrints has a limited time free worldwide economy shipping action until the 15th of december. Head over to my store and find some real hq prints of my work. May it be for yourself or a present for christmas! Digital Art, Photography, Abstract and Fractals… i’m sure there’s something for everyone’s taste. The free shipping is valid as soon as you spend $10 or more on a product. Quite a cool offer i wouldn’t miss! From my experience the shipping and print quality is pretty exceptional. Worth a look.
Now every artist who makes it into the book gets a free copy of the book. A very generous gesture since the quality we’re talking about is really really good. Superb print quality and you really know you have something worthful in your hands when you grab it. All the different categories in the book feature artists from around the world. With work that surely belongs to the best digital art you can get these days.
What if kinda sorta maybe Hadley’s Hope in ‘Aliens’ didn’t explode and developed its colony further? But yeah you could say I fell in love with the city I created in ‘Phoenix Rising‘. Since I have built me quite a nice plate in Vue, I had to take another visit. And it could become more in the future. I’m sure you don’t mind as long as some stunning vistas like this one are the result of these excursions. Again I’m wondering why I’m into such megacities. I’m very interested in technology, where it took us in the past and where it may take us in the future. Maybe that’s a reason.
When I started this one I didn’t have a real plan. I was just playing with atmospheres and clouds in Vue and found a nice point of view on the city part we see farther in the back of my ‘Phoenix Rising‘ picture. Started to add more details to that area and moved objects around to find a good composition. Lots of smaller testrenders happening in that stage. When I had arranged everything to a point of satisfaction I started play with the lighting. I really wanted to make it look somewhat photoreal without to lose the usual tension and contrast that I usually get into my pics. I eventually became undecided between a more natural lighted sunset with the light source behind the camera and a real devilish/hellish red backlit situation with the sun shining directly into the cam.
I stuck to the backlit setup because of the tension it created in the scene. Nonetheless I had a problem with visible detail. Since it all was pretty much in shadow. But I wanted lots of details visible! What I did was rendering both lighting situations i had in mind. The one with the sun behind the camera captured all the little details I wanted visible. I took that render pass and layered it above the backlit version and started work both together. That’s a technique I use whenever I want more detail in certain shadowy areas. Of course you can also use the multipass possibilities of Vue to fix those. It all depends on what you want to achieve.
In the end I managed to get a pretty decent result together that can walk hand in hand with my ‘Phoenix Rising’ project. It shows another side of that megacity. A bit darker and dense… almost like you could swim through the atmosphere. Another view I would die for to see for real.
DIGITALPhoto Photoshop hatte mich vor ein paar monaten eingeladen für die ausgabe 02/2010 einen Digital Matte Painting Workshop zu verfassen. Nun hatte ich die möglichkeit für ausgabe 05/2010 einen kleinen workshop zum thema tiefenschärfe zu schreiben. Um genau zu sein wie man mit digitalen mitteln tiefenschärfe in ein bild hineinbekommt. Das prinzip wird anhand eines beispiels erklärt und kann auf dvd zum besseren verständnis auch begutachtet werden. Das foto selbst ist eigentlich ein just for fun matte painting gewesen. Wird im magazin nicht drauf eingegangen. Ich möchte allerdings die gelegenheit nutzen und das plate hier mal zeigen. Bestehend aus zwei unterschiedlichen bildern vom selben strand. Allerdings ist in dem plate schon einiges gemacht worden um die bilder zusammenzufügen.
Schaut mal rein. Es ist durchaus einen blick wert!
This project was a lot of fun. Partly because it ended a personal creative blockade after the finish of my ‘Phoenix Rising’ project. Again i was playing with Vue and certain lighting settings. I think i found a good base for future projects now. Rendertimes went skyhigh though. However the image quality certainly speaks for itself. My goal here was to setup (or find a way) to light the scene as realistic as possible. That succeeded and after tons of hours for the render to finish… i eventually had a great plate to play with in Photoshop.
The final result is 65% Vue and everything else Photoshop. Of course i added quite some extra textures to get in the needed details. As well as extra painting in areas that did not turn out too good. The overall Photoshop postwork was done fairly fast. So i’m really happy with the outcome.
