Week 07.

This week is the start of a new project in which I have to design and model a sentry gun. So far I have spent my time generating ideas that could possibly work for sentry gun, creating silhouettes to find a design that looks unique and imaginative but realistically plausible at the same time. I created a mood board which I was able to switch back to whenever I needed more ideas, the mood-board consisted of images of flamethrowers, conventional guns and sci-fi weaponry. I wouldn’t be using all three themes but a combination of two, either a sci-fi gun with a flamethrower attachment or a more modern day conventional sentry gun with a mounted flamethrower, regardless of the direction I head in flamethrower idea would be implemented as this would be the unique feature of this sentry gun.

I had three main designs that I was considering to implement as you can see below. In the top left I have all the research I had done for possible flamethrower ideas since that was definitely going to be part of my turret design. In the bottom left I have gathered images for machine guns and more conventional weapons, these would be the primary weapons for the sentry gun so I had to think relatively big. There was a possibility that I may go for a scifi approach to the project so as you can see in the top right I collected examples I thought would work well on a sentry gun or just weapons that could give me some inspiration to create my own scifi ideas. I had a few ideas of what I wanted the stand to look like but I did some research into possible stands anyway (bottom right), I thought it would be pretty interesting if my sentry gun had wheels too so I collected a couple images supporting that idea too. I thought it would pretty important to make sure both guns on my turret carrued the same theme eventhough they were shooting completely different projectiles, so in the centre I gathered examples of weapons that fired different types of ammo but maintained the same theme/design.

After finishing my moodboard I wasted no time and started making sillhouettes to generate ideas:

My first five ideas were very down to earth and realistically possible and I liked them because of it, they seem very imaginative but can still work in this day and age. These design were created using two sections of my moodboard (machine guns and flamethrowers).

I was told by a peer that they looked a bit bland so I tried to make the next two more interesting by adding a more scifi/futristic design to them, they were certainly more interseting but apparently they still weren't anything that stood out.

The next day I came back and really tried to push for sillhouettes that stood out whilst still trying to maintain a realistic approach and it resulted in me producing my best sillhouetts yet. I tried to go using an idea I had placed in my moodboard I decided to add dragon features to my turret, seeing as it shoots fire it makes perfect sense after making the "Fire Breather" sillhouette I went on a small dragon turret spree creating 11. and 12. (Spitfire) with dragon features too. (sillhouette 10 was actually created before 8 and 9).

I posted my sillhouettes to the critique Facebook group to get a wider range of feedback and my designs were recieved very well, somebody actually said they were the best designs he has seen yet. Surprisingly the more realistic designs were praised too. Overall the most popular choices were designs [6], [8], [12], [13] and [14] so brought those through to the next stage of concepting.

[Really quick rough drawings of design 6 to bring the 2D sillhouette design into 3D]

[Needed better more accurate drawings so I made a base model of each design and started painting over them again]