Next up I plan on throwing out some concepts for Ed-209.  Then after that wrapping up with the final designs.  Don’t forget to check out the other Robocop redesigns  here and here. then tune in for the finals coming in the upcoming weeks.

See ya,

A

The future weeks I’ll show more on how things work but this shotgun would shoot five rounds before having to “reload” after that he has to switch to the second chamber by using the lever.  For show he would use the leaver T2 style, with spinning reload like t-100 did.  Yes there would be more simple ways to do it but this would look much cooler.

I figure he could reload the gun by halfway holstering the gun in his leg.  There would be some sort of reload mechanism that would insert the shells.

That’s it for now.  More Robocop redesigns to come.

Dont forget to check out last weeks in progress concepts for Robocop himself (HERE)

A

On redesigns like this I always try to do almost a caricature of the old version.  I want to change it as much as possible but still have the character be recognizable.  If you can’t tell it is, then you have pretty much failed.

Anyways in the next few weeks I plan on redesigning everything from Robocop’s gun to ED-209.   What you see here is just a start, and I have a lot more coming up that will be a lot more fleshed out.  See ya next week.

This was just a quick exercise for the blog, so I didn’t get to put in as much research as I normally would for a real product design.  So here goes.  I knew that whatever happened the system had to be 100% leak proof.  So everything would be contained in bags (fig D).  These bags would be LDPE with a heat resistant coating.  This bag would be stored with water (room temp) then placed into the top of the coffee maker (fig G) along with the coffee packet (fig F).  The coffee packet would be similar to what you get at those cheap hotels for your in-room coffee maker.

There would be a second bag in the actual mug.  This bag would be completely empty and compressed.  When the coffee maker is activated, the water is heated and the water bag is compressed forcing it through the grounds, then into the mug.  No gravity needed and no liquid is released.

The mouth of the mug would be similar to existing baby sippy cups with the rubber mouth, which needs to be sucked on to release liquid.  Another note is that the original water bag would be reused in the mug for the next brew.

Figure B gives you an idea of the materials.  The mug would be made of some sort of brushed steel so that the mug can have a vacuum like a thermos and the main coffee maker would be made mostly of an ABS plastic.

Well that does it for now.  Feel free to leave comments/ideas for the design.  And remember in space no one can hear you percolate.  Yeah I said it.

No thumbnails to go with this one so as a conciliation price I give you the evil Devil monkey!  Enjoy!

Evil devil money ponders eating your soul!

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Steam powered lava walker!  This is a sketch I did a long time ago (see my first post) but never really got around to adding color to the concept.  The inspiration for it was just by coming up with three random themes.  Lava, steam punk, and 4 legged.  I love picking the three random things because it gives you starting point instead of just pulling something from the air.

I tried something a little different with my approach by laying out flat colors and then using the burn and dodge tool in photoshop then going over a second time with some color to add the glowy parts.

I also overlaid a few textures that I got from HERE.  Awesome site, with lots of free textures to choose from.  It’s easily the best texture site I have found yet.

That’s it for now.  With any luck I’ll be posting next week too.  Hey nobody is perfect….

My favorite part of the design is the spiky mane around Voltron’s head.  The mane always just seemed to be something missing from the original designs.  I thought about adding some to the other lions too but then I had a slight epiphany and realized that these giant robots are actually a pride of lions.  Which means one king and the mane on the black lion acts like a crown; so if all five lions were standing together, you could clearly spot the leader (like stripe from gremlins).  But I did toy with having the arm lions forming shields and weapons formed from manes.

A lot more thought went into the look of the torso than one would think, to making it more sleek but keeping it recognizable with the original version.  Nobody remembers but there was a Voltron series that came out a few years ago.  They tried to make the lions look more modern with a curvy, Industrial Design look but it never looked right which is why nobody remembers it.  Hence, I stayed with the more hard-edged look to reflect the original design.

With a little more time, I would love to develop the remaining lions more but that will have to be a project for a future date.

See ya next time,

Andrew Tober

It’s about time!  Finally, the final sketch for my Tron Legacy concepts.  This week’s concept is the Tron Recognizer.  I always hated these things on the movie and it was not because I didn’t like how they looked or they scared me a child.  No, it was because the Intellivision’s “Deadly Disk of Tron” video game. http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=20552 The game cheats and the booklet tells you that you can destroy the Recognizer by hitting it in the “eye”.  Much like cake, the eye was a lie.  Young, fat Andy wasted many days trying to beat that game and never did manage to destroy the in-game Recognizer.  Not to mention, I’m pretty sure it just repeated on forever.

Anyway, I stayed close to the original version’s body shape.  The original felt kind of skinny, so on this one I tried to beef it up by adding heavy shoulders and a thicker mid-section.  That helped give the look more of an intimidation factor.  I also tried to add some function to the look by adding some mechanical looking sections.  For example, the silver-ish pieces on either side of the shoulders are rotating cannons.  You can see more of that on the rough sketches.

My favorite addition is the power source in the mid-section.  Imagine, if you will, a screen that starts out pitch black and the blue glow emerges out of the darkness followed by the red lines. Could totally be one of those O $#^@* moments in a movie.  I also liked the addition of the blue lights coming out of the bottom.  It looks like a jet stream in the sketch but really I see it as more of a spotlight or a tractor beam.

If anything color and texture has been one of my weak points, so I tried to push it a little this week.  I didn’t go crazy, baby steps.  I added a galvanized metal texture over the body and set the layer style to a soft light.  The beams of light are a combo of gradient and some new texture brushes I found.  And the chest glow is just a layer style (glow) with the noise turned up.

Well, that’s the last of the Tron series.  Not sure what’s next but I’ll figure something out.

A