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

Comcept 21 – Battlegroup Selcior

This one was a plain just for fun thing, started quite a while ago. When playing around, I started to like it and things fell into place for the final result you can see there now. It was a quickie and nothing overly complicated. Even though I (as usual) got carried away a little. Originally I only wanted some scifi fighters sweeping over a landscape. Soon there was a larger ship added. And I when that ship told me it felt a little lonesome… I added another larger one. So everyone is happy now. However, I wanted to keep it simple. Thus it became a perfect entry into my comcept series.

Now what are we looking at here? Could be a group of destroyers flying off into a battle. Ready to deal some damage! :D Nothing too special.

Created with Vue, Worldmachine, Photoshop & Lightroom

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The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Highland Ridge

I started this one very late 2011 and thought I finished it early 2012. Well, not so much. While it was a rare attempt at creating a snow scene, with me actually being rather happy with it, I struggled with it a long time. Everytime I looked at it I found stuff I wasn’t happy with. So I fiddled with it over the years. However, it’s time to finally lay it aside and call it done.

The picture does not have a specific story behind it. I just wanted to try myself on snow. I’m fairly happy with the result and again learned something while working on this project. As usual I started with a plate I created with Vue. Rendered out the scene as well as various additional elements and combined it all in Photoshop. A lot of overpainting and fixing happened there (as usual).

Right now it’s really cold around here in Germany and a sweet little romantic snowy mountainside scene may lift the mood a bit. Snow can be a cool thing. Not so much in the city though. :)

Hope the pic makes you wish to be there as much as it makes me wish to be there. Winter in the city can be quite depressing. =)

5000×2334 – Vue – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate
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The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

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Terraformer

What we see here is, what I imagine, an ancient kind of terraforming device. Left on this planet by some ancient civilization. In the back we can see some giant ruins and leftovers of what once may have been a city. Something must have gone wrong and the planet never fully terraformed. Now the big stucture on the left is still working to a certain degree. But it’s not powerful enough. So only the surrounding areas managed to build some sort of ecosystem that over time grew onto the terraforming structure. Imagine that thing to be like 1.5km tall. So it’s huge and massive. And what are these ships doing there? Maybe they’re doing some science work and measurements of the surrounding areas. It could even be seen as a continuation of my earlier ‘Fallen Sanctuary‘ project – where they explore the ruins we see in the background of this scene.

A more exciting scenario could be that this massive terraforming structure has a meltdown. =D And the ships shit their pants and try to get away. Sounds pretty cool too. =D

This piece gave me some headaches. I was playing around with lots of things even though I wanted this pic to have a more reduced look. Without overloading it with detail. Well, that didn’t entirely work. Even if it looks rather open, there still is quite some detail in the overall scene. More than I originally planned. In the end it may benefit the overall scene. It’s not a perfect piece but it has some neat ideas I think.

Technically it’s Vue that has been used to create the overall scene. The terraforming structure is a model by Nora Nirvaluce that I previously used in a different way in the earlier mentioned collab project. The tree/root like things growing on it were done with The Plant Factory. It has a neat feature where it lets you grow stuff on objects. Needed to learn how that works and this project helped. The feature was also used to give the rocks a unique touch with some strange roots all over them. The rocks were created with Sculptris. The fog/cloud bank was rendered in Vue and took (as expected) ages to finish. I needed the cloud plate for a consistent look though. After rendering it all… Photoshop helped to bring in the final touches, fixes and overpaints that were necessary to create the scene I had in mind.

6571×3000 – Vue – The Plant Factory – Sculptris – Photoshop

Alternative Colour Version
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This pic is part of The Luminarium’s 27th Exhibit. The topic was ‘Organics’. Some amazing work by some great digital artists in there. Check it out HERE.

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Red Sands

This picture started as a project for a movie. They had some scenes on Mars and approached me if I would be interested in trying myself on it. I did some concept work and was playing around with a Marsbase kind of idea. I sent them my ideas and they promised to come back to me on how to go on with it. Well, that was 1 1/2 years ago. Nothing happened. Not a single word. So I decided to not write off the extensive work time I already spent on the project and finished it myself as a personal project. The guys I wrote with obviously had no interest anymore. I finished it up right in time for the Mars hype that’s going on right now! =D Flowing water on Mars. That’s amazing news and opens up great opportunities.

