GG ACADEMY

Concept Vehicle Design

 

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: Iconic Vehicle Design Analysis​

• Activities: Lecture & Demo

• Homework: Warm-ups, Studies, Silhouette Sketches, Project 1 reference sheet

• Due Date: Week 2

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Week 02: Lecture: Bluesky Design & Ideation​

• Activities: Critique, Lecture & Demo

• Homework: Refine ref sheet (add design brief), warm-ups, project 2 package ideation, silhouettes with light & shadow, final 3 views

• Due Date: Week 3

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Week 03: Commercial & Consumer vehicles Pt. 1​

• Activities: Critique, Lecture & Demo

• Homework: Ellipses, car/bike sketches, project 2 ref sheet, ideation

• Due Date: Week 4

 

Week 04: Commercial & Consumer Vehicles Pt. 2

• Activities: Critique/ paintover, Lecture & Demo

• Homework: Refine ref sheet if needed, Refine ideation and finished final views

• Due Date: Week 5​​

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Week 05: Aerospace​

• Activities: Critique/ paintover, Lecture & Demo

• Homework: Aerospace sketches, pick one design to take to finish; Paint or line/value

• Due Date: Week 6

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Week 06: Interiors & Cockpits​

• Activities: Critique, Lecture & Demo

• Homework: 2 Interiors with matching exteriors

• Due Date: Week 7

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Week 07: Extreme Modification: Extreme Modification : Leveraging your tools & Final Project Launch

• Activities: Critique, lecture & demo

• Homework: Build a 2d/3d kit, modify one of your previous designs or design a heavily modified vehicle

•                    Final project pitch/ref sheet & package/ concept ideation

• Due Date: Week 8​

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Week 08: Vehicle Stylization

• Activities: Critique, Lecture & Demo

• Homework: Design a vehicle based on an animation/ video game character, layout and design according to provided storyboard or white box

• Concept refinement or 3d massing &  paintovers

• Due Date: Week 9&10​

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Week 09: Art Directing yourself​

• Activities: Critique/ Paintover & Demo

• Homework: Keyframe of finalized design(lighting materials, greebles, graphics,etc)

• Functional callout or cutaway sheet

• Due Date: Week 10​

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Week 10: Final Presentations​

• Activities: Presentation/ Paintover & Demo​​​

• Homework: N/A

• Due Date: N/A

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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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