SUMMER PROJECT
Retro Robot: shape concepting
Starting to create some shapes for my robot, I found myself pretty annoyed about the lack of possibilities with the design. Okay, maybe I'm not too much of a good designer at the end, but still, there isn't much to do, if you avoid the geometric rough shapes you are missing the whole point of a 50s and 60s robot. I spent A lot of time trying to make my sillouetes look different from each other, and at the end the result was cool, but I'm still not sure about my final design. I didn't have that insight about any of them yet.
I started with some very sketchy sillouettes and then decided to give them more detail to be more sure of what I was picking from. I avoided at this point to create small details as the faces and de devices that would build the robot.
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The main thing about the robot design, and the one thing that got me reluctant about the design was: THE LEGS. The legs are so impractical! I've seen hundreds and hundreds of designs and the majority of them just use longs PVC tubes for the legs but HOW are they supposed to MOVE like that?? It's ridiculous to add human legs to robots if you don't have the technology to make them bend properly! I can't make a Dalek and just give them the ability to flight, because that's just too lazy. It's so much easier with the arms because they're not supporting the weight of the whole body. As a result I avoided legs and went for a rolling robot, even though I'm aware they wouldn't climb any stairs. We gotta live with that, there are not many stairs around the streets and they can just stay outside of the buildings in Universities and make sieges. That's horrible, oh my god.
For the colour picking, I decided to try something new and use the technique of using the clolours of an existing photograph. I was looking for urban scenarios for awhile when I found the perfect picture to use as reference! I wanted something that would be essencially bright, and then I would make everything darker and more monochromatic when adding the rust and making everything look older. So I chose this picture with a good amount of greys and earth tones with colourful details, overlapped with my designs and started painting some colours to the robots!
After I had all the main colours picked for every design, I started to paint over it to see how it would look like, obviously is an exagerated effect, with details missing and some of them are obviously more colourful than they should be, but I was just looking for the best colour combination here.
At the end what had to be taken into account here was the function of the robot and if It would fit into the sci-fi world I am creating. That means I had to leave some combinations behind, like the yellow-salmon and priorize the blue-grey combinations. I think I alrealy have a final colour palette in mind thanks to this experiment, and now I just have to choose the best shape design.
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I had never done something like this for the colours and I think it helped so much. It would be great if I could just walk around the city and take pictures and make my own collection of references, but the English weather has to be good to me for this to happen. I was pretty happy with the soft colours I got from the references instead of very saturated or very dark greys for the metals, I think I got some interesting colours to play with different kinds of materials here!
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Next steps are deciding the final shape, creating the detailed concept and maybe a block-out to show the robot in it's most splendorous form.
Retro Robot: background research
For my summer project I'm taking the second year material to create some new designs before I go back to Brazil. I've gotten props, a building, a diorama, a character, and now I'm making a robot! Everything's going straight to my portfolio to show how versatile I can be.
The brief is "The undisclosed games company is creating a game based on 50s sci-fi called the 'Rise of the Robots'. The company is looking for new and original key 3D character/prop for the game. They need original robot designs that link with the time and genre. It needs to be sophisticated and designed to be counter balance to the plethora of slick shiny humanoid machines visualised in popular culture and cinemas today". Yep. That means no futuristic robots for me, only those square unpractical beasts from half a century ago. I'm so excited. I can only remember what Doctor Who did with the Daleks after they realised their design wouldn't allow them to go up stairs or make any complex movement: they just created an excuse for them to FLY. It was gold.
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I first went to the internet to collect some visual reference for the robot designs we had at that time! I collected some of them, but I also looked at some great sources that would list the technological advances they made at the 50s and 60s. Alan Turing's computer, the first home videocassette, the first satelyte, video recorders, telephones, it was a brillant time. I really want to show all of this innovation on my designs. Below there is the reference board for the visual aspects of the robots.
That was cool. But you see, I had to dive into historical sources to understand exactly what was going on with the world during the 50s and 60s, and create a narrative for my final concept. That being said, these two decades were just too much. There were wars, civil rebellions, nuclear weapons creation, the race for technological innovation, the first human troops being sent to outer space, while the population was rioting against the cold war effects and creating movements for social justice: the Black Power Movement, the Black Phanters, the second-wave of feminism, people fighting for the rights of the minorities on the US and Europe! I saw some golden ideas for some sci-fi movies there.
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I had set up four general narratives for my design:
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1. My robot would be a weapon of mass destruction with nuclear power created to intimidate the world - mostly the USSR - and would end up creating a post war conflict between robots created by all nations.
I immediately rejected this idea considering the HUGE amount of material surrounding the cold war. It would be really nice, but I can't take this anymore. More US x USSR, is Hydra coming into the story as well? God no please.
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2. The robot would be created by the government to ceize and control the riots that would start the counterculture. They would be mostly sent to intimidate students at Universities, and this would eventually lead to a great civil war of people vs machine. The peaceful hippie movement would not see it's peak, and people would see themselves obligated to literally fight for their lives.
I liked it and eventually chose this idea because I don't think I have even seen this storyline being told by popular media. What would have happened if the government decided to stop the social movements right on their beginning instead of the natural flourishing of the Hippie scene!
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3. The robot would be created to replace humans on space travels to avoid life losses.
That is cool. But I don't see a sci-fi coming out of this idea.
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4. A general domestic server robot.
I refuse to take part in robot slavery and be THIS cliché. Just no.
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So what I have for now is number Two: the "police" robot! Let's see how it goes from now on.
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