Sketch-Fu: Men's Footwear

very nice Phil!

Thats one clean sketch Phil. Hard to believe that its from an iPad but I do :wink:

Here is a warm up page where I tried doing one thumbnail sketch every 5 minutes.

Nice page Viper. Thanks everyone for the comments.
Another fun iPad sketch today… Always thought a Zoom Safari concept would be fitting for a cross country racing spike…

definitely a good theme for an xc spike!

Viperoshanali:

I like your design, that gives a dynamic element to the shoe. The sketch is beautiful and natural. Is adidas?

Hi All,
This is my first post here. I just recently turned my attention towards designing footwear and here are 20 teaser examples of my quick “upper” sketches. These are of course developed with different tools than traditional media sketches but due to the speed with which I can generate them and the loose gestural nature they end up having they are technically just “sketches.” Used as a means to stimulate new aesthetic directions I think they are pretty fun. So fun in fact that I did 700+ of them last week.

i think that’s Scott Robertson ya’ll!!! Oh snap!!! Yo Scott those sketches r sweet…is that modo ur using? like in the space suits…

Thee are really cool, Can totally see how explorations like these could help spark some crazy new concepts.

Yes, it is modo with some programming modifications to speed up the styling process that shall remain a trade secret for the time being.
Scott Robertson

This is a massive production. We are going to become obsolete. Good job.

Victordcantu, no I don’t think so, but you might need to adapt in order to stay relevant. But that has always been the case throughout the visual communication history of industrial design. Markers replace watercolors then Photoshop and Sketchbook Pro displace traditional media rendering and next it looks to me through my experiments that 3D + 2D will add to the mix of tools you will be able to use. The concept design process is very different with these new techniques. Instead of starting with a blank piece of paper and adding complexity each step of the way you start with something photo-real and often times more complex than you could ever draw and then work to simplify it. It still requires a designer’s eye to create the source images for the mapping and the editing and refinement passes needed to create something worthwhile. So it is a very different conceptual design experience. But as far as productivity is concerned there is no comparison. I can generate these much faster than decent traditional media sketches.

Plus, I don’t want your job. I want to inspire and create new and innovative ways to help you advance your craft to the next level. I’m happy to just innovate and educate.

Interesting for fun or a programming experiment I suppose, but I don’t really see this as footwear design. No more than would be cutting out shoe shapes from random pieces of wallpaper.

Not one of these takes any consideration of how a shoe is made or functions or what would look good.

Can you let us know the intent for your experiment? Or is it one of those “because it can be done” things.

R

Yes, I understand. Interestingly, as a tool that allows you to display the “behavior” of lines or 2D drawings on a 3D object, and from there make design decisions. I see it as a way to save time in sketches. You can find the path of a line, and if it is an element that match into the design concept, use that and maybe combine it with any other design line. It’s not about replacing things in the footwear design process, is an alternative tool.

Is that so?

R’

You always seem to come off so harsh… Do you even know what real innovation is? Take for instance your SKORA shoe. Not much more than New Balance Minimus. Prove me wrong. They look cool but seen that bought that. I’ll post up something that I think is innovative in shoe wear later tonight after I complete manufacturing for today " maybe tomorrow" and you will most definitely find something wrong and have something negative to say if you bother to say anything. You remind me of why it’s hard to share work with people who don’t understand what you are doing so they respond with a seemingly authoritative point of view which is always negative and condescending.

ScoRo5 You ROCK! I loved your piece on “MODO” space suit exploration. As far as a visual tool for the aesthetics of the item this is truly inspirational and you even got the proportions of the shoe correct :wink:

As a viewer of this fantastic forum I would like to say welcome and I hope to see you continue to infiltrate the shoe design scene. Remember most of these guys consider themselves to be shoe engineers that need to tell a story that is totally irrelevant to what a shoe needs to do (function) which aligns them more with fashion design IMHO.

That’s right I said it!

flame away,
human

Richard,

I should have been more specific. This project is about style and fashion, not function. Used simply as a way to explore new aesthetic graphic directions this process has value. Of course in the hands of an experienced designer like yourself I’m sure the functional issues could be overcome. Many times in my career while working in other industries a strong visual image can be used as a good point to start driving the discussion of new technologies to support the functional hurdles many of these studies present. This experiment is about graphic design applied to the shoe form without regard for the specifics of modern day shoe construction, with the exception that the form of the shoe is more accurate than a hand drawn sketch and that it respects the assembly of platform to upper.

These studies do no start life as a function first concept, they are all about shapes, colors, textures and being able to see those wrapped on a real shoe form in real time and then quickly rendered in a photo-real look in multiple views and variations all while you are out having lunch or asleep. If you get no happy accidents, no big deal the time invested was almost nothing, but should you get a decent success rate wouldn’t that add value to the process? There are some aesthetics now that can be manufactured but we never invest the time to explore them because the labor investment required to draw and render them in a traditional fashion is too great. So those new and potentially innovative “looks” are never explored. These tools can help unlock some of those directions.

Victordcantu,
Correct.

Humancargo,
Thanks. I’ll share more along the way. In fact I share something educational every Friday here on my You Tube channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/scottrobertsondesign
Getting ready to post this week’s tutorial on colorizing a greyscale sketch in Photoshop and doing a weathering pass.

Human,

I didn’t mean to come off as harsh, and don’t think I particularly normally do so. Maybe I can blame the abbreviated post on the iPhone I banged it out on, perhaps too quickly.

Rather than bashing the concept or exploration, I was just looking for a little clarification and pointing out the difference between what I consider purposeful design and throwing randome shapes and colors on a wall to see what happens. That might have some value as inspiration, but I guess I wouldn’t call it design.

ScRo5,

Thanks for the clarification on your intended purpose. I have no problem with fashion specific design, and of course not all footwear is technical or performance. I’ve done fashion and lifestyle footwear as well, BTW. I suppose to come across 1 happy accident that serves as inspiration in 700 auto generated variations is worth something “for free”, but then again, value is also judged by the quality of the result and the effort building the system that generates that result.

As said, an interesting experiment in generative programming I guess, maybe I’m just missing the point.

R

ScoRo5 - I have to totally agree with Richard, that the selection page from your 700+ renderings are nothing more than a play on a digital program. Aesthetic beauty has been thrown out of the window and considered proportion and form is non existent. Lots of lines and nothing more.

Humancargo - Where do i start? Richard is criticizing those drawings because they deserve it. Absolutely no thought or consideration towards how the shoe would be assembled or produced. If i had a junior in for an interview and they produced those drawings, it’d be a short meeting i’m afraid. However the best bit is your signature “simplicity is the essence of a clean line and form will always follow function”. I think you need to explain your philosophy on design to dear old ScoRo5 over there.

cheers

Wow!

Just WOW!

human

Thanks Scott,
I am absolutely a HUGE fan of your work in its totality! I will be sure to bookmark and follow.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend,
human

Rkuchinsky, Nordmade, maybe we have not seen the essence of the proposal. I think it is basically applicable to designs focused on running shoes (example), there are designs that require (because of its target) designs with much saturation lines (commonly wavy) and a collage of shapes and colors (children’s shoes), that is tedious to do because almost no range to innovate in that style.

I think it’s something like projecting an image on a last, we can follow a line visually appealing, and we can use if we need it.