OMG PS3 - (continued)

Okay, last design for a PS3 display for a while.  I need to work on other stuff, but I am pretty happy with how these designs progressed from being fairly simple and "blocky" to something waaay cooler.  Enjoy!

OMG - More PS3!!!

Haven't done much designing of late, but had some time yesterday to throw this third concept together.  As much as I'd like to go crazy with some detailing, my gut tells me not to because that would be contrary to the very clean style and branding of the product.

I have another concept taht I'll be generating today, and then that's gonna do it for my "studies in playstation".  It'll be time to move on to something else.

More Sweetness

Finally got around to working on that "Hamilton Sweet" Display.  The theme should be old, worn, faded, but still solid.  Using washed out wood boards with rusted metal bands (with rivets), the whole display carries the overall look and feel of the brand.  Now if I can just figure out how to make the actual product and sell it, I think I'd have a winner!

PS3 Strikes Again!

At the advice of a colleague, I decided to up the ante with the second PS3 Display concept and get wilder with it.  Since this isn't a "real" project, I really am not that concerned with budgets or manufacturing... just a sweet design to do justice to the product and the brand.  Enjoy!

Film

This short sequence was made for my Independant Study class during my final semester in college.  The class focus was to be an extension of my senior thesis - Entertainment Design.

The tank model was designed and built by myself and the set was constructed with foam chunks glued to chicken wire frames.  The final sequence was an animation that I concepted and storyboarded but was actually made by my friend Reuben.

It's low-budget and low-quality, but overall it’s not bad for a first time out with concepting and producing a sci-fi movie sequence.  One day I may decide to take this into some of the more sophisticated software I have and make some adustments (like removing the background and playing around with the brightness and contrast).  But for now, I’ll let this work stand in it’s original form.

Student Film - Tank Blast

Fun?

I am currently building a new gallery of various owrks and pieces that showcase all of my doodles, sketches, marker rendres, and digital illustrations of sci-fi and fantasy things.  Be alert for such dangers as:

- creatures
- spaceships
- environments
- other randomness

None of these was for any other purpose than my own amusement and entertainment - I hope you enjoy checking them out as much as I've had doing them over the years.  This particular gallery will be updated regularly and I'll have to take it one peice at a time since I have a huge stack of doodles and sketches that need to be scanned and then formatted.

http://gallery.me.com/skyarrow19#100046

Hamilton Sweet

Another detour on the road to getting that PS3 project wrapped up is a little idea I've had for a couple of years.  As my friends know, I have a soft spot for whiskey (bourbon and scotch in particular) but I'm pretty much a fan of the entire whiskey family.  So the idea came to me - "What if I could make my own?"  "What would it be called?"  "What would it look like?"

One day while thinking about it, the name popped into my head - "Hamilton Sweet".  Yes!  Thats it!  Now with a name like that, it would have to have an old-time kind of feel to it and would have to have a bit of meaning behind it as well as some kind of credibility.  Well all of that kind of ties in nicely with my own family history on both sides hailing from the Ozark Mountain areas of northern Arkansas.  Perfect!  That region conjours up the same kind of imagery as the Appalachians of Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, yet is distincively "Midwest".

So from there I invented a fictional distillery called "Old Hamilton & Sons Distillery" and based it generally in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.

Here are my ideas for the label and the bottle (not very smooth renderings, but I'm not concerned with that at this point).  My main objective is to use this product to design some nice POP displays and signage with to add to my portfolio... enjoy!

PS3

Finally,  here is the first of the PS3 Display concepts fully rendered based on my initial marker sketch.  I shall also be adding this bad boy to my portfolio!

Quick Study

I will absolutely get those PS3 renders buttoned up here soon, but today I spent a bit of time playing around with some lighting and textures.  I modeled up this very simple scene and then tinkered with the wood and brick textures until I got them just the way I wanted. After that, just a simple matter of setting up a spotlight and tweaking the rendering settings.  I'm pretty happy with it given that I usually only get to render up items with a "newer" finish to them (plastics, metal, wood laminate) so it was cool to crank out something with some actual age and texture to it.

Portfolio

The PS3 project will be updated soon, but until then I got a bit sidetracked with needing to revise my portfolio.  The new version of my online portfolio can be found at the following url:

http://www.coroflot.com/skyarrow/Portfolio1

Staying Sharp

The last several days have proven to be slow for me with not much on the horizon.  Phone calls and emails will continue to be placed to prospective clients, but in addition to the sales-end of things, lets not lose sight of the fact that whole idea of this is business is for me to design.

So with that in mind, I have given myself a proactive project to work on... an endcap display for the Sony Playstation 3.

The first step is to generate a couple of concepts, which I usually do via sketching.  This can be in the form of very rough thumbnails or in more refined hand sketches.  Which path I take depends entirely on what the deliverables are for the project and which client I'm working with.  But for this case, I am going with the assumption that I'll need to present refined hand sketches before proceeding to 3D renderings.

And so after about and hour and a half of drawing, I present my two concept sketches for my self-imposed homework assignment:

Vintage Sweetness

My mom recently purchased this sewing machine from my grandmother.  I still haven't tracked down the year of manufacture, but it has some definite hints of 1950's and early 60's.  No matter what the age however, this is probably one of the most gorgeous product designs I've seen in quite a while.  The proportions, the parting lines, even the side-mounted motor just screams to be compared to modern designs of sci-fi spaceships (like first chapters of the Star Wars saga).

I do enjoy getting to feast upon this brilliant little sculpture on a regular basis!

Lets get started shall we?

For my first design post I'd like to share a couple of low-res renders that I did for a guy here in the KC area that specializes in high-end custom furniture and fixtures for commercial and residential.  These images are of a custom kitchen remodel for a client here in town and I think the overall concept is pretty sweet.  Note, the design and concept is NOT mine, I only helped him by generating this 3D rendering.

I'll post some of my own stuff here as we go, but for now wanted to get this posted for all to see...

Here we go

This will serve as my first post for my design business - "dlh design".

Although I already have a personal blog (that I don't do a great job of updating), I feel it wise to create a seperate blog to focus on design and the POP Display business.  This can be design work that I am involved with, or it can relate to design in general or the POP Display Industry.

So off we go!