This is my part of the production of the VR Motion Simulator Bike that was exhibited at the international digital media conference SIGGRAPH 2018 in Vancouver,Canada. Apart being an alumni exhibitor at the Drexel booth, I was apart of the product design of the bike itself as well as content made for the motion simulation platform where I was a lighting artist and game designer for LoveBirds.
This was my final project before graduating Drexel University with a Bachelors of Science in Game Art and Production, and a minor in Immersive Media (AR/VR).
This is the skeleton of the bike that was introduced to me at the beginning of the production. This gave me an idea of how the platform was supposed to move and how the user was going to be sitting. To try out different shells I built a wooden skeleton that was to scale with its mechanical counterpart.
Upon receiving the basic design of the skeleton, I was able to begin designing several prototypes..
Some inspiration for hover bikes were curated from some popular science fiction sources such as Star Wars and Warhammer 40,000.
Another influencing element in the design process were sci-fi uni-bikes. I was also captivated by Horizon Zero Dawn at the time and was intrigued by the way the Thunder Jaw carried itself when moving around, similar to a T-Rex.
The wealth of hover bikes from the Jak and Daxter series offered design concepts that could not be ignored.
Above is the ultimate 3D model I created for the design. The design teams unanimously agreed on keeping the structure as general as possible, favoring a faceted design to prevent the bike from being themed to specifically. The Variety of games this simulator prototype could be used for goes well beyond bike design concepts including paper airplanes, UFO's, and bubble-ball themes.
An exciting process I was able to explore in the product design realm was CNC routing my own design. I was very pleased with the entire process of designing something digitally that in the end, became a tangible final product.
This was my final project before graduating Drexel University with a Bachelors of Science in Game Art and Production, with a minor in Immersive Media (AR/VR).
