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

It’s time to make downloading of wallpapers even more comfortable than it already was! The future! New alternatives! New hopes! New dreams! Alright… enough advertising phrases for now. Windows 7 has that one unique feature that allows you do create your own Wallpaper Packs! People can download and doubleclick these and *kaboom* Windows automatically applies the pack and its settings! I really dig that. That’s why i decided to create some packs for selected artworks in my gallery from time to time. All at once would be boring right? ;) However. In these packs i try to cover all possible standard resolutions. So it’s surely worth a look. I thought that Fractal and Abstract pictures, which work magnificient as wallpapers, are the perfect start for this collection. For now you can find Themepacks for the following pieces:

Windows 7 ‘HRT‘ Theme Pack

Windows 7 ‘Synchrotone‘ Theme Pack

Windows 7 ‘Solitude In Chaos‘ Theme Pack

Windows 7 ‘Where Is My Mind‘ Theme Pack

Windows 7 ‘Hades – Valiant‘ Theme Pack

All pictures in this Theme Pack are copyrighted by tigaer-design.com and may not used or reproduced without permission. Thank you very much.

I hope you like it. Stay Tuned for more! Thank you.

Regards

DIGITALPhoto Photoshop hat mich eingeladen einen Digital Matte Painting Workshop zu verfassen für die ausgabe 02/2010. Das magazin erscheint alle zwei monate und ist randvoll mit nützlichen tips zum thema bildbearbeitung. Das bild welches ich zu diesem workshop erstellt habe kann man sich hier mal ansehen. City View war anfangs nur eine inspiration zu einem bild von Kai Bellmann, einem freund der vor kurzem in Vietnam unterwegs war. Dort hat er einige sehr schöne fotos machen können. Unteranderem eben auch diese strasse. Glücklicherweise hat das magazin angeklopft und ich hatte die perfekte gelegenheit etwas mit diesem foto anzustellen. Dabei habe ich versucht dem leser ein paar meiner techniken im feld Digital Matte Painting näher zu bringen.

Vielen Dank an DIGITALPhoto für diese möglichkeit.

Schaut mal rein. Es ist durchaus einen blick wert!

Digital Artist is still a very young magazine that comes from the same publisher like the Advanced Photoshop Magazine. The Digital Artist Magazine focusses on a more wider spectrum of tools though and gives you the chance to explore a wider spectrum of artists. In case of the workshops it shows you how to combine different tools in one artwork and how to seamlessly combine the various elements the different tools give you. In my case i got invited to write a workshop about extending photos. In that particular case i took some Digital Matte Painting techniques to get things done. I took a fairly boring snapshot i took in Berlin and added a sort of futuristic skyline to it. Nothing too exciting too but sexy enough to get the techniques explained. Ultimately i really like the result. Looks cool. Check it out!

Thanks to Jo Cole for the great support.

Regards

FUTURE CITY

The Digital Artist Magazine invited me to write a workshop about extending photos. I decided to go for Digital Matte Painting techniques and searched my archive for a good plate. I found a nice photo i took in Berlin and it turned out to be a great plate. All the other materials were from my archive too. A lot of buildings from the Frankfurt skyline. Not many skylines here in germany though. Nonetheless i tried myself on manipulating what i had, to make it look different to what i already had in the picture. In the workshop i tried to explain parts of the work process and how to push a boring photo to something more interesting looking. It was fun to do.

A creation progress viz: here

I really dig the result here!

Check this article for the magazine.

Regards

CITY VIEW

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. :)

Plate: here

Hope you like it as much as i do!

3500px high – photoshop – intuos3

Regards

2510

How could a city look like in 500 years from now?

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.

Regards

Time flies by! And it seems i say that every year. However… the time is right and i took myself some time to create a nifty calendar for YOUR 2010! Man. 2010 sounds like a Sci-fi movie doesn’t it? Very weird. Now this year the calendar contains completely new works from my 2009 collection. No recycling of older artworks. Even though i’m thinking some of you would have liked it to see some older works in it too. :) In retrospective i’m proud of my work this year. It’s some solid work and the presentation within the calendar looks cool too i think. So if you want to discover a new world every month or you want someone to discover these worlds with you… go ahead and check out the calendar. :) I’m sure it’s something for everyone! Discover…!

Regards

Comcept 13

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.

6hrs – Photoshop – Vue – Intuos 3

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

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