Gmay3's Sketching Journey

Happy New Year everyone, hope you all had a great holiday!

Pb, thanks for pointing out those errors, I see them now and I’ll work on that!

Over the holidays I didn’t get to sketch as much since I was working 0n this project. With that finished, I’ve started up sketching again in the new year.

Here are a few recent ones, some watch sketches exploring different ways to set the time and a camera sketch!

Here’s a sketch exploring more tactile compact digital camera zoom controls. This is the first time I’m using action arrows, do they look ok? Should they get a heavier outline?

Lately, I’ve been working on 3D skills which is why I’ve been light on sketching posts. Here’s a few recent ones, more camera exploration and a little 2 point perspective.

Here’s another camera concept from this weekend, trying to really push the pop up flash.

Hey guys, since I last posted I decided to pick up a Microsoft Surface Book for digital sketching and as a replacement to my aging laptop. I have been really digging in to Clip Studio Paint Pro (formerly Manga Studio 5) and been loving it. It’s definitely been time consuming getting up to speed with the program but the benefits of digital sketching are clear!

Here’s a loose coffee maker concept, if you have any tips or critiques I always appreciate them! Have a great day.

Hi Gmay,
Try starting the sketch with an all grey base layer. Second, sketch your concept using black or dark grey. Third, using an airbrush tool lightly brush in your shadows using black and your highlights in white or light grey. Finally use your eraser tool to cut back your airbrush work. Hope that helps.
You can find tons of Youtube videos and tutorials on techniques.
Cheers…

Thanks JBoogie, I will give your suggestions a try! Sketching the idea out first in grey is a great idea!

I’ve been practicing more digital sketching and did a concept for Yo’s Dyson Hair Dryer Sketch Challenge a few days ago.

I wanted to show the close ups of the sketches and rendering to see if there are any places I could improve on since I made them smaller for the arranged final sketch. As always, thanks for taking a look!

Since my daily sketching a few months ago I have been working on everything but sketching. Things like foam modeling, 3D modeling, working on my portfolio, and reading ID books. I sat down on Monday and tried sketching a cylinder with prismacolor pencil and was so frustrated to see how far I’d slipped from when I was sketching every day.

Time to focus on sketching!

I’m setting my alarm back an hour every day and I’m jumping back into daily sketching with both feet. Looking back on this thread, the amount of progress I was able to make with all your help was so encouraging. Let’s push it twice as far!

It’s time to start. Welcome to Part II of the journey.




I’m going to start part II off by refining this truly stereo, two part bluetooth speaker concept I started on several months ago.

Here’s what I had before this week:

Here are some developments I’ve been working on this week. My goal is to communicate the idea without needing a bunch of text describing it.

Thanks for taking a look! Critiques are always appreciated.

I wanted to try working this two part bluetooth speaker concept into a few “scenes” to show some use cases for it. I haven’t sketched a car interior or backpack before, but I wanted to show that the speaker’s form is designed to fit in different types of cup holders so you can take it on the go.

I took a little more time to sketch the backpack since I wanted to try to follow the techniques from Yo’s recent backpack sketching tutorial video, it was a lot of fun to try!

nice improvement with the backpack.

Apply that kind of design thinking to the bluetooth speaker itself.

Thanks Michael! Here’s a couple more sketches from the last few days. The last one is where I tried to apply more design thinking.

I think you could push the design of the speaker further. Try doing 10-15 concepts on different forms.

Ok, sounds good! I will work towards 10-15 concepts, here are 1-6. I’m pretty new to marker work so I wanted to try practicing it on the first several.

How are you feeling about these? I see a few concepts that are already more interesting than where you were before. Nice work!

Thanks Michael!

I feel like they all have pros and cons trading off portability and sound quality. I think I’m most drawn to concept 5 (the box with the clasp) because it’s kind of an interesting experience of opening it and maybe being surprised by what’s inside. Also, having a square face will benefit the sound quality by allowing a larger diameter speaker to fit and having it naturally on a slant pointing towards your ears.

I’m thinking of doing a few more concepts to push things and explore more and maybe something else may jump out!

I think one thing that worked about your original is that you could listen together or as separates, where a lot of these concepts seem to eliminate the ability to listen to them when put together. I think a lot of them are adaptable if you switched the materials.

One thing that did not work on the original was the discrete grille. It is too much the way an engineer would thing, the driver is here so this is where the grille is. Try making that grille go all the way around. Conversely, putting my engineering hat on, with that solution having a round design doesn’t make sense because so much acoustic volume is wasted in the arcing grille.

Those are some really helpful points! I will try to think more creatively about the grill surfacing and focus on making sure the speaker can play in both together and separate modes.

On some of those concepts I had been kicking around the idea of designing the speaker so that it would only play in stereo/separate mode to emphasize its difference from other bluetooth speakers, but designing out a useful feature of playing in a compact mode doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve been working on a few concepts that would be able to play in both attached and separate mode. I think they’re getting closer, it’s so fun to see the different forms progress! I would never have thought to start here without the exploration.

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Nice progression Gerry. That is why it is so important to move beyond your first few concepts. Getting feedback is just one tool to get you out of your comfort zone. I like to look at products in all different industries and from all different time periods as well. Often there are similar problems that others have solved, even if in a totally unrelated product type, or in nature. Combine this with generating a target user and identifying the other products and experiences that this person values.