Technically I started this one with Worldmachine and trying to create a landscape that sorta kinda could serve as a Mars landscape. I’m sure it’s not 100% realistic (if at all…) but I managed to get some nice variation into the terrain that works well enough for the eye. I combined various terrains with Photoshop and imported them into Vue. Adding the base was a difficult task. I had to work the terrain quite a bit to make it fit the parts where I wanted to place the structures. I’m not entirely happy with how it turned out… but it’s good enough for me to work. Sometimes you have to make a cut and stop working on something. To make it even more unrealistic I played with the idea of some local terraforming around the base.

Overall it’s one of my more realistic ‘looking’ pieces. At least when it comes to the visual feel and photographic presentation. Hope you enjoy the view and who knows… maybe the pic is at least a tiny glimpse at how our future on Mars could look like.

6000×2740 – C4D – Vue – Photoshop

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The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Quest For Eternity

This pic was an experiment. I started it August 2014 and saw it as a prequel to my, earlier in 2014 released, ‘The Eternals’ artwork (hence the rather cryptic title for this one). In said picture you can see rather prominently a ship zipping by. I really liked the look of the ship, so I thought “wouldn’t it be funny to see where it came from?”. And that matched with the experiment I had in mind. I wanted to try and work in 16bit colour depth. It was also a test to see how my machine would be able to handle the load. It did well… but saving a larger Photoshop file in 16bit… literally takes ages. Naturally I wanted to have a quite striking image in terms of colours. So the colour depth would make sense. And I hope I got something neat for the eye with that.

If you ask me what this place is then I honestly don’t have an answer. I was fiddling with C4D when I stumbled upon this spikey shape. It instantly made me want to play with it in Vue. After some trying this and trying that I had a scene. Everything fell into place. In the end it was something like a docking or landing area for ships. The spikey things… well, let’s say it’s some ‘modern’ architecture thing. It adds a nice abstract component to the scene. =D

Usually my work is loaded with detail. That doesn’t always work. So ultimately I wanted to do a very clean cut pic for once. Something that’s simple and yet eyecatching.

6000×2739 – C4D – Vue – Photoshop

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Fallen Sanctuary

The best description for this one would be just two words: happy accident. I had a nice conversation with a fellow artist about 3d stuff, modeling and sculpting. We came to our current projects and I saw a screenshot of a model she worked on for an exercise. She had no further use for it and I asked if she could send me the model so I could play a little with it. I immediately had some fun with that model playing in Vue, which made clear that we got something nice there. So then we decided to do a collaboration piece.

I’m not a big collab artist since I have a very specific set of tools I work with. And combining that with the workflow of a fellow artist can get messy fast. Nonetheless we agreed to try it. I was able to find a good composition and a working scene very fast. It even surprised me how fast I had something that really worked. We decided to keep that and I started render out my usual load of plate material for Photoshop.

I started and combined the different plates, began with adding effects and details. Then I sent it over to my friend and she added her creative magic. She sent it back to me and I did finalizing touches. The result works really well and we’re both pretty happy how it turned out. What does it show? Well, not sure. But it could be some giant ancient mysterious alien ruins of sorts.

Vue, Worldmachine, ZBrush, Photoshop, 3500px wide

Find my colleague here…
Nora Nirvaluce on Behance
Nora Nirvaluce on Artstation

3d model fun render #1 // 3d model fun render #2

Quick Concept

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Regards

Hunting Season

This scene doesn’t have a big backstory. I imagine it shows a military training exercise for fighter pilots on a desolate moon surface. A cat and mouse game between groups of fighters. Red vs Blue. Something like it. But ultimately I leave the interpretation the viewer. =)

This one is created for The Luminarium Art Collective for an exhibit release with the topic ‘depth’. Check it out HERE – While I admit that there are far more interesting interpretations of the topic than what I did for it, I still enjoy my work. I used the topic to play with a couple of things. First of all a slight depth of field effect. Secondly… planets! I always wanted to try myself on a picture that (even if unrealistic) has a lot of planets or moons in it. In this picture I wanted to use them to create the depth the topic demanded. And I think it works good enough to give a nice impression of a vast space and distance in general.

