Visual Design Intensive workshop week - Vehicle Design

This week at uni we were tasked with designing a vehicle based upon an interesting object of our choice, this is the first task we have been given that involves actually designing something so naturally I was a little apprehensive. We started off looking at the basic shapes that make up the object as a whole, we then moved on to look at silhouettes of the object and also of images from books; I mainly looked at birds and insects. We then used those those silhouettes to 'imagineer' a vehicle using marker pens and pads. We were also advised to try and solve a real world problem in some way, so i started to look at planes and the problems they encounter, my initial thoughts were to design a jet that could land vertically however i found that this does actually exist, the Harrier. I then saw that it can only generally land on flat surfaces so i started to look at something that could land on pretty much anything; so i looked at how insects land and stand up and began to draw up some designs. The design seemed to progressively get a little worse and more over the top but i then simplified it down a little and i was pretty happy with my final design. I really enjoyed this weeks work and enjoyed learning a new process, if i was to do it again i would of perhaps been a little more confident and bold with my designs and perhaps spent a little longer on the final. We also had our first digital painting tutorial which went pretty well (it made me want a Cintiq), before this course i had some experience with painting in Photoshop however that was all self taught so it was good to actually be taught how to use it properly. The final turned out pretty well and definitely shows my idea clearly, whilst its not perfect its not bad for the first piece of digital work I've done on this course.

My final Piece for the vehicle design project based on my computer mouse

The course so far...

I've been studying Game Art at DMU for around 4 months and I feel now is a good time to reflect on the course so far. In a nutshell I'm really enjoying it and from what I've heard the course is only going to get more interesting but also more difficult. The work load grows each week but Im yet to feel like its getting on top of me, don't get me wrong I'm up late most nights doing work but that's mostly out of choice. We had an assessment just before Christmas which went surprisingly, well to say that a lot of people have been told to re-do pretty much everything. I did have to re-submit my 3D building project as I had basically messed up some of the texturing which was pretty fair; I know to read the brief a bit better now. Whilst doing this i found it took around half the time to put together in comparison to before and i utilised my texture budget a lot more effectively. 

I was told that if i was to hand my work in as it is I would get a pass grade, which from what I've heard of other peoples assessments, is pretty good. However I was told I could bump my grade up by doing a list of certain tasks, including re-doing all my finals in an A3 sketchbook, clean up all my work on facebook, clean up my sketchbook and fix drawings with hairspray. I would say I've learnt more in these past few months than i have in the past few years and I definitely think drawing comes more naturally to me now and I don't quite have to think about it as much as I did. I do now feel like I should perhaps do something a bit more productive with the little free time I have, do some personal work or masters studies or maybe learn some basic coding skills; especially after the talk we had a couple days back from an Indie game dev, i felt quite inspired to attempt my own game to better understand the process. After the assessment i feel a little more confident in what i have to improve to further my drawings, I need to stop feathering my lines in as it shows the viewer i'm not confident in what i'm drawing. Instead i will try to work a little lighter to begin with and then define my line-work a little heavier afterwards. My tutors also hinted that i may need to look at my composition abit more. Im currently looking alot at using only tone and very minimal line work to show shape and form as it helps build a visual understanding of the object in front of you without worrying about the linework surrounding it.

A quick before and after of one of my finals after re-doing it in A3 over christmas.