High school student portfolio

Hello everyone. My name is Mason and I’m a 17 year old high school student working on becoming an automotive and or product designer. I hope to recieve feedback on my work as I need to get better and keep improving, so any comments will help!

Online portfolio- http://cargocollective.com/mbw

Blog- http://mbw-design.blogspot.com/

Thanks and I want to hear some critique!
-Masom

Very nice work there for a high school student. On average better than many transport students after first year from what I remember. If anything maybe be a bit more selective, as there’s quite a bit of range in quality at the moment.

keep it up,
nik

Agree with hiower. The car sketches and marker renderings are good but its being let down by the product design sketches and your photoshop renderings. Continue to practice and I’m positive you will be miles ahead when you get to university. I would suggest following some photoshop rendering tutorials to improve your digital techniques, as your analog skills don’t seem to be translating across the mediums.

Jack

Thank you Nik! Isn’t being talented in a wider range better than one or two things? Or should I just focus on one?

thanks man!!! Any critque or tips you could give? I find myself getting stuck lately with mediocre designs…

Agreed, awesome stuff especially for high school!

Since you mentioned that you are interested in product design as well as transportation, it would be good to show a product project that has some sort of problem statement, research into user group, etc (exactly what you did in the Chevy Trek project: http://cargocollective.com/mbw/Design-Projects).

Thanks for the feedback guys! And I do have a lot of product stuff on the side. I just don’t want to post much of it and and have any of my ideas replicated. I’ll try to do some quick pages of thumbnails and post them up here later.

Recent render.

Kids these days… :wink:

Mason, this is excellent work for a high school student. There are some inconsistencies (for example your Mini marker sketch is really quite good, but your Nissan Juke one is not as successful) but I would expect that at your age. When putting together your college portfolio, some editing will bring out the strongest work. Some of the product work is better than others, but again, to be expected. I think you could be stronger in that work.

Your Camaro render above is very strong, and your graphical work is superb! Like the VW below, I’d love to see some of that visualization technique applied to your products or transport design. I can see the eye you have for photography translate in these graphical images:
http://cargocollective.com/mbw/T-Shirt-Designs

Not sure where you are located, but if you are in SoCal and would like to job shadow at our studio for a day, we would be open to that.

Very good work. Keep posting in here, keep pushing yourself, and keep reaching out for feedback. It is the fastest way to get better. With the level you are at, considering the age you are at, you have a lot of potential!

You should check out some of the work of Andrew Kim, he posted this when he was about your age:

Hey Michael, thank you a bunch for the kind words and good feedback. I am pretty shocked to get that kind of feedback from a guy like you.

I’m glad you like my graphical work like the VW, I have about 10 or so more similar to that I am working on. I am trying to start a unique t-shirt project. Let me know if you want to hear more about it maybe I could get some advice.

Anyways I don’t live in California but funny that you mentioned that cause I’m coming to L.A. soon! I am visiting art center and meeting a couple of instructors and designers. It would be an amazing experience to shadow you or a designer on the job, just to see what it’s really like. What’s the name of the studio you work for? I can give you specific dates for when I come down whenever I figure it out. It will most likely be in mid July.

I do a lot more product design sketching(don’t want to post it on the web) and I actually have an idea I want to prototype just havent pushed forward with it yet.

As far as Andrew Kim’s stuff. I’ve been following it forever. It’s amazing and I always look up to his superb work.

Thank you again and I look forward to talking more soon.

I had to front page this:

I saw!!! Thank you so much man! Means a lot!

I’d love to get more info on your studio and the job shadow.
Email me at masonbwatson@gmail.com

Thanks again!!

Hey guys, another update! Working on a re-design of the Cadillac SRX.

Thoughts?

A few things to think about:

  1. who is it for? Who buys the SRX? Who would Cadillac like to buy it?
  2. how is it better than the old model? Are there any unique features?
  3. does it better represent the design language and brand values than the old model?
  4. what other products does it compete against? How does it distinguish itself as better than those?

thanks! I’m actually answering some of those, just wanted to show first ideation stuff and explain the final concept in the end, this isn’t the final direction just yet. More to come.

I wish I would have had access to a site like Core77 when I was 13… it shows that you’ve been hanging around here for 4 years. Very nice work. Looking forward to following your progress.

Thanks! I will try to keep it updated as often as I can!

Good job there man.

I’m also 17, and whilst you were on Core77 at the age of 13, I was busy modifying a game (sort of small introduction to game design) but I gave up since I lost interest. I’m around this place for a year, and I’ll repeat what NURB said: I wish I had found Core77 when you did.

Good luck with future projects.

Thanks Deformat.

Here’s something straight out of my sketchbook, scanned and the only editing was from the scan quality. The side window is a little funky looking.
Any suggestions? I’ll be posting more hand sketches soon.