Created with Vue, C4D and Photoshop. For the terrain I used a worldmachine terrain that worked really nice when I played around with it. Often enough pictures come together while playing with some elements in 3d. Suddenly it clicks and you have a starting point. If you’re lucky then everything starts to fall into place as if it’s magic.

Vue, Worldmachine, C4D, Photoshop, 6000px wide

Plate

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Regards

Come A Little Closer (if you like)

Here we have a pic that is near and dear to my heart. Sometimes you work on a project and it’s your one and only baby for that time. When the project is done it’s time to move on and you kinda lose a bit of that passion you originally had for it. For this particular one that’s not the case. I still enjoy this one a lot. It’s certainly not perfect and has its flaws. But it has so many elements that I really enjoy when it comes to pictures.

The original idea for it came (like many ideas) in a sleepless night. You know, these nights where your brain can’t turn off and can’t stop think about stuff. The first spark and image I had in mind where simple shapes and these two specific walls on the left and right. Basic but interesting architecture. The rest fell into place as soon as I started the creation process. Some very extensive extra time went into the scifi complex in the background. The hero building in the far back spawned the idea to play with it and ultimately resulted in the creation of my (earlier released) “The Eternals” artwork. Yes, “Come A Little Closer” actually pre-dates “The Eternals“. So now it’s seriously about time to really go public with it.

Technically it’s Vue again. Basic vector modeling to create details for the front room and some specifics in the background. For the two rocks that are implemented in the walls I used a Worldmachine created terrain. Worldmachine added a lot of fantastic detail to make that part look petty awesome and realistic. The lady was done with DAZ Studio and refined in Photoshop. The outside complex contains heavily modified models I previously used and the far mountain background are photos.

Hope you enjoy this one as much as I do.

Vue – Worldmachine – Photoshop – 7000×5053

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Creative Process Video Breakdown

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Memories Of Ascalon

I don’t exactly remember when I started working on this one but I was big into playing Guild Wars 2 at the time. Hence the title and the inspiration for this one. Great game and exceptionally detailed world.

When I started this a long time ago (almost 2 years ago), I haven’t had done any big Fantasy projects in a while and focussed entirely on Scifi. So it was about time to expand a little and try something different. The outcome looks fine I guess. Played with terrains and a colourful daytime atmosphere. I’m actually very tempted to rework the colours to be a little more reduced but that’s the mood I’m in these days. Back then I found them to be right and therefor I will keep them.

Technically it’s business as usual. Vue to create a plate and Photoshop to refine, composite, overpaint and fix things.

Vue – Worldmachine – Photoshop – 6000×2553

Plate 1

Plate 2

Plate 3

Regards

Virtuosity

Here we have my first new portfolio entry for 2015 and along with that fact it’s also part of the latest and 25th Exhibit of the Luminarium Artgroup. It’s certainly a little different from my usual Scifi explorations but I really like how this one turned out.

Originally I wanted to do a Scifi scene with this one. A couple of scientists exploring this cave, where some strange floating materials came from the depths. I quickly got away from the scientists and moved more into a fantasy realm with it. I’m not the best with fantasy and this project gave me at least a little bit room to play around in that field. In the end we have a lady, bravely standing on the edge of a cliff, playing with some cool magic skills. I could imagine that she’s training and testing herself there. And from what I can see it’s successful! I wouldn’t want to start a fight with her!

The inspiration for this picture came from a commission I had just finished around the same time. I found the idea of placing a scene in a cave like environment rather intriguing and played around with it until I found a good path to go with. Technically it’s again a mixture of Vue and Photoshop. I had a fun time in Vue finding a good and solid composition. DAZ Studio helped with creating the lady. Photoshop helped to combine all the different elements along with quite some overpainting and fixing that was necessary to make everything sit right in the picture.

Vue – DAZ Studio – Photoshop – 3607x5000px

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The Luminarium Exhibit #25: Silver

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

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