Alias Design has published my latest in my Devil in the Details series. In this episode, I show a methodology for creating geometry that looks geometric but ‘feels’ organic. My intent with this piece was not so much teach a set of tools, but a way to ‘see’; being able to identify problem surfaces and know how to achieve a better result.
I’ve been busily working for the last couple days getting Jenn’s site all back in order. Not only did we migrate her from Blogger to WordPress (like I did), but we also redesigned the entire site adding a lot more content and a brand new look.
It’s still early and I’m sure we’ll tweak some, but everything is mostly in place.
Being totally new to WordPress, it took a while to get used to their componentized templates and heavy use of PHP for stitching it all back together. Easy work for some, but maddening for a first-timer.
I thought I’d give a shout out to some of the developer’s out there that lended their wares to the effort.
The JavaScript slideshow gallery on the front page is from Jon Design’s Smooth Gallery 2.0. It was a fairly easy incorporation and seems to be fast and quite flexible.
The other is Dagon Design’s Secure Form Mailer plug-in. I had reused the PHP scripting from my old site and got it to work, but it felt cobbled together and offered little in terms of spam protection. We’ll give this plug-in a try and hopefully Jenn’s inbox will stay clear of unwanted mail – or not more so at least. Head over to Jenn’s contact page and drop her a line…
I got home form work today and my latest issue of wired was in the post. One of the cover headlines reads “Coffee Science: The Perfect Brew”. I thought, it must be an article about Zander and his Clover machine.
Sure enough. I was right! Woo hoo!
I haven’t even got through the whole article yet, but I got excited. I’ve never had one of those cool Wired magazine instructional illustrations published in reference to one of my projects before. Sweet!
Awesome work guys! Don’t let the mothership steer you too far from course!
J.
I don’t really consider myself a “car guy”. I enjoy racing games. I’ve seen the Pixar movie. I know my fair share of the latest models on the street and many of the classics. But I don’t crave them. I don’t talk about them all the time. I don’t care if I’m driving the latest or fastest. I can’t fix them. I’ve never seen Bullitt.
As a designer though, there is a certain allure. I never had the chance to take a legit transportation design class in college, but there was that temptation. That niggling little voice in my head that said, “yeah, cars are cool.”
There is just something inherently interesting about the shape of cars; the whole format; the platform if you will. Four wheels, two headlights, etc. It’s amazing there are so many variants out there. So many interpretations for a fairly limited archetype.
That little voice told me to give it a spin. Get it out of my system. I started this project, a long time ago. I just had to finish it so I could move on to other projects that I need to get out of my system. So about a week and half ago, I dug out my old files and started over. It’s nice to step away from something and come back to it. You see new things.
I started with this as my basic idea: make a “super car”. Yeah, I know – cliché, but if you have to get a car design out of your system, might as well make it big and fast (looking). I wanted something that evoked classic 60′s cars (Dinos and Cobras and such) but still feel modern. I always loved this era since car design really was about the shape of things rather than how contorted the sheet metal could be or how many vents something could have (all functional of course!). Keep it simple. Make it nice.
I know there is a lot missing with this one. No side markers. No exhaust (hydrogen power?). The grille isn’t really finished. I didn’t do an interior since I didn’t start from the inside-out and no-one could possibly fit in it… or maybe they could. I took the basic dimensions from a Murcielago; overall XYZ dimensions, the track width and wheel base (although I ended-up stretching it a bit).
I took this on as a personal challenge. There was a lot I didn’t know about car surfacing and overall proportions, but I know what I like. I like Cobras (as mentioned). Harald Belker’s Lexus from Minority Report is pretty cool. I love the DBR9 Aston Martin. The Ferrari P45 and Enzo are nice as far as super cars go. So yeah, I took bits and pieces from all of these to make my car. As such, I didn’t set out to make it fit any existing brand. I don’t have a name for this car. It’s working title was just J-car in all my 3D files. It could really use a logo on the nose and tail. Details…
As an aside, I should mention that all of this was done in AliasStudio 2008 running on my new Mac Pro. Overall, I am super impressed with the performance. The images are not renderings, but screen captures directly from the CAD application (with a bit of Photoshop for the depth of field and lighting effects). Real-time rendering has simplified my life in so many ways. I love to look at a product as it is developing and evaluate in under a variety of lighting conditions and in different materials. The “image base lighting” features added in the 2008 edition make for some fantastic images. These have a nice airbrush quality to them more than photorealistic. Not hyper real, but convincing. Maybe one day, I’ll do some Maya Mental Ray images of it.
This has been a really fun project. I learned a lot. I learned how many tools are in AliasStudio are tailored for car design that I don’t use on consumer products. I also picked-up some cool shading tricks that I may share at a future date.
Oh, and here’s one for the Cobra fans…
While Jenn and I were off vacationing in Vancouver, B.C., a few of the tech blogs started circulating Nike Speed+ images. Looks like Nike is set to release the update to their Triax series watches that are base on their “+” platform of wireless monitoring products. The U.S. Nike Timing website hasn’t been updated yet to reflect the product release, but the design looks familiar.
We contributed to this project about 2 years ago. It’s nice to see the “glass ball” aesthetic has been maintained as a derivative of the original Oregon Series watches.
While I searched around Nike’s timing site for some more information on the Speed+, I found this: the Mettle Blade series; which is reminiscent of some watch concepts we did for them when I first started at Teague. This design looks to have been pulled a bit closer to the Oregon Series than the concepts we originally worked on, but there is enough DNA in this version, that I recognized the watch.