Christophe Young

New Year - New Project!

Added 2024-01-09 22:00:05 +0000 UTC

Hey everyone, HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I hope you all spent some nice holidays and are ready for the year ahead. I can personally say I came back inspired and energized!

Here are some sketches and a test page for a new world-building project I just started last week - FERUS MACHINA. I won't spill too many details right now since I'm still working out how things work and what the visual language of the machines will be, but these sketches have already sparked a lot of ideas and are starting to lay the road for stronger designs.

When starting a project like this, I try not to jump into drawing too quickly since I get attached easily and if the big idea isn't strong, the project will quickly fizzle out and die. I waited a few days and blocked out my ideas in a spreadsheet before even opening Photoshop. Then I proceeded to block out super rough volumes to figure out the human scale and how big these machines were going to be (This Gaz-L is one of the smallest haha). The human scale is one of the most important factors when doing ergonomic designs.

After these initial stages, I started ideating with these quick sketches. I'm thinking of scale, functionality, how things open and close, where the engines and gas tanks would be, how the limbs articulate and move, what is the function of the head, and of course figuring out the shape language. With these designs, I'm trying to bring out the personality and elegance of the animal while maintaining a cold machine-like presence. It's a tricky balance to strike but the more I sketch, the more I'm figuring it out!

I've attached the PSD below if you want to see how I set up my document for sketch ideation. I can't wait to show you more ideas!