LAUAN601: Practical #3

This week concludes a large section of my practicals, in terms of the finished final illustrations. In general, I found the pieces works quite well, not only on a technical and aesthetic level, but narrative-wise as well, translating the emotions and thoughts I wanted. One thing that was mentioned by my tutors that perhaps some of the narrative points might be a bit vague if you're familiar with the context of the situation so within the submission sheets for the practicals, it might be best for me to includes several introductory lines to each piece. However, overall, I did try to build as much stories into all the finer details as possible

Age: S.A.M model in used in a care centre, helping elders to experience the memories and feelings of their youth. Inspired by my case study of Paro - a therapeutic robot seal being used in care homes across the world for people with dementia, and also increasing application of VR tech in everyday life.

Early sketch 

Love: Inspired by the case study of Hatsune Miku - the digital diva, along with elements of Japanese subculture such as otaku- those who are passionate fans of a certain subject, hikikomori - people who lock themselves in their rooms and disconnect from the world, and the Japanese love of digital. This illustration echos the story of artificial love, similar to that of Spike Jonze's 'Her' (2013) 

The hikikomori environment 

Kondo Akihiko - 35

Passionate fan who got married to his virtual Idol - Hatsune Miku 

Care : Inspired by my own real life experience and observations of my own family and Frank's within Robot and Frank, portraying our reliance on tech even in the most human matters, such as caring for our children, with young parents increasingly exposes their kids to more tech at an early age and the new generation being 'nurtured' by tech ( via phone, ipads, the internet ) 

LAUAN601: Practical #2

Results from the Twitter poll came to match my expectations as 2 and 6 came out as the winner. However, after some experimentation with the body, I found the roundness and 'chubbiness' of 6 really offsets the characteristic and aesthetic of the entire body, and as a Twitter user commented :

''2. The thinner face makes me think of an adult, where as 6 reminds me of a child with it's rounded features. I'd want a servant that seems experienced and capable, not young and ignorant. The simple face seems friendly, I imagine that it could express through emotes''

Therefore I settled with a combination of both designs for the final head. As a result, the design managed retained the expressiveness of 6's digital screen face while balance it out with a more well-proportioned head shape.

As part of the concepts, I also rendered out some extra details on the mechanical skeleton of SAM as, well as visually describe the 'customizable elements' of it, including the 'male' and 'female' body proportion examples, and suggestions on shifting parts.

Finally, to finish of the character design process, I made a more detailed T-pose sheet (with both the female and male body). This can be utilised later on if I ever decided to make a 3D model out of it.

Overall I really like the concept I came up with for SAM, and I think I succeed in my goal in a sense that it came out looking clean, simplistic, approachable and highly adaptable to different looks, elements that I feel would be characteristic of a mass-produced service robot of the future. Narratively however, there's been discussions regarding the question : "What if the customers wants an animal, or a baby robot", which is an idea I've experimented with the Sammy body-type in the concepts above. However, for the particular subjects of the mood paintings I'm doing (love and old age), I think the Samuel and Samantha would be sufficient.