One of the key steps when designing and producing a solution to a problem is exploring different possible design ideas, rendering and polishing each one to compare and contrast each drawing against each other to find the most suitable one.

Sketching

I began by quickly sketching several designs to get a good variety from which I could choose and develop the designs. Though this step sounded easy at first I found hard making sure that each design was unique and not too similar to the other ones. In addition to sketching each design, I had to outline each sketch with thin and thick lines to make the designs more realistic and appealing.

After sifting through some of the sketches I made, I had to choose 6 and so decided to scrap design 5. The sketching process helped me to better visualize some of the design concepts I had initially planned in my head. While sketching some of these designs I also learned the importance of making the designs realistic. In many of the sketches, there is a lack of depth and each of them looks like they are made of a solid block of material rather than several pieces of material joined together, so I had to go back and make some adjustments to sketches.

Rendering

After selecting the designs I had to render each one to make the designs look more realistic and fully-fledged. While rendering each design I experimented by using different techniques to render different materials.

Through this process, I found that using Copic markers were best for reflective materials like steel, while the colour pencils were the best for dull materials like matte acrylic and ABS plastic. However, by far the most difficult material to render for me was wood, I struggled to create fine grains while also including depth and shadows to make it more realistic.

I initially gave the design a solid fill with light brown Copic markers and tried creating the grains with fine line markers. In my first attempt the grains resulted in the product looking like it was made using a single block of wood, this was quite problematic as it made the product look very unrealistic. In my second attempt, even though the grains look realistic it lacked a difference in shades and tones and so resulted in the product looking very 2d. In my final attempt, I decided to scrap using the fine line pens and instead use the Copic markers to show tones and shadows even if the detail of the grains was lost. I enjoyed the final render the most as I felt that it was the most realistic and appealing.

After experimenting and using different methods, I fully rendered all 6 of my chosen sketches;

3D CAD Drawings

In addition to renderings done on papers, I wanted to render each design on fusion as a way of getting an even better idea of how the products could look. The fusion CAD drawings were very useful for the designs that were made of wood as it realistically portrayed the grains and tones that wood normally has. This also allowed me to diversify the methods and mediums I used when communicating the solutions I had conceived.