One 2013 resolution was creating more ‘realistic’ mechanical designs in my personal work as a lot of recent demos and things have been quite ‘made up’ sci-fi tech (with lens flares!) so here was some sort of humanoid utility robot to get the ball rolling. Like a more developed Boston Dynamics ‘Petman’ type robot that could be used for the military, similar territory Long and i explored on the DRONE webseries. When you head into the ‘realistic humanoid military robot’ territory it is hard to get away from (but i will try!) the brilliant work my co-workers Christian Pearce, Greg Broadmore and especially Aaron Beck have done the past few years and of course Shirow’s GIS work before that. This type of design is pretty fun but also feels a bit limiting in a way, it always feels more like being a slave to research and gathering way too many military/medical/robotics photos to make sure everything looks like it could be built by current day or slightly future manufacturing processes, i guess its just getting used to thinking within a set of more rigid limitations…… milled aluminum looking forms for body chassis, hexapod neck pistons, chunky/angular head forms, hexagonal ‘stealth’ panel breakups, aerials, helicopter vision optics, NO GLOWING LIGHTS especially for eyes etc (all basic rules/guidelines learned from working with Aaron Beck). Though if you aren’t careful it can start to look like a pile of stacked rectangular boxes like mine did, will try to avoid that next time.
ZBrush + PS
`ChewedKandi has certainly gone out of her way to keep the vector community on the right path. Always making sure that her talents are infinitely scalable, Sharon has put her bezier curves to excellent use, and firmly anchored herself as an inspirational leader. We're absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for June 2013 to `ChewedKandi. Congratulations, Sharon! Read More
Sta.sh
Inspiration basically from all the things mentioned in the above description. Real world fighter jets, helicopters, robotics, hexapods/pistons, cars.....anything and everything Masamune Shirow. A lot of the time detailing this was research, too many military photos and medical robotics photos etc.
Basically looking at real world designs and mechanics and applying them to an imaginary design, understanding how things are built and why something looks the way it does and applying it to a robot.... and in most instances here directly chopping in parts like the connector joints from the neck hexapod to the head is an actual connector on an actual Hexapod so it would actually bend and rotate properly. As mentioned above it almost becomes a bit limiting for me as i would draw something i would have to run back to my reference and look to see if that would actually work, or finding real world parts that function similarly or exactly to what i am drawing.
This is def a starting point for me this year, will be pushing into new territory throughout the rest of 2013. Look forward to sharing some new stuff soon.
But it wasn't...