The other week we had a week off from regular study patterns, and instead had an "Intensive week". In which we had to design a vehicle from scratch, starting from a basic object. In this post I'm going to talk a little bit about what i did, I liked/disliked about the project, what went well and not so well for me and how I could have improved.
First off we started with an item of our choosing, in my case I chose my Zippo lighter. A pretty interesting and deceivingly complicated item. we then drew the silhouette of it about 50 times to see what interesting and complex shapes became of this once so simple object. From my Zippo i came up with 2 main ideas for vehicles, both pretty simple. I went with an idea of an air boat with some kind of modified engine on the back, and as the lighter had a kind of jet exhaust style thing going on, a small jet engine seemed to fit the bill.
I wanted to keep the main propulsion system as fans, because purely using a jet engine for something as simple as an air boat would be a bit too much i think. So I incorporated the two together with the jet engine in the middle and 3 small fans around the outside, my idea being that the fans mainly power it, and the jet engine is there for the occasional boost. Such as if you get stuck on something in the water or on land, as it is an amphibious vehicle. This is the design i went with, nothing particularly fancy.
I thought i had it all worked out, i had an idea of how a jet engine worked and figured out how a separate engine would power the fans, but it wasn't until i made a physical 3D model of it, that i realized I still had a lot to work out. For a start the fans weren't attached to anything other than the cam belt, the fan covers would have probably snapped off quite quickly as there only attached at the base with standard steel pipes, so they could have easily fallen over due to the power of the fans. Not to mention would the engine or jet engine even work as there wouldn't be much air flow to either of them as the driver of the boat is stood right in the way.
I don't know if I'm thinking too much into this or if this is exactly what i should be thinking, but I know next time I'm doing a project like this I will be making my designs that bit more realistic, because if there not, there not believable, and if people don't believe there realistic enough it breaks immersion in game.
I learnt a lot from this project, as it showed me how to go about designing you own vehicles from scratch, how to progress ideas and how to come up with a final piece. I really liked the modeling and digital painting aspect of this project, even though i still need to work on the painting side of things. What i should have done looking back is gone with my other vehicle design, a jet that takes off and lands on a rail, with the use of magnets to aid it. But if i'd have done that i feel i wouldn't have learnt as much from this project, so in the end I'm glad I stuck with the air boat after all.
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