Stealth Sci-Fi Fighter

This is a Hi Tech Sci-Fi sort of Stealth Fighter Plane Ship thingy. It was done through following one of the tutorials from Doug Chiang's Book Mechanika which I have touched upon before. 

 The first and largest obstacle I had with this was getting the initial design right. As with all this sort of work, if the design is no good, then no amount of rendering or presentation will turn it into a good design so getting that right was key. The sketches above are a testament to that with what I thought were not quite good enough designs. Another aspect I had a problem with was getting the perspective right with the wings and multiple layers.

Eventually I settled on this sketch because, although I knew the perspective was slightly off at the front, I knew I could edit it in photoshop, which I did in the image to the left.

Once In photoshop I replaced the sketch with black lines to complete the design and create a clean and easy to work with outline. I then used red lines to identify the areas that would be in shadow.

Using the fill bucket I added in the preliminary shadows. I then used gradients to add the lighting effects to the rest of the ship.

Next the original lines were duplicated and inverted adding detail to the darkest sections. Then I used an overlay layer to add the colour.

Finally I added some more highlights and shadows with the gradient and brush tools, before creating a shadow and backdrop to ground the design and a mechanic/pilot for scale.

Interactive Shop Design

This is a video of a CAD model I made in Google SketchUp. We were supposed to show this in a presentation given today in front of the rest of the year 1 design school, but when it came to showing the video, it just froze, so we had to do without.

As you go through the video, it starts at the round counter at the front where you can purchase your experience. It then move on to where the different moulds are stored, with an extra display for more special or seasonal ones. After that it's the chocolate tubes, where your choice of chocolate can be poured into the mould, and then round to the freezer and adding extra decorations, or visa versa. While the chocolate is cooling, the packaging for the chocolate can be coloured in at the next station. Continuing round, at the back of the shop is a counter where customers can get bespoke designs made by a member of staff, and further round on the right of the store is a section where people can buy premade chocolates. The brief given was to design an interface to facilitate the creation of personalised chocolates, which we were encourage to make chocolate models for. My team's idea was to have a shop, similar in nature to the Build-a-Bear Workshops. So using some sketches I created this model.

 

These are some more views of the shop floor.

Cocktail Maker- Finished

Finally it is done. At last I have completed the artifact part of the Graphics course. My Cocktail Maker is complete, minus a name, and a tagline, and a poster, and a workbook.......so mostly done......ish.

But anyway this is what I have done, and I am very pleased with it. It has taken a long time and it was very difficult to get it to look real, I still don't think it does, but oh well. Below are the main stages that went into the creation of this image.

After a very rough sketch I drew the Isometric (35 degrees) drawing on the left to finalise the design, followed by the more dramatic and eye catching two point perspective drawing on the right.

 

 That drawing was then scanned and imported into Photoshop where using the pen tool I isolated and created masks for all the different shapes, which took quite a while (100+ screenshots!!)

Then with the masks completed I was able to start importing other images and textures into the image, shaping them with the masks and transform tools and adding highlights and shading. Of course this took the most time requiring 200+ screenshots.

But anyway with that out of the way I can now get on with the poster and the workbook. With that in mind my late night reading today will be: The Visual Quickstart Guide to Illustrator CS5....all of it; better get going.

Cocktail Research- Ingredients & Infographics

I've been doing some research on Cocktail Recipes for my graphics project, which has been enlightening and amusing to say the least. But now that it is done, I have collected the information into a more visual and graphical style: Infographics. Infographics are visual ways to display often complex information in a much clearer and easy to understand medium than just text.

My first Infographic was to collect all the recipes I had gathered and demonstrate how the various ingredients are used multiple times in different combinations in different drinks.

 The names of the drinks go on the left while the ingredients are along the top. Each new colour is a different ingredient.

With this done I then decided to display the information in a different way, as a series of linked boxes, with the drink is linked to their component ingedients.However this did not work.

So I decided to minimise the clutter by minimising the ingredients, and thus the drinks.

Now it is much clearer and shows how 9 ingredients can be used to create 16 different drinks. I was reduced to only nine by limitations of both space, and in what combinations I could link without the lines crossing. But anyway, I'm pleased with my first proper Infographics and I plan on doing many more.

Made In Brunel T-Shirt Competition

Brunel University has the brand 'Made in Brunel' for the exhibitions of student work arranged by the university. A new year, a different look for the brand and part of that are new t-shirts.

So to save on effort, or give the students a chance to enter a competition and add to their portfolio, they have made it a competition for design, engineering and fashion design students. The only conditions to the brief are that it has either a black, grey or white base, only uses the colours orange, grey white and black, and it must have the Made in Brunel logo on it. So these below are some designs I have done for this. Click on the designs for details.

So hopefully the judges will like it, the deadline is 1/11 so still time more more ideas.

Photoshop Emergency Support Vehicle

So probably the last of these Initial Ideas done on photoshop. The idea behind this is that of a relatively small vehicle, only about 1m high and 2.5 m long, that can operate remotely or independently to traverse difficult terrain and carry very large loads. This would be deployed with emergency forces to help with emergencies where heavy equipment or loading is necessary over rough terrain, such as in mountain rescue and earthquake and Landslide response. Of course this is only a very rough concept and idea which definitely needs improvement, but again it will look good in the workbook.

This time the initial sketch was on lined paper as that was all I had at the time.

EyePhone

No not an iPhone, but hopefully you can see what I was getting at. So this is an alternative design for the photoshop assignment I have to do for the Graphic communication course (see the first idea here). This is more of a personal communication device, one that projects the screen to the lens in front of your eye. This allows you to easily see through the device while still being able to focus on the contents of the screen when necessary. Again this is only a very simple computer rendering, with plenty of scope for further design. However again I am happy with it and it will make a good image for the workbook I have to do.

Below are the sketches I did for this. 

I was inspired for this by the lens Garrus from Mass Effect wears over his eye.

Photoshop Stereo Orb

So after yesterdays disappointment, today was back to lectures, Graphic Communication to be precise. Then after the lecture, which was mostly on what our assignment is, we went to the computer labs to do some more work on Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign. I chose Photoshop as earlier today day I had decided on the artifact that I would make on Photoshop.

 This is a quick rough first draft of what the product may look like. What it is is a glowing orb like light that, when activated, splits in two and reveals twin speakers, so its a sort of light/stereo. This is made how we will have to make the final image, out of photo montage, which is taking images from the Internet, and then manipulating them into the desired shapes. To be honest I would prefer to make the images from scratch on Photoshop, but since that is not allowed, this is the way it will be. This took about three hours, including the time taken to screen capture each stage, 50+ in total, and the final design probably won't look too similar to this, but its a good image to include in the workbook I have to create for this project. Below this are the sketchpad pages I used to come up with this idea/design.

Poster, Stone Carving and Broken Mirror

So just a few random things today, while I work on a couple of larger projects which I will show when they are done so you will have to wait. Anyways onwards.

This is a little poster idea I came up with in bed when I wasn't able to sleep. I realised Brunel the university I am going to, and design, the course I am doing, have the same number of letters. So I came up with this idea for a poster using design related words and It has worked well.

This is a merge of a photo I took in Wales and have then recoloured in Photoshop, and the Viking version of my name from  previous.

And finally, when getting up this morning my brother managed to break his mirror. I then decided to piece his mirror back together jigsaw style. Broken glass in a mirror or pane have always interested me, so I then took some photos of it.