MDU115 - Week 11

Last week I promised some designs and concept work from the Project Brief I was writing, so here we are!

This post assumes that you've read my Week 11 update regarding the research and design documentation I was working on - if not, go back and check it out!

Based on that research I discovered that lall good swords are based on two major components: The blade and the hilt - each one having its own unique components and differences.

So I decided that I'd break it down into those two components and begin with some grips for the hilt. The reason I chose to go with grips specifically, is because based on my design notes, I didn't feel as though my particular design would make use of a guard or pommel. Again, the reason for this is detailed in the documentation and last weeks' blog.

Below are the designs I sketched out for the grip. I tried to cover a wide variety of other worldy styles - I initially thought that perhaps this sword may be constructed by someone who lived on another planet a long time ago - much like our planet i assumed that his planet would have wood resources available and therefore I designed how they would've constructed the handle from wood and other basic materials. I Quickly realised that doing my designs this way would take way too long (I knew that the teachers are looking for number of varied designs and not how intricate one design can be) so after this I tried a couple more in that 'wood' form - I also included some more detailed and weird designs: one handed grips, two handed as well as a grip with it's own guard built in.

I then moved onto some blade designs - The top row take inspiration from the more traditional "Earth" based metals and shapes. I used a curved scimitar design, a larger butchers knife, pointed blade, a saw and a cleaver as my inspiration respectively. I've included the design notes for each design in the image below. The second row are elemental designs - I wanted to create an elemental sword initially, but I decided that it'd be a good idea to get some basic shapes down first with the real world metals. The bottom row takes design cues from a scicle, a javelin, a straight sword, a double edged blade and the last one is based on a straight sword but it ethereal. The first design was based on the earth or forest element - grass, vines etc. The second is based on lightning and electricity, the third is based on water, the fourth on light and the fifth on poison. Again all the specific design notes are included in the included image.

The first design I went into a final stage with was the electricity blade. I wanted to utilise a black steel maetal as mentioned in my research notes and had to come up with a way that the electricity would work - I didn't want to just say that it appeared so I decided the idea of a power crystal embedded into the hilt of the sword. This was a good idea I thought because I can identify a specific contrast colour against hte black by doing so. I love purple and blue hues as well so this would've been a good colour combination. I decided to include a number of aesthetic elements into this design in the way of baubles, charms, gemstones and an ordained guard.

For my second final concept I went with the elemental variety. I went with fire because fire is cool and again had to come up with a way to allow the fire to exist. I used the crystal idea again but wanted to extrapolate on it, especially because it's a more 'otherworldly' and 'fantastical' design. SO I looked at how fire can exist and eventually my research lead me to lava and volcano, i realised that I could create the sword 'metal' out of earth and rock, and the magma/lava can live in there, powered by the crystal. Again all the design notes are below.

When I spoke to Jody a few weeks ago he made it a point to say that he wouldn't accept a traditional word design, so even though I really liked both my designs I was forced to go with the second one. Because of this I did some more design work on it by creating the orthogonal diagram below so I could get a better idea of what the sword would like.

So that's it - the goal next week is to actually model this beast! I'll update you in the next blog!

- Ryan