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

The Unknown Huntress

I started this one ages ago. Originally just for fun to play and learn stuff. Especially in regards to texturing within Vue. I did learn quite a bit and was able to transport my knowledge into later pieces. The reason why I turned this into a fantasy kind of direction was simply because I don’t have much stuff going into that direction in my portfolio. So, time to diversify a little bit! Is there a story to the picture? Not really to be honest. Maybe our character belongs to a tribe of hunters and is returning home from a field trip.

From a technical point of view, beside playing with texturing in Vue, I also looked at Plant Factory a little more. Especially techniques to grow stuff on objects. Which can be seen on the pillars that go along the way in the scene. There is so much stuff you can do! It can drive you crazy sometimes!

Ultimately it’s not a piece I’m entirely happy with but for an exercise it’s good enough. As usual I lost myself in too many details no one will ever notice unless it’s a neat print they look at. =D

6000×2739 – Vue – Plant Factory – Photoshop – Lightroom

Plate 1

Plate 2

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Alrighty. Here we go again. As some of you might have noticed, I took a break last year. I took the time to create some new stuff that you will, of course, find a selection of in this new calendar. I couldn’t resist and put some oldie goldies in there as well though. Some of my all-time favs and perhaps new all-time favs. =) Hope you enjoy the selection, which may help you make yourself (or a loved one) a cool neat christmas present. =)

Find it here: https://tigaer.deviantart.com/art/Scifi-And-Fantasy-Calendar-2018-711447916

Regards,

Beasts Shall Rise

The initial idea for this one came from a commission I had finished at the time. I took the foundation of that earlier project and expanded on it. Since you can never have enough fantasy stuff in your portfolio, I wanted to go into it full throttle. And even while writing these lines I’m still fixing elements in the picture and tuning colours. I guess it’s one of those where I will always find stuff that could need some touch ups here and there. But at some point you have to stop. Because it looks good already and the stuff you fix are on a pixel level that no one will actually see. So yeah… I’ll stop now. :D DONE.

I guess the inspiration for this one came mostly from the commission but also a lot of Game Of Thrones or Lord Of The Rings of course. These properties kind of set a standard in the recent years. At least when it comes to a more ‘realistic’ look and feel of the fantasy genre. I’m a fan of cities that are built on a mountain cliff and always wanted to explore that theme. There went a lot of work into the fine tuning of the renders I used for a plate here. I used a wide range of tools from World Machine to DAZ3d to C4D to Vue and last but not least Photoshop. Lightroom as the final step of getting the colours and mood right.

Are the dragons attacking or just flying by? I leave that to the viewer. When I had the city pretty much done I felt that there was something missing. So I added some dragons because… ‘because’. They added a level of depth that was missing before. So I decided to keep them.

At the end I had a handful of different colourschemes for this one. I decided to go with a more aggressive and colourful tone instead of a dirty greyish realistic one. I think and hope the overall look, along with the colours, give a nice and epic impression. It at least works for me. =)

I dedicate this piece to two companions I lost over the last 5 weeks. You guys always made me smile when I was down. You’ll be greatly missed.

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

Creative Photoshop Process
Plate 1
Plate 2
Previz/Wireframe 1
Previz/Wireframe 2
Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Alrighty. Here we go. The calendar for YOUR amazing 2016 is now available in my deviantart store. Had a hard time picking the artworks for this one since they all work well for a calendar page. A nice look back at the pieces I did this year. Among a few older ‘personal favs/classics’ we have quite a number of new pieces in this calendar this time. For the calendar design I used Vue to create a neat looking cover image and plates for the month pages. Had some fun with it and hope it turned out eyecatching enough. :) Due to the format I had to cut off small parts of the images but tried to keep the main elements in frame as good as possible. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out this year.

Find it here: http://www.deviantart.com/print/38876699/

Regards,

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

Print Detail

The Luminarium Exhibit #25: Silver

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

Regards

Strange New Worlds

Here we have a pic that is lying on my hard drive for over a year. This one is actually my first experiment with using 3d fractal objects generated with Xenodream. If you know my gallery then you’ve seen these already in other pictures. The reason I held this picture back simply was/is that I’m not too happy with it. Even though I can see some good qualities in it. That’s why I now said “To hell with it… let’s make it public”. =D People’s tastes are different and maybe there are folks out there who like and enjoy it more than I do, or maybe even inspires them.

