Post by urbancinderella on Jun 2, 2007 10:14:06 GMT
Interview with `tigaerdeviantART - Digital
Administered by Visigoth.
Name: Christian Hecker
Age and Birthday: March 3, 1982
Location: Germany
Website/Gallery: www.tigaer-design.com & tigaer.deviantart.com
Then let's get started, shall we? To get it out of the way, tell us a little about your history.
Well, my name is Chris Hecker. I was born in 1982: former East Germany in a town Wolfen. When I finished school I had no idea what I should do in my life. It took me quite a while to find it out. Then in 2000, I started to explore Photoshop... and never stopped doing that. So I take that as a sign that this is the right stuff for me to do. In 2001, we moved to nuremberg and here I am now answering these questions.
So fate brought you Adobe. How did Terragen come about?
The first time I played around with Terragen was 1999. I was on the search for a program that could render me some nice landscapes. Unfortunately my computer power back then was not the best and I gave up on Terragen. In 2001, I had my 3D phase. I played a lot with Bryce, and Terragen came up again too. This time I had a more powerful machine and more enthusiasm to really try it.
A more powerful machine? Care to divluge the details?
My current machine is a 3200+ AMD (good old 32bit one), 2gb ram and a 19" lcd. I work out my art with Photoshop CS. It's a very versatile program, and since my work is a mixture of digital painting and manipulation, it covers everything I need to create my art. Oh, and music: I often listen to music when i sit on my machine and work on something. I'm a rock fan. from Metallica to R.E.M. - it really helps sometimes to slip into some sort of flow... more efficient work.
Your work often displays a very down to earth feel, while still retaining a feel of mysticism. Where do you pull your inspirations or ideas from?
Well I was always interested in creating worlds I always wanted to visit. I do visit them, just in my imagination, and I want to share these places with others. So when finding a way to do this, Terragen was, for me, the only way to go. I learned the basics and played around with it. Because I never got too in-depth with Terragen, I started to rework my renders in photoshop. I added rock textures, clouds, etc. The first pieces were a weird unrealistic mix of different elements.
So you could say you've adopted matte painting into your technique, maybe even helped pioneer such a movement. Where exactly did the idea for combinging 2D with 3D come from?
I started to use Terragen to create basic picture to which I could apply my photoshop work. Soon I started to model terrains in photoshop to render them in Terragen. This was a very complicated technique that allowed me to create buildings, but I don't use it anymore. My pieces "Artificial", "The Wall" and "A New Hope" were created with that modeling technique. The pieces "Awake" and "Elysia" are created with paintings. Yes: paintings, a completely new thing to me. Why am I painting now? Simple: it's much more efficient. Modern digital matte painting actually is very complex photo manipulation. I got myself a Wacom tablet not long ago and started to explore the possiblities. My latest big project was "Back to the Future". While "Awake" and "Elysia" were pieces on which I worked with matte painting techniques, "Back to the Future" was my first real matte painting.
I'd advise our readers to check out those pieces, none of them will disappoint. On a somewhat related note, you've become quite a popular artist on deviantART, a massive online art community. As an artist, what do you think you've acheived?
To be honest, not too much. Of course a lot of people enjoy my work and that's a very cool thing! My target, however, is it to become a kind of mixture between Dylan Cole and Gary Tonge. Both are masters in what they do, Dylan as a matte painter and Gary as a regular painter. I've got a long way to go.
Do you have any plans for making it down that road?
I would love to get a job where i could work with my love, Photoshop. No matter if it's some advertising stuff or even as a concept artist for some studio, I would love to learn from people that have experience.
How about a little advice for our readers?
Patience: that's the key. If you're really interested in creating something that makes other peoples' jaw drop, then you need patience and passion to reach that artistic level.
Dylan Cole's website can be found at www.dylancolestudio.com/
Gary Tonge's can be found at www.visionafar.com/