I finished this quite a while ago and finally i got it onto my page. All the time i was thinking about what else i could add to make it even more interesting. Stuff like that can be a trap. Instead of realizing that the pic is pretty much done you keep thinking and thinking. In the end this is a rare pic to find in my gallery. I can’t remember many night scenes i did so far. It’s not that it’s difficult to do them. Somehow i’m more the evening or morning type with my paintings. This picture here has quite some nice details and atmosphere. Could be a scene straight out of Total Recall or Blade Runner.
Phoenix Rising is without doubt the largest personal project i ever did so far. The project involved in depth work with Vue 8, Photoshop, After Effects and minor sound editing. The techniques i used were basically digital matte painting oriented and involved camera mapping, editing, motion tracking and of course 2d and 3d work.
In the beginning i was thinking about how i could top the success and personal achievements i got out of ‘Gates To Elysium’. That was late May 2009. That picture was able to gain itself a CGChoice Award on CGTalk and that means a lot to me especially motivation wise. But the question still was how i could top that. And by that i don’t mean prizes or awards. Would i be able to create a similar good or even better piece of work? Something that would satisfy me on all levels…?
November 2009 i started to play with an idea without actually thinking about making this my benchmark for 2010. I fiddled around with Vue since i knew it would play a significant part in the upcoming project. I tossed around some objects and soon packed the scene full to the brim with stuff. Since i still am not the brightest light in 3d modeling i worked much like in the last years project and used parts of the DAZ 3D Cityblocks to arrange me the scene. Again i took lots of the models apart and reorganized them to make the buildings look the way i wanted. Knowing that quite some Photoshop work would be laid on top of it all. Vue already started to act up because of the load. So i decided to leave that behind and concentrated on the atmosphere aspect of the scene. I already had a really beautiful cloud setup and lighting. I knew i had to do something with it. Soon after that i felt a deep pain in my brain when i saw the needed render times for that atmosphere. I started a test render for those clouds and the atmosphere and it took ages. I did the render just to see how it would look in the end. I were like 60-70hrs when it was done. And the clouds still looked nice on 5000px wide.
February 2010 i picked up the project and really started to work on it. Building up the city elements and experimenting with the tons of ideas i got when i worked on it. Finding the right position for the camera wasn’t an easy task here. I already was playing with the idea of making a camera mapping animation out of the project. Friends are calling me ‘sick’ and ‘lunatic’ now. But that’s the price you pay. If i would have known how much work i had to invest… i guess i would have stopped right away. But i didn’t know and when i was already working on it… i wanted it to be done right.
Early March was the time i started to render the final parts for the Photoshop work. Starting with the atmosphere and the background city. The atmosphere and background elements were rendered on a slightly higher quality than the foreground elements since the lighting and clouds needed to look good. Without too much noise and everything. It was a painstakingly 90hrs render. It took me 5 days to render it. Thank god for the resume ability of Vue. But it was worth the wait! When it was done i had really good multipass material to work with. All the other foreground elements were rendered in roughly 30hrs. Light and atmosphere did not require super high settings so i turned those down a but. All of these renders were done with multipass options. The ultimate freedom for the Photoshop work.
With the main renders done i started to stitch everything together in Photoshop. That was the easiest part. I already had several hours into the Photoshop work when i accidentally overwrote the Photoshop file with all the layers. §”4%&=? awesome! In the end i would say that it was good. I had the chance to redo some of the work steps and saw that i also had an alternative way to do certain operations. That lead to a better picture quality in certain areas of the sky. Nonetheless i wasn’t happy when i found out that my PSD was ruined. That was the first time something like that ever happened to me. Normally I’m very careful with my PSD files.
With the Photoshop work going on i discovered possibilities in the picture that i had to take. So i dug out Vue again to add even more details. Again multipass was helpful to easily place the new elements in the picture. The ultimate freedom! The Photoshop work was a lot of fun and seeing worlds building up in front of your eyes is always very satisfying. I was thinking about the fact that i really would love to see this in moving pictures.
I also thought that i must be crazy. All the ideas i had in mind for an animation. All the time i would need to realize these ideas! Yes, crazy! However! Late march i started to play with Vue and made first experiments with a possible camera mapping animation for the picture. The picture was pretty much done, except for some stylistic things and very small details.
