Tuesday, 3 June 2014

The Starfish


I was looking at some motorbikes last week and admiring the way the hard mechanics are complemented by the smooth glossy paintwork on the fiberglass body, certain areas are cut away to allow some engine parts to show, it left me with a feeling that I wanted to create something that had this seductive material combination, glossy plastic and hard machined metal... I started noodling ideas in my sketchbook and still had this tri-head mech design idea from before that I wanted to develop further so began to push this shape around, creating flowing panel lines to break up the fiberglass shells, and designing mechanical parts that would be repeated around a center - but what does the mech do....? This is probably the first time that I didn't have an idea but wanted to created interesting shapes to allow materials to be assigned and just look dam good when photographed! I created some sort of turbine elements and exhaust vents, so visually it implies some sort of flight/hovering function - a lab drone.....? Could be, I like that and it's very fitting in white, but I know I wanted to try some other colours, red is sexy, more of a nod to the Ducati bikes I was looking at, tried a yellow version and it reminded me of an ROV sub unit, so that was the theme of the environment paint up, couldn't resist putting a shark in there (Jaws still burnt into my brain from a childhood viewing...!)

Hope you enjoy it!








ROV

Mind the shark

Original SketchUp model


Idea and form that hatched in my sketch book

Sunday, 1 June 2014