The forgotten posts, Vehicle Project, Week #5/6

For Week 5, the project was Vehicles. This area is something I am interested in so I really did enjoy working on the project. However, like last year I was slightly frustrated because there were no boundaries. The reason I dislike this amount of freedom is because I believe constraints and limitations progress creativity far more than the ‘do what you like’ approach. I think it can also minimize students who might not consider validity and purpose in design. That being said, it was time to crack on with some designs, I did land last year so I figured why not try air! This was the first time I had drawn/learnt about planes so it was a learning curve trying to understand the content before attempting to create something from it.

I love racing, the idea of pushing machines to their limits in speed and durability is fascinating so when I discovered they do this with planes at events such as the ‘Red Bull Air Race’ I was rapidly drawn to it. I also looked at classic WWII fighters such as the P51-Mustang, Spitfire and Messerschmitt Me 262 (jet), I tried to understand what makes these planes so famous, alongside their capabilities ofcourse. These designs seem to have aggressive forms, almost like a shark from the front, with short wing bases that suggest agility. The tip of the propeller got my attention first, if this attribute were to be exaggerated, I was convinced the results would bring a more bold design that shows its greater purpose of speed. I didn’t see reason in adding random shapes onto this well identified silhouette as I thought it would only alienate the designs ability to convey its purpose (racing). 

After being inspired by the Heinkel He 178 (first practical jet aircraft) I looked at jet technology and came across the SR-71 Blackbird. Its jet designs truly do define the word ‘speed’ and I had to adopt this influence somewhere along my design process. At this stage I had the whole ‘function defines form’ state of mind, so I wasn’t going to add random forms simply for the cool factor, instead I wanted as much credibility as possible with this project so everything needed purpose. After doing some side views, I decided to jump into some perspective drawings to get a further understanding on what I wanted to develop from my silhouettes. This lead to an elimination process where I found myself drawing quite a few similar variations of planes, I did also draw pilots in most of the sketches just for a mental note on scale. I do constantly look back at Scott Robertson’s work as he is one of my favourite vehicle artists. I also had influence from a Sci Fi pioneer/illustrator called Chris Foss, his work is outstanding in all matters of design and innovative thinking; not to mention it is all traditional as he was doing these great paintings since the 1970’s before a digital medium had been developed. His work influenced me to add graphics, decals, and other patterns I thought could attain a retro style. I also added in these because I wanted each plane to be identifiable in its uniqueness, this idea came from the film ‘Red Tails’ which I have blogged about earlier.

After developing what I thought would be a functional design, I began coming up with finals. I do kick myself a little for not experimenting further into traditional colour, I feel as though it is always good to get out the paint pots before you jump into to Photoshop because it helps reach organic, fresh outcomes however, only having two weeks on this as well as a 3D deadline, I had to finish it all up quickly. I started looking at F1 cars, as well as the Japanese Touring Car Championship, after finalising the plane it was time to look for a method of presenting it. I found using these road racing cars as a template would work well because of its similar nature. At this point it did cross my mind to make up a manufacturer of my own including badges, sponsors etc. The reason I didn’t do this was because existing vehicle manufactures give far more credibility and are easy to identify with.

I wanted to push this idea further into a world where these things could exist, so I decided to continue with a ‘controversial’ final design from Nissan, it was inspired by the turbo charged f1 cars from the 70’s which claimed many lives, but still went on the track for many years. I decided to add excess fuel tanks to the exterior of the design to reduce the number of pit stops thus giving the plane a huge advantage. Ofcourse this design is very impractical and dangerous but I wanted this ‘sport’ to be in its early stages where rules and regulations had not been developed thoroughly. The idea is the manufacturer is claiming 100% safety with its new material that encases the fuel, claiming it to be ‘crash proof’. 

This project was very exciting and refreshing to work on, if I to add anything, it would definitely be details like designing landing gear, seat ejection/safety, pilot suit, and even the environment the planes could race in. I think when I do find time I will be adding at least a couple of these things to the project.   

The forgotten posts, Week #3 and #4 review

I do realise that these briefs I am about to review have been overdue as I completed them months ago, but it is something I have to get done because I do believe reflecting is important. For Week 3 we were taken through Leicester City Centre, the goal of the brief was to complete many quick sketches in an almost storyboard fashion. To get a better idea of what our tutors wanted we were directed towards an artist’s called Gordon Cullen, an artist who had alongside other finished works, completed many quick sketches. Cullen’s basis was architecture so things like perspective, horizon line, and scale appeared very accurate. This is what we needed to achieve in limited time to get us in the state of mind where we could draft ideas accurately.

