Hey everyone, I am making this post with the hope that it can take some people on a path of improvement and also give you some insight in my learning process.
Around 6-7 months ago I started learning more about vehicle design, the process was not exactly what I expected and in truth, it got better with having the practice combined with theory. The process went like this :
- Started with learning about general rules on how you work through the vehicle design process - this includes vechicle type , wheel distance, position of driver and wheel , door size , elevation from the ground etc. - This area is very important because it can give you a good foundation for general design of the vehicle.
-The next step after theory is practice - Practice itself should be conciously made, meaning in the process of learning - build a check list, a way of working etc, and go through each step. This way you will be able to tackle each problem conciously and actually embed it in your process. Some people will have a harder time - some will have an easier time.
-Another step I use is review- I review what I have done, what was bad - why it was bad- how can I improve it ( this is tidious sometimes, you can become slightly frustrated from time to time, but i personally don't have a diferent way) - the only thing I believe is having breaks and be consistent.
-Ask others for feedback - If you can, ask other people for feedback (try to find someone that does that thing your trying to learn) meaning you won't ask a character designer to help you on vehicle- you would ask them to help you on character design.
-Repeat and also let some time for the information to rest inside your brain- This part is not discussed enough I believe, after you learn something, you let it rest, and then repeat the same process. I do this at least 4-5 times before I can say I remember the knowledge with ease. After this part I also apply most of the knowledge so it becomes a part of my process. In the end the last part I simplify my information to the max so I can keep in mind all the important parts - because in the case of explaining i can expand on the subject with ease.
I tried to do vehicles in the past but never had a real success - had a lot of struggle - and the struggle created frustration. Now I was actually comited to actually get better at this and make it as good as I can. The image you see above - left side top - is how the process started.
In this image what I did was exploring the entire thing with 3d - what you see there with green and red - are notes - notes about what is bad and what can be improved. Again these are not great but are part of the process, a lot of what artists do they tend not to show the bad stuff, but here it is, i believe the vehicle designers out there will definetly say this is bad . What is important is not the bad - is what you learn from it.
Here I have a lot of side views - I wanted to get better at side views- because for me is easy to then think in 3d or even model it to get it in a appropriate form together in z-brush. I use both 2d and 3d to learn because it expands the knowledge more evenly across the board - from theory to aplication- and improves the process as a whole.
This is a place where I started to see more improvement, the line got better too (related to line - line was so bad at first- here is getting better) . I realised that now I can do things with a lot more ease and everything started to come together better.
For the black and white i used Vizcom AI - you can find what it does here : https://www.vizcom.ai/ I think is pretty cool what it does and I think the process is easy to go. I did the drawing - AI did the base shading - I refined it a bit and these are the results.
Here you can find some resources I found:
How to draw Book - Scott Robertson
https://www.youtube.com/c/SangwonSeok
https://www.youtube.com/user/scottrobertsondesign
https://automotive-styling.com/car-design-guides/the-basics-of-car-design/
Overall remember to do your research as well - find everything you can posibly learn from and keep working on it!
Hope you enjoyed this post and wish you all a great day!
Hue