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

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
Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Organica

This one started as an experiment. Like many other pics I do for some reason. I wanted to dig a little deeper into a tool called The Plant Factory (TPF). A software created by the guys who also run Vue. After finishing this pic I wouldn’t say I’m an expert in TPF… but I learned something for sure. To a point where it already helps with other projects. However… I used TPF to make roots grow all over the scene. To make it look as if nature decided to overwhelm this place to a certain degree. So ultimately this project was perfect for the then current ‘Organics’ topic of the Luminarium artgroup. It could be seen as a companion pic to my ‘Terraformer’ piece. Maybe it’s even the same planet!!!??? =)

The scene base was created with C4D and Vue. A lot of importing/exporting with The Plant Factory and tons of overpainting and fixing with Photoshop. The last part more than usual. Therefor I decided to play with a more stylized look and made it appear a little more painting like. A lot of time went into refining small elements to make it all look consistent.

Is this experiment a success? I’m undecided. While it sure does show something I had in mind for this scene, there are a couple of technical things I would do different today. Of course I would… because now I know the stuff I leaned from creating this picture. :D

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

Plate
Scene Setup
Print Detail

This pic is part of The Luminarium’s 27th Exhibit. The topic was ‘Organics’. Amazing work by some great digital artists in there.
Check it out here!

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

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
Plate
Plate
Print Detail

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

Print Detail

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety

Regards

Com-cept 22

Much like all the other pictures in my Com-cept series, this one was an experiment, with using some rather unusual techniques for my work. I wanted to try myself on something more rough looking while at the same time trying to bring a solid composition and a certain amount of detail. Most of my other work is detailed to the pixel due to heavy use of 3d rendered plates. Even though I used a 3d plate for the landscape here too, I wanted to focus more on efficiency instead of diving into too much detail. More painting than pixel perfect 3d. I wanted to try my luck with the Sowig.net contest I discovered rather late and had to rush a couple of things. So obviously there could have been done a little more refining. =) I never expected to win that contest… which shows me that I did at least some things right with this picture.

3000×1370 – Vue – Photoshop

Lars Sowig is a very talented digital artist with some really neat work. Feel invited to check his work here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sowig
Website: http://www.sowig.net

Regards

Domes Of Hope

Here we have another collaboration piece. My second in a short period of time. After not doing collabs for a very very long time. Now I do enjoy the outcome of these projects and may do more in the future.

This time I had the pleasure to work with GTGraphics’s very own Tobias Roetsch. He’s also a pretty well known Scifi and Fantasy artist that enjoys some vast and grandiose environment vistas. He explained me his idea and I started to do work in Vue to created a serviceable plate. That includes the landscape and the design of the domes. While working in Vue we both talked about how to bring in a good composition. Then I rendered the material in several passes and combined it in Photoshop. After adding some detail, fx and textures I sent the Photoshop file over to Tobias.

Tobias did his magic with adding the city, additional landscape details and a very neat sunset atmosphere. Then it was my turn again with adding some more little details like the ships and some fine tuning. After that… we pretty much had it. I tried to play a little more with the overall colours but always ended up throwing my adjustments away. The atmosphere Tobias created works pretty much perfect.

Vue, Worldmachine, C4D, Photoshop – 6500px wide

Please check out more of Tobias’s work here:

GTGraphics.de
Artstation
Deviantart
Facebook

The artwork on:
Deviantart – Artstation – CGSociety – Behance

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

Plate

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

Print Detail

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

Print Detail

Regards

Late 2014 I began to create a couple of event-screen images for Galactic Civilizations 3. A great game if you’re a fan of scifi exploration and strategy. Every now and then you encounter random events that force you to make a decision that will have a certain impact on your empire. These events needed some background images that sorta set the mood for the event. So I created 4 pictures for four of these events. Some of them were interesting tasks that forced me to go different routes than usual. Beside the usual Vue & Photoshop route I had to try myself a little with 3d modeling (which isn’t something I’m too firm with). It definitely paid off and I’m fairly happy with the results.

Example Event – ‘Worms’

“The location of our colony on this planet is apparently the prime hunting grounds for a species of massive, building sized worms. This is by far the most fertile land on the planet, so we don’t want to move if we don’t have to. But on the other hand, massive building sized worms. What are your orders?”

For 1920×1080 Wallpaper Click Here

Example Event – ‘Swamped’

“Upon landing on this world, you quickly realize that it has been inhabited before. Beneath the northern ice, explorers have found an ancient starship. They believe they can free the ship from the ice, but the resulting melt will flood much of the arable land on the planet, and the climate change will kill most of the unique native species.”

For 1920×1080 Wallpaper Click Here

Example Event – ‘Powerful Drug’

“The flowers of a specific plant on this planet are a powerful intoxicant when ground up or smoked or inserted various places. The drug provides an intense feeling of contentment to all those who consume it, although in a few cases people have been content to walk directly into powerful machinery.”

For 1920×1080 Wallpaper Click Here

Example Event – ‘Beautiful Sunsets’

“The atmosphere of this planet, thick with poisonous particulates, does have the side effect of causing beautiful, even spectacular sunsets, and word had spread through the galaxy of their beauty. A burgeoning tourist industry has developed, resulting in many coughing tourists, ignorant of the dangers of this planet. Your colonists are getting tired of stepping over their bodies.”

For 1920×1080 Wallpaper Click Here

These are the 4 projects I did in late 2014. It was a nice, productive and successful experience. I had to work out a couple of things in order to get my ideas done. New techniques and approaches. Luckily it all worked out and I hope the pics will help to build a neat world within the game.

Regards