 

 

I found this exercise quite nice to do, the freedom of just finding interesting areas and jotting them down without worrying about a final piece or development work. Although I am not a huge fan of standing up with an A3 sketchbook, awkwardly trying to draw, it does push you out of your comfort zone. I also think that when pushed out of your nice little room with warmth, internet and supplies, you do have to work harder to achieve a gratifying result. After working through with pencil and pen, I did quickly work with a black marker, I think it helps define lighting quite dramatically as you are only using two values. Overall I was happy with this brief and I think a few digital sketches could not hurt, maybe something more refined that explores colour.

 

 For week four we found ourselves beamed down into Bradgate Park. It is similar to Abbey (where we went during week one) in terms of what’s there, grass, trees and water; however it has some very dramatic hills. I do prefer it over Abbey myself because it’s not as ‘neat’; you can walk through thicker grass and reach up high hills looking down into other pathways. The day we went it was raining so I had to put the sketchbook away after the first hour or so, for its own safety ofcourse. I did manage to take many photographs and discovered my attraction towards the water once again. 

 

 

After working through some thumbnails in pencil I realised I wanted to develop my ability to portray organic foliage with realism and try to understand how light workings around these forms, I pushed what I preferred into acrylics to identify colours. This time the water didn’t catch my eye because of the ripples but more for a centre focal point. As now we are meant to be thinking of composition a whole lot more, I wanted something to contrast the various greens that would be making up 90% of the painting for my final. I was quite happy with it; maybe I could add more detail into the foreground alongside more contrast as well. What I did realise is that you can’t rely 100% on photographs and a camera (especially is it isn’t something of very good quality) it tends to compress the colours, so if you don’t add more vibrancy you tend to get a very gloomy outcome.  

 

Assessments, Stress, Procastination and Christmas Break

So, it has been around 2 weeks since my assessment and whoever is reading this is probably wondering why I am so late in blogging about that. I WAS OCCUPIED!! In deep procrastination and… home stuff (which means nothing… at all). OK! Anyway, throughout these past weeks I seem to have been caught in a spiral of doing not much at all, this may be because during the first semester I kind of burnt myself out in trying to meet every deadline which I did succeed at to some extent. Of course there are always things you can add to, when you don’t have too many constraints. I have been dabbling in a few personal works here and there so not all time has been wasted although I do feel I can always make more out of these free days. It is of course the holidays so SOME slacking is in order, but I think now I have had enough of all that.   

As far as assessment goes, everything went well. Much better than last year, that’s for sure. At this stage I am working towards a 2.1 grade, which I am very satisfied with but of course, why not aim for the highest mark, right? All my modules seem to be going smoothly; it was a bit of a pain with critical studies because I was not sure where the ‘should be’ mark was. This happened to be put on our blackboard system (online database for updates and information from the university) the day before our assessment so a last minute catch up was almost impossible, however our tutor Mike will always say ‘should have referred to the critical studies handbook’ which is, I hate to admit… true. Visual Design also went ok, the main thing I learned here is to make sure I put everything up on Facebook for the tutors to see, because no matter how much work you do, if it is not posted online, it will not be given much feedback as no one would have seen it. Game Production went extremely better than expected because I really did think my project was a bit of a last minute mash up. I was ill during the 4 days before the deadline, I thought my personal set brief was not amazingly thought out, and I felt it was a lot of random decision making. To my surprise I was told I met the criteria very well and it was what Blitz were looking for. Nice. 

So what have I been doing these past few weeks? Well, like a lot of people I did go see The Hobbit!! I decided it would also be good inspiration as films like this go to great lengths to not only construct in depth storylines, which can be very difficult when done from books, but also create amazing CGI sequences. As I had never read any books from the franchise, my only reference point was the previous trilogy, Lord of The Rings. Though the film takes its time grasping into this ‘adventure’ it does set a very convincing stage for the characters to progress the narrative by means of another trilogy. I had no idea myself until I saw the film, that there would be more. It is also nice to see a team of people take their time to encompass the books events into trilogy’s instead of cramming it all in to 2 hours and 30 minutes. A key part of the film involves Gollum’s re-introduction, in a deep cave inside the mountains where Bilbo unwillingly finds himself, of course here is where he also unites with the ‘precious’ ring. This set of scenes really got me thinking about lighting, and portrayal of characters; so when creating artwork I found it is important to think in ‘camera mode’ so you don’t always have be eye level standing up with everything. Setting up angles from various locations around the scene can convey illusionary attributes such as dominance, power, and scale. 

