A breakthrough?

Between some of the help Ahn has been giving me in class and some sweet online tutorials at idsketching.com I have been working toward a new technique of sketching. It is a much more loose, emotional and dynamic style, important for an industrial designer. It is also much less focused on the details and mechanics of the object in question. I have been plagued by this need to make super detailed drawings that make sense mechanically and from a manufacturing standpoint but have lacked a certain shimmer, if you know what I mean. This drawing is the first of the new style. It is for our upcoming mousetrap car competition. I still have a long way to go, but it is so different from what I've done in the past that I felt I had to share it with the interwebs.

Things I'm doing besides ignoring my blog....

I have been learning Rhino 3D, a program designers use to create digital models of their ideas. These are just some fun exercises I have done in the last few weeks to get used to the tools:

Mighty mousetraps!

Wednesday was the first annual mousetrap race car competition at the University of Washington School of Art. It was a showdown between the Junior and Senior Industrial Design classes in three categories, speed, distance and style. One of our instructors, Magnus Feil proposed the challenge and mentioned that there would be press there to cover the event. I think most of us were thinking it would be the school newspaper, maybe the photography club, etc. We were all a little surprised when the two major seattle newspapers showed up and one of the local television stations! It really added to the excitement of the event and I have to hand it to Magnus for arranging this great publicity for our up and coming Industrial Design program. It's no secret that Western Washington University has had the better program in the state but I believe their days on top are numbered thanks to our outstanding faculty and the pure energy given by my fellow classmates who are pouring their heart and soul into every detail of every project.

First, a couple photos of my trapster, I was trying for speed:

 

Here's the article from the Seattle PI:

And finally, I just found this today, here is a little video compilation from the Seattle Times, watch for my car at about 0:39, it was a very close race, but I lost...