Get your model on!

This isnt directly relevant to my model in specific but i just saw this model on a blog and thought it was dammmn cool. I would like my final to be this sort of mock realistic style.

The Bike So Far

Ok so what I'm doing for this project at the moment is building the bike with no consideration for level of detail. The goal of this exercise is to get a model which I like the look of and would be happy to have as a final piece. The next step will then be to model all the different parts of the bike focusing on LOD and swap them out for the high detail parts.

This isnt yet at that stage. I would like to spend a couple more days working into it and re-working it if necesarry to make sure I get the best aesthetic as possible. Here is a quick render which i set the computer doing over night. Mwahaha my computer never sleeps!

RE DRAW.

I sat down this weekend and went for a massive re-draw. This was because i gave it a day, then looked back at my previous design and to me it just looks like some sort of 'desert' 'mad max' style pod racer. This is not what i want out of this project.

I would like a semi realistic looking concept bike out of this project that looks both believable and attractive. I came up with this design based on the classic 'Vespa' Here are some of the pictures i used as reference for this new design:

Bike Concepts

So after switching from car to bike (reasons in last post) I came up with my first concept for my bike. Here is a drawn and modeled concept for my bike.

Back to a Bike

After speaking to Alex, i raised the point that i hadnt fully decided whether to make a strafe bike or strafe car. After telling him that i am incorporating Apple into my car/bike he raised quite an important issue.

If apple made a car, it would be the most functional sleek car ever. basically a white rectangle with curved edges. This has been somthing ive been silently thinking of for a few days now.

He recommended that I think again about making a bike as this will be a more dynamic shape, with a more interesting final product. And since we are being marked on our models, I dont really want to get marked down because i designed ALL of the details out of my car! So I am going back to the idea of a bike, however I still think i can incorporate much of the work ive done so far with the car.

Over the last couple days i have been blocking out a simple design and here is as far as the car idea will be taken:

Also just for the record, this model is around 1000 Polys.

Structure

Today i set some time aside to get a first visual done. This visual is by no means what my end product will be based on, I'm just of the opinion that the best was to start designing somthing is to do -anything-. With this basic idea put down, i can now analyse it for whats wrong with it and also the parts i would like to take through to the next stage of this project. Just out of interest, the poly count for this model is around 360 faces. As a side note, i'd like to analyse the models i make for this project for their poly count, to help me get a good idea of the graph curve for detail x resolution. Heres a quick drawing, which i then modeled from as refference.

this is actually an idea i had for how the spherical wheels could oporate. I got the idea from an old wheel mouse. I will include an exclusive post for this though

Functional Solutions

I have been going through my break down of the basic car, and comming up with functional solutions to problems. Here are my workings: