Pimp my Gun is a website with a library of different firearm components that you can throw together as you choose. This technique, known as 'collaging' according to our lecturer, is a great process for generating ideas, it allows the user to brainstorm without much thought, in the hopes that you will create something you like, or something that gives an artist the creative spark they need to start working. Below you can see a few of my designs, they vary from the realistic-yet-different, to the futuristic and bizarre.
This website is a lot of fun, and allows a lot creative freedom, and after using it for a while we were asked to take one of these designs into photoshop and create a concept image with it.
As you can see, although i took the futuristic design, not much has been changed. I narrowed the gun itself and added some structures that might hold it together, but overall i really like the aesthetic it already had, it seems like a cop-out i know but that's just how i felt, i also thought that something you dont see in weapons is vertical symmetry, thats why i find this design fairly refreshing, even though assymetry is a design choice to allow some functionality to the device...
In the next part of the lesson we were introduce to our next task which, put simply, was to repeat exactly the same process we had used to design our character/creatures, but to instead design an object.
So to start off, i went in search of inspiration.
And after scouring turtleart.net for some time, here it is. This image is, as far as i can tell, a rendered 3d model of a Lightcycle from the movie Tron: Legacy. It was designed and created by Daniel Simon, a concept designer who specialises in vehicular design, holding senior designer positions for both Bugatti and Volkswagen, before he moved to designing for hollywood films and his own personal projects.
Above you can see some concept work for my chosen image, i really enjoy the blend of angular and curved surfaces that were used in this design and i hope to be able to capture it in my own work.
As was done for the character design, i started with a page of credit card concepts:
As you can see i tried to mimick Simon's curvey approach in my work here, and it was this that led me to my final idea on the bottom right, which everyone in my peer group agreed was the best design. Just from looking at it you might be wondering why, and thats because the tiny concept image gives nothing away. The idea came about when thinking of curves, and was that of a spaceship with a warp drive, you can see why HERE. Basically, its a spaceship with a ring around it. You can get a slightly better idea of it from my refined image, which you can see below:
If you clicked through to the article i linked, you'll see the similarities between my design and that of the hypothetical warp drive craft. I make the assumption in my design that the ring would need to be spun for the drive to function, hence the small dots on the bottom of the ring, which are thrusters, there are more on the top.
There was another article on this theoretical warp drive that posed the idea that using such a device would cause 'shockwaves', much like soundwaves build up on jets as they travel, causing a devastating beam of energy when the drive reached its destination (see HERE.) In a most likely laughable solution to this problem, i decided to make the craft a very flat, razor sharp flying saucer. The reason being that the low profile of the craft would mean that no significant energy buildup would happen. I thought of the idea that these saucers could turn on their side (though orientation doesnt really have a place in space to be honest) when entering one of these rings, and that their engines, located in the centre of the craft, could be used to power them. The jagged lines are supposed to be arcs of electricity, either acting as an ignition for the drive, or providing a constant stream of electricity, i havent decided yet.
After this stage, it was once again time to get my refined image into Photoshop. See my next post for how that went.
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