Giraffe Mechanics by Andrew Chase

Andrew Chase wrote: "This is my second giraffe (I made the first one to use in "Timmy"). I made it out of transmission parts, electrical conduit, and plumbing pipe. All the joints rotate and lock. Turning a removable crank on the Giraffe's side raises the neck. Lifting the tail releases a catch and lowers the neck. It's about 6 feet tall and it took about 80 hours to build."!

It is incredible! Great work!

Source Baekdal.com

Detroit Motors Competition by Local Motors

This is an exciting competition both for the Local Motors Community and for Detroit!
Design a vehicle for the visionaries and entrepreneurs who will revitalize Detroit. These are the people who will raise Detroit from the ashes of recession. Small businesses like bakers, builders and mechanics. Creative entrepreneurs like designers, musicians and painters. As Detroiters use their ingenuity and creativity to create new enterprise, Detroit will reinvent itself and flourish once again.

Design your vehicle to suit a specific entrepreneur, or a specific job capacity. Make it exciting, and make it DETROIT!

Check out the details and engineering requirements on the Competition Page.

Competition begins on Wednesday, April 29th (00:00, -4 UTC)
The submission deadline is Tuesday, May 5th (23:59, -4 UTC)

The community-chosen winner will take home $1,500USD,bragging rights, and potentially, features in prominent publications. Second and third place will win $300 and $200 respectively, and several community high fives.

Source Local Motors.com

Master in Transportation Design at IAAD Turin, Italy

The Master program in Transportation Design for 2009/2010 will start in April at the Istituto d'Arte Applicata e Design in Turin Italy.

Calendar infos:
April 16th 2009 to July 30th 2010
Lessons: 1000 hours, 100 hours with special guest speakers,640 hours of individual activities, 400 hours internships at partners companies.

Coordinating team:
Strategic Coordinator: Luciano Bove
Internal coordinator: Fabio Miniati
Teacher's team: Daniele Calonaci, Edwin Osorio, Francesco Blancato, Fabio Miniati, Luciano Speranza, Simona Zara, Andrea Cartella, Duilio Romano

For infos contact:
IAAD
c.so re umberto 5 - TO
tel/fax +39.011.54.88.68



Info via: IAAD Turin

Economic crisis and Design opportunities

Hi friends,

for every crisis, there are five steps to go through until we are out of it, one of those is « the rebellion » phase. This step is when people realize that, to overcome the crisis, they must try to do something. This is a very prolific time during which everybody tries his or her best to react. Proposing concrete alternative solutions becomes necessary and useful.

The Design world is particularly excited during this phase because it is the time to make the necessary changes to move on better basis. So, to the question: is the economic crisis a Design opportunity? My answer is yes!

Designers are asked to work on different social axes like architecture, mobility, energy, ecology, just to name a few.
This is the real opportunity to apply significant changes to our society, our way to live our life, our new use and customs, our changed mentality.

For example: the serious consideration of “electric vehicles” will provoke a big infrastructure change in all major cities around the world, the mobility will be re-designed. It looks like, by year 2015 , that there will be a higher rate of electric cars as well as higher rate of associated services.
New trends, new consumer habits, new thinking, new needs. All this can be accomplished thanks to new technologies and clever Design applications. We will go for a more responsible era after the past 20 years during which the key world was "money" for a very selfish consumistic society. Hopefuly this crisis will change this world in a more responsible one to live better, to share, to care.

Lets not forget the importance of Design schools. Art center College of Design is very engaged with sustainability transportation programs. Since few years it organizes workshops and seminars about how to design for a better world starting from the mobility system, I know there are other schools doing similar programs and it is important that they go further with these activities.

I imagine and hope that the actual economic crisis will give ideas to Design schools to use their creativity to anticipate credible solutions.

We can overcome such crisis if we use correctly our creativity.

VW Golf

The new SketchBook Pro is awesome. It has some great new features like symmetry axis, blur, sharpen, more flexible brush creation and the most important, rotate canvas. Unfortunately the latter one doesn't work for me.

MY M5

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Stripes

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Gran Turismo S marker rendering

Arun is a transportation design student at IED in Turin, Italy. He has a blog named AK where you can find some nice automotive sketches and illustrations.

I chose this marker illustration for two reasons: 1st because it is well done and 2nd because, unfortunately, this is a technique not anymore used in school. Message for all design students use color pencils and markers it is the first important step to learn before doing more complicated stuff!

BMW & Co.

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Ivan Borisov and his car design

Good work by Ivan Borisov !

Digital car sketch tutorial

Video from Youtube

M5

Did this cartoon for the upcoming home for BMW owners and enthusiasts, Bimmer Empire.

Fiat 500 L by Nicoletta Bernardi

This Fiat 500 L 1960 has been illustrated by artist Nicoletta Bernardi a passionate of automobile history. Nicoletta publishes her art works at Motori a Matita blog, this type of illustration technique and art is very important because of several aspects such as : the discipline, the attention of rendering with color pencils (not easy at all to get this result), the attention payed to details, prospective and correct use of light and contrast.
You know when I was a kid I started with a very similar technique before learning the "automotive" car design rendering style. With this type of exercise I learned , by myself, some of the most important basics of drawing.

Pen sketch by Deyan Denkov

To make a car sketch using a ball point pen is not an easy task, you need good skills and time to make a good sketch.
Deyan Denkov from Bulgaria gives us a good example of how to do a pen sketch, the cross-hatching technique is important to creat 3D effect and the control of line thikness is extremely important to frame the car. Naturally lets not forget the prospective.

Deyan Denkov studied at Technical College of Yambol, Bulgaria.