Effective Vehicle Design Class
-
Hi! I've been working my way through classes and I feel I've hit a speed bump. I did over 20 silhouettes for the creative vehicle design but I don't understand how to take the silhouettes and use them. The class seems to jump from silhouettes and using creative things to... I'm drawing a flying sushi boat, which was awesome. Can someone explain how that works for them?
Thanks!! I love reading these posts and getting to see what you all are up to.
-
@Lisa-Clark I recently completed this course and found the silhouette and household object exercises most helpful for shape ideation and breaking out of preset notions of what a vehicle design might look like. In my experience the silhouette exercise is a way to quickly generate multiple shape designs for a potential subject or object. It also provides a strong read of the shape by completely shading it black (although I find mixing in some white space can help communicate form nuances).
I typically view the silhouette as a contour/outline of the potential vehicle drawing but it could also be just a portion of it, that you would subsequently build a more detailed line drawing/sketch around. If I recall correctly the instructor doesn’t demo the silhouette method to sketch step but does show the gesture line method to sketch step. All three of the shape ideation methods from the course (silhouette, gesture lines, household object ) follow the same pattern: take an abstract shape, and build a full sketch around that, either incorporating all or part of the abstract shape into the vehicle design. It’s just a jumping off point to get you out of the box on the vehicle shape/form.
The silhouette concept is also demonstrated in the Prop design fundamentals course.
Hope that is helpful.
