"Wasp"

Aeroplane of some type (I'll come up with some specs later)

Explorer 1

I was so inspired today that I sat down and focused some of my creativity into drawing a spaceship. Or more specific an explorer with large feet for landing on rugged ground and for picking up large objects.

So this is my first creative post, and I hope there is many to come. Hopefully there will be a lot of progression in drawing skills this semester. Please feel free to comment in any way!

Ahh! Inspiration by post :D

At Friday I received four books that I had ordered at Amazon.co.uk. They are all books about the process of concept and entertainment design, and the authors are Scott Robertson and Stephan Martiniere.

Here are the titles of the books:
- Quantum Dreams - The Art of Stephen Martiniere
- Quantumscapes - The art of Stephan Martiniere
- Lift Off - Air vehicle sketches and renderings
from the drawthrough collection, Scott Robertson
- Start Your Engines - Ground vehicle sketches and renderings
from the drawthrough collection, Scott Robertson

In addition to this I have borrowed a movie which is about Scott Robertsons creative process. So now I hope I have enough material to get a bit further on my assignment, and maybe start to understand how these guys manage to allways be so innovative and creative in there quest for new shapes and concepts.

Design games

Today we finished our second Tuesday of trying out design games. A woman named Eva Brandt held the lectures and she introduced the methods. The first day we discussed the differences between creativity and problem solving. After this discussion she split us in groups and let us try one of the design games that she had developed. The games was about identifying and/or understanding a user of some product or a user performing a task. At the end of this day Eva gave the groups an assignment to make our own design games.

My group, me, Erik and Jegaard, made a game called "Hybridesigner". The game was all about designing hybrids that consisted of the content on three cards that you had picked from a stack of cards. The cards were of three different categories; Nature, Artefact and Adjectives. The group that played our game liked it. They said it was mostly fun to play it, and with some changes it could be used as a design tool.

"Absence" with Mikkel McAlinden

Today we visited Mikkel McAlinden and his latest exhibition "Absence" at Galleri K. McAlinden is a well known photographer and you can see his earlier works at mikkelmcalinden.com or the "absence" pictures at galleriK.com. The intention of this visit was to try to get an understanding of an artists creativ process.

We were asked to reflect and comment on some of the experiences we had at the exhibition. I have two things that I would like to comment:

1. When asked if he had any methods that he used when searching for good ideas, he told us about a technic that a friend of his had named "joggingart". Its idea beeing that you in all situations forced yourself into producing art. So as a photographer you should always take pictures, even though you dont have a specific idea or meaning behind it. The art or products of this "joggingart" doesn't need to be of any quality.

I liked this idea so much that I would like to add it as a "rule" for my project. This means that I have to produce something every day this semester, even though I'm out of ideas, inspiration or even energy.

2. McAlinden told that it would be clever to change our way of viewing a piece of art. Instead of seeing a picture, or walking at a museum while deciding if it is good or bad art, we should decide whether we liked the experience of it or not. He suggested that we could f.ex. change the name of "the museum of art" into "the museum of experiences". The experience was what he saw as the most important thing when going to an exhibition. When making his own pictures he played the role as a viewer and tried to make the best out of the experience.

I was a bit astonished by how great an idea this was; making Art (experiences) for the viewers in stead of making it for yourself. I'm pretty sure I will have a different view of the art when I am visiting Astrup Fearnley this Sunday.

Progress

Allright!! I talked to Svein Gunnar Kjøde, a member of Geriljaworks (geriljaworks), on Friday and we made an appointment for a meeting this week. Svein Gunnar wrote his Mastersdegree on creativity, and was more then happy to help me. He has experience from industrial design and entertainment design, and he has even been a co-worker at Funcom, one of Norways leading game developers.

Inspiration & Project

I am incredibly fascinated by the way designers, (f.ex. Scott Robertson, Feng Zhu, Syd Mead, Herald Belker and Mark Goerner) vary over a theme, and detailing, in their creative process towards a concept or product.

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I think it would be a nice challenge for me, during this project, to try to gain some of the skills these concept designers have. I would have to search for literature written on detail sketching, on where to look for inspiration etc., etc. I know that there are a couple of really good artistic inspirational methods that these guys use. I will try them out an see if they work for me, and find out why they eventually work.