Now camera mapping is not a thing i would say I’m an expert in. I’m not exactly firm in 3d modeling and kept the ingredients from the original Vue scene pretty much untouched in Photoshop. That means i did not add extra elements to the buildings etc – i only added things within the actual building shapes. Always keeping in mind that i ‘could’ be doing an animation of this. To have worked that way really helped me with the camera mapping. Nonetheless i had to take the painting apart again. Foreground, background, middle pieces etc etc etc – so that you would be able to see what actually is behind the big towers. All these textures demanded extra attention and a lot of extra work. That done i could concentrate on the ships!
In April then i was in the middle of the animation work. Man how much time went into the rendering of all the different passes. Not to mention the test renders! Not to mention the disk space needed! I rendered everything in uncompressed AVI format. 5.6gb for 40 seconds of film in 1920×1038. And i had to split the renders in the middle because when i rendered it in on task it produced a weird error and played the movie not like it was supposed to. So a lot of stitching of movie files going on. Not to mention that After Effects can be a true pain to work with. Tons of crashes! But somehow i got through.
Early May i was pretty much done with the animation itself and saw how i could get it polished perfectly in After Effects. I wanted to add a bit of dirt to the lens and found some helpful tutorials on YouTube. The internet generally is amazing for tutorials… even for video stuff.
With the animation done i got back to the painting and refined a few more things on it. That makes it look a tiny bit different than the animation. Nonetheless i’m very happy with both results and never thought i would be able to pull all that off.
While ‘Phoenix Rising’ is the actual project name i found it interesting to give the city a name too. ‘Hadley’s Hope’ is of course the name of the camp on planet LV426 in James Cameron’s ‘Aliens’. I liked the idea of taking that camp and its story out of the ‘Aliens’ context and wondered how that colony would/could look after 1000 years.
Oh a lot of text and it could be so much more! Hope you enjoy the picture, the animation and the whole world you can discover! It was quite a journey to explore and create it! Ultimately it does satisfy m on all level. It’s again a personal achievement i never thought i would be able to pull off. That’s a good thing.
Special Thanks: http://www.greendjohn.net for his awesome music! His piece ‘Windcatcher’ was perfect for my project and conveys exactly the atmosphere i wanted.
Hope you guys enjoy this shorty. For me this is a special animation since so much time went into it. It was the most complex endeavour i ever did and it was worth it!
5000px wide – Photoshop – Vue – After Effects – Infinite Number of Hours
Phoenix Rising – it’s been quiet the last few weeks but busy in the background. Last november i started to work on something that turned out to be my benchmark painting for this year. It’s by far the biggest project i ever did and it covers pretty much everything i learned over the past 5 years. This march i started to really work on it and now it’s in its final stages. May was always the month of my big projects so i hope i can finish this up soon. It will include a great wallpaper pack as well as quite some background info to the project. So right now it’s more than 2 months of work on it. The painting is pretty much done but i have some plans for it and therefor i’ll wait with the release a bit longer.
Again it’s a futuristic cityscape. I don’t know why it’s my favourite theme keeping in mind how damn complicated it can be to create stuff like that. I guess i want to really master that field and with this project i guess i get close to mastering it. Last years CGChoice award win really pushed me to go a step further and i really did it. I hope you guys will agree when you see it because i don’t think i’ll attack such a big project any time soon again. So much work in it!
So much for this little report. Stay tuned! I hope to release the project by the end of may.
Every once in a while someone is asking me for an interview and i gladly take these. You never know what interesting questions come up. It’s also interesting what memories these questions spawn. This time Chris Kapzynski from kapdesignstudio.com invited me. I’m sure it’s an interesting read for everyone so feel free to check out what his site has to offer. The direct interview can be found here.
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Phoenix Rising – it’s been quiet the last few weeks but busy in the background. Last november i started to work on something that turned out to be my benchmark painting for this year. It’s by far the biggest project i ever did and it covers pretty much everything i learned over the past 5 years. This march i started to really work on it and now it’s in its final stages. May was always the month of my big projects so i hope i can finish this up soon. It will include a great wallpaper pack as well as quite some background info to the project. So right now it’s more than 2 months of work on it. The painting is pretty much done but i have some plans for it and therefor i’ll wait with the release a bit longer.
