GG ACADEMY

Industrial Vehicle Design for Entertainment

 

This course is designed as an introduction to the world of vehicle design from an industrial design perspective as it applies to entertainment. It will supply students with a foundation in design thinking and a variety of ideation and illustration techniques. Students will be pushed to experiment with the goal to develop an understanding on how to find and nurture their personal style, all while still able to meet a production's needs. 

 

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• A basic understanding of perspective and 3D principles

• Basic Visual Communication skills are recommended to get the most from the class.

• Experience drawing and painting using traditional and/or digital drawing tools

• This will be a mileage-heavy course, so be ready to dedicate time to doing homework.

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• Course Materials, Textbook, and Software This is Optional (example: Photoshop, Blender, Maya etc. Aka what tools will you be using in this class).​

• Required Material​

  • Class will be taught primarily using photoshop, blender, and plasticity and may potentially include various other 3d software such as Gravity Sketch, Moi3d, and traditional tools 

  • Any 2d digital art software

  • Any 3D polygon modeling, nurbs modeling, or sculpting software and rendering package recommended but not required

  • Traditional tools such as markers, pencil, pens, gauche etc.. are welcome but must be cleaned up and clear upon presentation

• Recommended Texts & Other Readings:

  • H-Point The Fundamentals of Car Design & Packag

  • Mechanika by Doug Chiang 

  • The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist

  • Cosmic Motors by Daniel Simon

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Important Note: This syllabus, course assignments, and due dates are subject to change. It is the student's responsibility to check our course. Any changes will be clearly noted in course announcements.

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Week 01: Intro to Vehicle Design

Lecture: Iconic Vehicle Design Analysis

• • Demo: Warm-ups - basic forms

  • How to do homework studies 

  • Quick ideation & sketching basics 

  • Silhouette-based design approach 

  • Basic 3/4 lighting and value rendering using only 3 values

  • Instinctual and emotion-based reference gathering 

 

In-class assignments: Form sketching

 

Homework:

• 1 page Drawing warm-ups of primitive forms in perspective

• 1 version Add basic shading 

• 1 Study for each of students' favorite Iconic Vehicles in film, games, and mass production

• 3 Silhouette sketches of Spaceships (small fighter or large battleship), race cars, offroaders, submarines or yachts, and cargo trucks 

• Pick one to add 3 values to 

• Pick your favorite design and character that correlates to the design from studies and make a 1 reference sheet based on the lecture.

 

Week 02:

Lecture: Conceptual Vehicle Design

• Critiques (work is to be uploaded before class)

• Lecture: Setting an effective objective

• Demo:

• Package sketching and establishing scale

• Grey Silhouette with light and shadow to graphic breakup and texture

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• Homework:

• Redesign one of your studies, keeping in mind its purpose and the world its in

• ​Refine Inspiration/ brief board

• Narrow down to 2 keywords and 2 images that best define your design objective

• Package ideation sketches

• grey silhouette with quick darks and lights

• ​1 Side view, 1 Front ¾ , and 1 rear ¾ perspective view with graphic breaks and refined shadows and highlights

• 3D or photo use is allowed but only as an underlay for perspective

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• Week 03: Commercial & Consumer vehicles

•    -  Critiques

  • Lecture: Anatomy, Structure & Evolution of Cars

  • Types of Cars

  • Power sports & motorcycles

  • ​Demo: Constructing an ellipse

  • Various ellipse exercises

  • Automotive paint demo

  • Reflections 

  • The magic of overlays

  • Form inspiration sketching for automotive design (speedform sketching)

  • Automotive pencil-style sketching & rendering

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  • Homework: 

  • 3 pages of just ellipses 

  • 2 - 3 sketches of cars or motorcycle designs of the different eras \

  • 1900s - 1950s 1960s - 1980s 1 Current and 1 future

  •  paint/render your favorite design/sketch

 

Week 04: Airplanes

• Critiques

  • Lecture: Basic Airplane Anatomy and Function

  • Demo: Digital marker and ink

  • Plan View sketching

  • 1 page each of airplane design sketches of the different eras 

  • WW1

  • WW2

  • 1950 - 80s

  • 2000s 

  • Future & Next gen (drones and low orbit jets ok)

  • Pick your favorite design and refine to a more finished ink and marker sketch​

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Week 05: Extreme Modification: Lifting/Off Roading & Hot Rodding

Critiques

 

• Lecture:

• A brief history in vehicle modification

• Modern Examples

  • Safari Porsche

  • Dropped alpha

  • Aether Alfa

  • Lexus offroad

  • Offroad miata

  • Demo: Modifying your designs

  • Chop Jobs

  • Photo bashing and kit building

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  • Homework:

  • Build a kit

  • Modification passes on 2 of your previous designs!

 

Week 06: Interiors & Cockpits Vehicle Stylization for Animation

• Critiques

•  Lecture: Interior scale/proportions/considerations & examples or possible guest lecture    

• Demo: Block in in using 3d

•  Block in using images/reference or guest demo

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• Homework:

• 2 interiors, different vehicles & perspectives, 1- single seater, 1- 2+ seater

       2 matching exteriors

      The shapes and glass should match

       

Week 07: Vehicle Stylization for Animation

• Critiques

•  Lecture: What informs vehicle stylization in animated content and how to interpret a storyboard

•  Demo: Character-driven vehicle design possible/guest demo or lecture      

 

Homework:

 

•  Choose any animated character from a popular IP and design a vehicle to match their proportions.​

•  Layout your design in accordance to the provided storyboard

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Week 08: Style Development

• Critiques

• Lecture: What is style and what dictates its success

• Demo: Using a photo for personal style exploration based on your interests and taste

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• Homework: Explore a range of styles by doing 1 study of each:

• 1- contemporary artists (concept artists, industrial designers, illustrators, etc…)

• 2- vintage traditional sci-fi & aeronautical illustration

• 3—Photo study online or your own photo: If possible, prioritize taking your own photo or be extremely selective with online images. Look for what you consider to be good lighting, composition and framing, subject matter, mood, and story. The image needs to impact you.

 

Week 09: Art Directing yourself: Final Project Launch/ Crafting a personal project or working from a Project Brief

• Critiques

• Lecture: Setting an objective

• Targeted reference selection and effective keyword usage 

• Form

• Function

• Emotional association

• Details 

•  Creating a Deck/ Ref Board

• Demo: Crafting a design matri

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• Homework:

• Create design objective sheet

• Create a design matrix

• 1 page package ideation

• 1 page concept ideation

 

Week 10: Presentation & Keyframing

• Lecture: Detailing: Functional mechanics vs Greebling and when to use each 

• Demo: Final touches and blending vehicles to background

 

Week 11: Final Project Prep

• Work in class: Set up a game plan for final

• presentation and paintovers for finals

 

Week 12: Final Presentations

 

•       Final presentations and critiques and final thoughts moving forward

•       Possible Guest Critiques TBD

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List objectives for this course. 

 

• Students will learn to develop their sensitivity for vehicle design and further develop their design, sketching, and illustration techniques. 

• Style development 

• Pipeline and process development & exploration

• Gain an insight into understanding the importance of thumbnailing, scale & packaging, visual association, proportion, form, shape, silhouette, compound surfacing, corners, section design, volume, function based detail, story and manufacturing considerations, and commercial (consumer facing) vs industrial design.

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You will meet the outcomes listed above through a combination of the following activities in this course: