Hi, in this blog I'll show my process and learning I had during the course of Nature and Form. I'm a second-year Industrial Design student at NID Andhra Pradesh. This course was done under the guidance of Mrs.Snehal Joshi.
Before Lockdown:
We had already started with the course before the global pandemic. We had finished with two weeks of the course and now I’ll show you the outcome of the first two weeks.
In the beginning, we were just getting ourselves familiar with our chosen species and their forms, be it the different stages in its lifecycle or movement or peculiar features it has. It was all about getting the so familiar with the form that we can decide what the attributes are and what are the things we can get away while changing the form but still keeping its feel.
After studying the animal and the form we went on to making wire models of the form. The objective was to understand the form in 3D and see what the key features of it are in 3D. We then tried to reduce as much as possible whilst keeping the basic form and feel of the animal intact. This gave us an insight of the essentials in our forms. This could be explained as a 3D abstraction process.
During lockdown: day1
Its been a while now since we last worked with our forms. Coming back to the course our first object was to get back in touch with our forms with form abstraction and from inspired product exploration.
Exploring products from the form[Komodo dragon]
rough sketches
day2:
I continued with form abstraction in photoshop. The idea was that if we keep one view of the form and trace over it we could understand and write down the key elements without which the form would loose it meaning and also whilst seeking the elements which are the foundation or the essentials of the forms we've chosen.
Foundation: In this exploration, I tried to understand the form and identify its key features and change them to see what differences it can make to the overall form.
Observation: After looking at the above forms, I understood the key features of the form. These are as follows:
- strength
- dynamism
- balance
- sturdiness
Exploration 1:
Here I tried to change the dynamism and balance factor of the form and see how it affects the form.
Observations: By removing different parts of the form I found out that it affects the overall balance and dynamism of the form. Since I did not change the base of the form it somewhat kept its sturdiness, though the strength factor decreased a bit as the changed the form. As we go through the 4 images, image 1 is the base, I saw that image 2 was the most dynamic, image 3 and 4 lost its sense of balance as the visual weight shifted to one end and weren't as dynamic as image 1 or 2.
Exploration 2:
Here I tried to enhance the key attributes of the form.
Observation: after observing the above three explorations I came to the conclusion that by exaggerating or understating the key attributes the overall feel of the form changes. When exaggerated it feels like its strength factor increases whereas when understated it decreases. There is not much change in its dynamic feature and there is still a sense of balance.
Exploration 3:
Here I tried to reduce the details and push the boundaries of the form to achieve a softer feel whilst retaining some of its key attributes.
Observations: As I reduced the details from the first red sketch I noticed a change in its strength and sturdiness which was bound to happen considering the intention of the exploration but the dynamism of the form didn't change all that much. The overall aggression of the form also reduced and lost its balance in the 5th and 6th frames considering the red sketch as frame 1, but the sense of balance was restored in the last frame.
Exploration 4:
Here I tried to add another attribute to the form without causing big changes to the existing attributes. The attribute that I tried to add was fierce.
Observations: As I transformed the existing form I took into consideration that I don't change the form a lot to keep its existing attributes. Whilst doing the above changes I noticed that the form had soft curves and sharp edges, the union of these two entities gives off a fierce and ferocious feel in the last frame. The dynamism of the form hasn't changed but there is a certain enhancement of the speed value of the form due to its soft curves and pointed ends. There is a small change observed in the strength and sturdiness value of the form as we move from frame 1 to 4.
Exploration 5:
Here I tried to explore how gender can be view in terms of form.
Observations: As seen in the above two frames it is clear which form seems to be of the male sex and which of the female sex. Why does this happen? The answer to this question is simple, through experience and shared knowledge of the species we have often seen and observed males be physically stronger than women due to the difference in our anatomical evolution, due to this very reason we associate male character to be physically stronger. Since out of the two the first frame seems visually stronger, it gives off a male vibe. This is due to the minor change in the form which can be mainly seen at the top left part of the form and softer lines on the bottom of the second frame.
Exploration 6:
Here I tried to add age attribute to the form to make it give a feeling of being old.
I tried to draw the first frame with incomplete lines and give a sense of an old wall painting. In the second frame, I added a few shakey lines to give off a sense of age and feebleness.
Observation: The first frame doesn't seem to work very well in terms of age but gives a sense of being unsure, incomplete, and gives texture to the lines. The second frame, on the other hand, gives off a sense of tremble in the form and makes it look weak.
Form Inspired Product Explorations:
After abstracting the form, we were asked to make a teapot or a lamp inspired by that form. Here are some of my explorations regarding the same:
Final Products:
Rough Renders of the final product
Final Renders:
After further exploring my previous teapot and cup…..I came up with the following product.