Beside the experimental factor, the goal of it was to go a more fantasy route with it. I think I at least succeeded with that. The composition is what bugs me most. It’s a little messed up. Nonetheless there are some technical things that look pretty cool I think. As mentioned before I created the spiral rock shapes with Xenodream and exported them into 3d objects. Those I took into Vue and created a scene around them. I worked with ecosystems to get foliage and trees into the scene. I also applied ecosystems to the spiral rocks to give them some vegetation growing on them. That makes them look more natual. Overall it was a little too expermienty and I was just toying and playing around too much. A lot of work happened in Photoshop as well. Just 2 weeks ago I added a last background detail and had to force myself to stop thinking about it and start considering it to be DONE.

Anyways… I hope you enjoy the view and maybe enjoy the little things like I do. =)

Xenodream – Vue – Photoshop – 3252×4600

Plate 1

Plate 2

Plate 3

Regards

Arcady’s Epiphany

Arcady, very early on, showed a huge fascination with all kinds of adventure stories. The traditional heroes and their bold undertakings to rescue a damsel in distress. Soon enough she started to think about becoming an author herself. “Someday, when I’m grown up!” She used to say. On her 12th birthday morning, her father decided to take her out into the field. Arcady had no idea what her father had in mind, but she saw him smile and his eyes shine bright like a star. “A place that always made me imagine my own adventures!”, he said. “Something inspirational!” Arcady could not resist, smiled at her dad and made herself ready for the trip. A quick breakfast and some words Arcady will never forget, when her dad said, “Time to write your own stories, darling!”.

This one was done for the 20th Exhibit of the Luminarium artgroup, created between October and December last year. The topic was ‘Adventure’ and I immediately had some ideas in my head.

Inspiration for this came from… I don’t know. Could be a mixture of things I saw in videogames and movies… as well as descriptions in books (and no, I haven’t seen Burton’s Alice yet) =). I was also playing around with Xenodream and its fractals. Its feature to export fractals to a 3d format enables creativity to fiddle around with a lot of ideas. The exported 3d fractals were easy to import into Vue. So I started to setup the scene until the almighty creative spark lit up.

Next stage was Photoshop. Again I used the Multipass options of Vue to render out additional elements to enhance the scene. A lot of work went into making everything fit and creating a nice depth. The original render already worked well but, as usual, I started to enhance the atmosphere part in Photoshop too. The plate pics for the planets were created with Vue as well. I’m not the most awesome space artist but I think the planets do look good enough. I also allowed myself to go for some really strong colours. I really wanted this to be an eyecatching pic, even in thumbnail size. Eventually I got to a point where I was rather pleased with the result.

When it comes to using fractal 3d objects then it’s highly possible you’ll see more of that in the future. =)

Hope you like what you see here. Enjoy!

The short little snippet of story is inspired by a character in Isaac Asimovs’s ‘Foundation’ books.

This pic is part of the 20th Exhibit by ‘The Luminarium Artgroup‘. A lot of great art for your inspiration! Check here.

Vue – Xenodream – Photoshop – 6000px wide

Plate 1

Plate 2

Print Detail

Regards

Yet again I have to announce something that makes me proud. For the past year I sat down and created a neat little art book. This book contains 9 of my personal portfolio favourites on a very high quality 30×30 cm / 12×12 inches paper. All of them on two-page spreads. So basically 60cm wide. That gives some amazing detail! Additionally it’s packaged in a very well produced and manufactured binding. For details feel free to check this page. There you can find all necessary info about the book as well as detailed photos.

Check The Preview – Here

Buy The Book – Here

Regards

LAKE FIREFLY

This picture was a submission for ‘The Luminarium‘ Artgroup. Their topic was ‘Asylum‘. My interpretation of the meaning can pretty much be seen in this picture. It’s a more peaceful approach. Here we have two people on a field trip to find some peace. But the environment looks a little different don’t you think? Of course I wanted to put in a little Fantasy/Scifi component. So our two friends here are either in the future on a distant planet or in an alternate universe. But that’s a taste thing. =D

Technically this picture was the first one I created with the Vue10 release. The random rock creator works really nice and is a good addition to the tool. The huge wing like mountain thingies were created with XenoDream. A very interesting tool that I might explore a little more in fhe future. Of course a lot of post work with Photoshop again. I even played around with creating some alien looking trees there. Maybe that was the christmas spirit coming through a bit. Just a little bit. =D This may also be the last piece of art for 2011 and I think it gives a nice conclusion with its mood.

Vue – Photoshop – 5000px wide

Print Detail
Plates and Parts

Regards