Space Helmet (part 2)

Space Helmet Design Detail

Continuing from the previous post, I worked on this design further detailing design elements. I don't think the design itself works particulaly well, but there are elements which I liked. What interests me here is the mixture of the hard surface shell and the glass visor, however the angle of the helmet would be very uncomfortable.

Also the seal of the helmet is not addressed and is obviously very important to maintain pressure. So there is much more work on this design that needs to be done. Hopefully I'll get some time to work on this, but I think my strategy would be to revert to the previous sketches rather than try to rescue this version.

I pasted a Poser character's head into this illustration to show some scale and position of the head inside the helmet design. Its interesting because it immediately forces you to reconsider and re-evaluate the design from a ergonomic perspective... ah well back to the drawing board, literally!

Development from Poser to Concept

Development stages from Poser to Concept

This is a breakdown of the previous post. Beginning with the Poser Render, 3 lights were setup, 2 intense white lights either side of the head and a central negative light. The render is taken into Photoshop and ran through filters, with layer blend modes. I looked for interesting shapes and forms and then started to paint in and erase. Towards the end of the process its a bit like sculpting.

The interesting thing about working like this is using black and white to begin with, because it eliminates a lot of information, forcing you to focus on the design early on in the process. The concept of using lights to sculpt form is the key ( especially the negative lights ) to getting the random results with the filters.

Ultimately you have to look for those visual clues in the development stages which take you on the journey to developing the character, costume etc. Hope you find it useful, comments, questions, general chat welcome.

Anohter Head Helmet

Costume / Helmet Design

This design is an old one which started off as a render in Poser. I used a succession of filters in Photoshop then to distort and warp the original to look for shapes. I then cut and pasted some photographic elements, which were painted over and worked into the design.

Helmet Design Test

Helmet design sketches  using Photoshop and Poser

This was an experiment using Poser and Photoshop. Its a technique that uses Photoshop brushes to block in shapes from a series of images I generate in Poser. The manual paint over at the end just refines the result of playing with the brush shapes. The one on the right is a little too Predator-ish, but its good fun. The left image is more interesting to me because of the lack facial detail, which always freaks me out. I think its from when I saw West World as a kid, the cowboy robot without a face. Oh the mental scars do surface when drawing...