I also think I have been neglecting character design so this film consisting of Hobbits, Dwarfs, Wizards, Goblins and Orcs, really made me question what direction my future portfolio my look. I really found the Dwarf kings attire to fit very well, these characters also don’t seem to dress in crazy, colour armour so instead of looking like something out of Warcraft they do seem like they are not too far from our world. Although Gandalf does seem to appear more and more like a homeless person in each film.

 

Characters are a weak point for me so I may have to come up with some interesting designs to assist my learning in this area. There has also a few blogs I have had ‘planned’ which need finishing so it’s time to really catch up with everything and start planning this portfolio stuff too. 

Loughborough Station!

The second assignment for visual design leads us to Loughborough train station, an old place that seemed not to be in use, although we were told trains were active on tracks throughout certain times of the day. This turned out to be much more exciting for me than the parks we visit because of the change from natural environment to hard surface man made constructions. The station had a workshop that sat further down the tracks, with many old (what looked like) steam engines that were in repair or maintenance. It was great to get up close to get a real idea of their materials and scale. I personally really enjoyed this place, though I didn’t think much of it then, I have come to realise that it was also a perfect place to get surface textures for 3D work; dammit brain!! 

I did some quick thumbnails on sight, very quick mark making to get achieve a better understanding of the trains in perspective and what type of environments they sit in. Though it wasn’t perfect weather the outcomes helped provide a starting point. After going through my reference images I moved on to using marker and paints with a prominent focus on the trains themselves, I felt that to achieve a decent final piece the perspective will have to be as accurate as my ability will allow so I practised that here. It wasn’t all too difficult, but it brought reassurance that I am learning more and more, kind of like repeating a task over and over until you know it inside out, and then repeating it a few more times. I must say I always stay away from acrylics or any sort of paint but after looking at 70’s and 80’s sci artists such as Syd Mead, John Harris and Ralph Mcquarrie and their outstanding abilities before digital painting even existed, I felt I needed to do some traditional painting, even if it was quick mark making. 

After doing this, I began digital colour studies to assist my final, though none of the thumbnails here made the final; it was a great way to understand the existing colours in the area and the lighting of the exterior studies. The final went well but it was a little rushed as I had to move on with other work, I may go back in to add more detail but for now I will call it finished. A good weeks work for learning basic vehicle forms and hard surface lighting.    

   

Red Tails!

So since last week we have been given a vehicle project for our visual design brief, I have started pushing my ideas towards aircraft and really do love the designs of the war planes from the 30’s/40’s. Powerful, fast and agile veterans like the P-51D Mustang, Supermarine Spitfire and Messerschmitt Me 262 (jet) all hitting 350mph+ inspired me to take these attributes and use them for racing purposes. I also looked at Red bull air race planes which are of very similar design.

I happened to stumbled upon a recently released film called ‘Red Tails’ which was about the Tuskegee airman, the first African American military aviators to fight in the Second World War. The film focuses on a group of friends undertaking missions for their country, and exceeding in every task whilst being subject to racism and racial segregation. As a film in itself it wasn’t the best I have ever seen but did touch on decent historical references and had some awesome dog fights/close combat scenes of the P-51 Mustang. As the film climaxes the African American aviators are given brand new P-51’s to replace their old ‘hand me down’ planes and this gift comes with life threatening missions against the Nazi fighters. 

As I am not judging this film a as media student or some sort of critique I can disregard all the patriotism and predictive storyline as it did seem like each time the pilots hit the skies, something was bound not to go their way and the only pilot to fall in love + get married, just happens to be the one that dies…  ‘Spoiler’. Although I did enjoy the film myself as it does have one of those typical heart-warming messages that regardless of racial background, we are all capable equally; being that it was based on true events also helped. Considering Aesthetics, I really do love the idea of the ‘red tail’ on the Mustang, a unique marking showing to all who they are and what they are capable of. I think I will be applying something similar to my vehicle design, not in the form of what it looks like, but what it represents; a logo, colour, or marking to suggest something powerful. 

Obviously there are greater forms of research you can do, than just watch a film or two, and on the day the brief was given I did manage to head over to the store ‘The Works’. After purchasing two huge books on Flight and Ships, it was almost like finding treasure. For less than £10 each both contain over 300 pages on the development of aviation and maritime throughout history! Building a library of content is very important so I am always on the lookout for these things, vehicle designs coming soon!