Week 5 - Sentry's and silhouettes!!!

   We finally get a project we have full control over this week. The previous two have had strict parameters to deal with. Make a set 6 assets in a room as a group with a Norse style, and recreate a film scene as a group, from the exact angle its shot in. But this one we're "unleashed", as the tutors keep putting it. We have a brief, but the project its self can be any style, shape, colour, design we want.
   Let me elaborate a little. Our project is to design a sentry gun in 4 separate pieces, to set parameters. The gun itself can be literally anything, its really only restricted by our imagination. We could make a candle firing dragon tail gun with water bottles for legs. But I'm not gonna do that, that's silly. Personally, I didn't want to go off the rails like some people did. Not that theirs anything wrong with that. My ideas were more practical ones that I could see within a game, or as a real life object.. I had a few ideas straight of the bat, so I collaborated them on a mood board and worked from there.

Three original ideas, Black and Decker, Old western/rustic metal, Child's toy.

 These were the three that popped into my head when we were told we could do anything. Well two of them were, the Black and Decker one came to me when Chris told us to "splice" our sentry gun with an object from home. I chose a Black and Decker drill I had lying around. It seemed like a potentially real product in an alternate world.

The object I picked for spicing with the sentry.

   The shape is simplistic but has clearly been through plenty of iterations. Its aesthetically pleasing and ergonomically designed. The colour scheme is very simplistic and follows the patterns Mike Kelly told us about in a lecture last week. The contrasting sections clearly separate off each part of the object so its easy for the eye to understand. Not to mention the detailing on the whole thing, which is to give the user a firm grip and also provides a nice pattern along the full length of the drill. Its safe to say their isn't much I don't like about this drill.
   You don't realize how interesting an object really is until you analyse it in detail. All the thousands of object we walk past each day take ages to design and get right, all so we have a cool thing to look at and a tool to use without hurting ourselves. As we take it for granted and stroll past as if its nothing. Its kind of a waste really.

   After deciding the drill would make an interesting and practical sentry gun, I set out to disassemble
interesting shapes from the pictures I had collected. So I could make a Black and Decker bash kit. A bash kit for those who don't know is a series of shapes gathered from somewhere for you to easily mix with, and create many iterations of something, in this case a sentry gun.

Example of a kit bash. No. 7

The 15 original kit bash's I made.

   The first 9 designs I made were me just picking shapes I found interesting, liked and wanted to mix together. While the last 6 were me just picking 8 random sections and seeing what I could make. After creating these I put it to a vote on which ones people liked and disliked to get an insight into which ones I should move forward with.. I asked people I knew to pick 2 they liked and 2 they didn't like. Some people gave me more in depth feedback like, "that one looks like poo" and "that one looks like a battleship" It helped a lot. No but seriously I did get some interesting feedback about what to go ahead with and what to change. Such as the ones people liked the most had a stock of some kind, and also had a long barrel rather than a short stubby one. I should also stick to it looking like a turret/sentry gun, as the ones people really disliked were the ones I felt I failed to make interesting and ended up looking more boxy with no interesting features, such as No. 12.

Pole Results

   I only asked 18 people what they thought to my designs, but as I wanted to crack on with the project I left it at that. Ideally I would have liked to ask a lot more but I didn't feel like waiting around for only a few more votes to role in. It seemed like it would be a waste of time. The main 4 that people didn't like for some reason have been eliminated form my designs, but I'm going to take into account what they didn't like about them so I don't add them to my next iterations. Similarly the main 4 that people did like are going to be worked over and hopefully improved upon.

   You may have noticed I didn't add any stands or supports to the base of my designs like others on my course have done. This is because I didn't just want my stand to be made of random shapes, it needed to have purpose  and be practical, I looked into stands and support for other things such as chairs and tables, the main thing that stood out to me was the folding stand of a workmate, a bench joiners and carpenters use to help them cut wood and clamp joints together etc.

Stand/base Moodboard.

Sentry sketches 1

    We were told we can create our designs anyway we felt comfortable doing so, either silhouettes, sketches, mood boards, digital paintings etc etc. so I decided to use all of the methods to get to grips a bit more on all the potential processes in the future. It really is a case of being jack of all trades master of one. So at this point I am wiling to try everything and anything too expand my art and design knowledge.

Sentry sketches 2

   Overall I am absolutely loving this project so far, I feel like this is one of the ones that I'm going too enjoy the most throughout the year. But then again I have no idea what the future holds. Lets wait and see shall we.