Sketch-Fu: Men's Footwear

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.

Scott,

I highly respect your skills in design and rendering. Wish I had those visualization abilities.

Maybe it’s just an aesthetic thing, but the results of the experiment don’t seem particularly useful. Perhaps you could tweak the generative algorithm to start with basic conventional shoe parts and modify from there. For example there are several standard patterns for toecaps, eyestays, heel overlays, etc. just random graphics don’t really apply to footwear much except maybe cheap kids shoes.

R

its just some sketches for crying out loud dang…

Good to see this is sparking some debate.

I personally find this technique that Scott is using as a great spring board. Its a different take on finding inspiration. Some people look at nature, others at fashion, some look at cars, some look at the competitive landscape, and so on. In short when coming up with a design, there’s usually an inspirational imagery phase that comes in.

This texture bomb approach I think is just another great way to spark some ideas. I can look at 20 images that Scott put up and get a few details and build concepts off that. The designs that Scott is showing arent meant to be a footwear design. But as a catalyst to the design process.

I don’t wanna take Sketch Fu too far off topic. But I see Scott’s explorations similar to this.

Random lines used to inspire a design. (Although the end result would be far more removed from the inspiration.)

As my first boss used to say “Less talky more sketchy.”

Lets not over analyze someone who is just having fun and sharing. Instead lets contribute alternatives visually.

On a related tip, I know a pretty well known designer at Nike who used to cut out silhouette of a shoe in a similar way. He would put different images from magazines under the template, photocopy it, and then sketch over top of that to see where it took him.

Another designer there has a template cut out of MDF. He would close his eyes and draw random lines within the template, then try to work that into a design.

some pretty famous shoes came from these two guys.

Good morning people

Passion always turns to argument when someone drops an innovative way to explore our favorite subject: footwear.

There are no boundaries in exploration, even if science and numbers are considered in footwear making, our subject is still driven by empiric approach, feelings, intuition, weak signals.

I am in favor of those attempts to innovate, way more than watching the incremental drawings, that are trying to figure out the next instant steps of our industry.

Creativity has no standard. Exploration has no rules, sco ro 5, keep on challenging the routine, stay fresh and naive when you explore.
Serenpidity opens people minds and breaks the comfort zones.
Thank you very much for sharing.

To each their own. Sketches are good. Talk is also good. This is a discussion forum.

R

Back on topic. Just a doodle. It has been too long since I’ve thrown a little sketch in the mix. A quick sketch before I close up the studio for the weekend.nothing too special.

Hey guys!

First post here on the site. I thought I would show something simple right now. :smiley:

Welcome Alex, nice simple design. Try giving the shoe a little “toe spring”, the curvature of the outsole upward toward the front of the shoe. Almost all shoes have at least a few mm of toe spring:

http://www.oliversweeney.com/ShoeGlossary.html?article=290#popup

yo - thanks for the tip! I got a little critique from a friend earlier and tried it on another shoe. better?

Nice improvement Alex.
Another iPad sketch for the weekend… Simple skate shoe design.

Nice Phil,

What app and pen are you using? Very tight.

R

Hi everyone,

Just finished a render of a Nike Huarache Lacrosse Turf shoe based on an image I downloaded. Thought I’d emulate a real photo of a product to try to make my visual as realistic as possible, learned quite a lot from this. Any tips/advice? I feel like I could definitely communicate the laces better in terms of texture and shading. Find detailed areas of shading difficult to construct using the brush tool sometimes.

Look forward to hearing some constructive comments!

D

PS: find more of my visuals at http://djones3291.tumblr.com