| Conor |
02-10-2011 03:35 PM |
Jarroddaniel, you need to stop making so many projects at once. You've made about 3 or 4 houses in the time it takes me to design one!!
Some tips:
- I don't even begin to design a house until I have an almost complete image in my head of what the house will look like. Sometimes I even draw out rough plans beforehand.
- Search 3D warehouse for a day looking at furniture. I have made several vital contacts through the warehouse and always manage to find the piece of furniture I want. Make yourself aware of what furniture your looking for before searching and don't just settle for something mediocre. (This might be a bit hard if you aren't an architecture/design freak because you need to know the names of lots of pieces of furniture/designers)
- It takes me 4 months to go from a house plan to a finished model.
- I usually restart about 3 times in the first week of designing the house to try and get any problems ruled out from previous attempts.
- Learn from past attempts, copy what other TiBB designers do and listen to member advice.
- If you spend so much time working with the model that you get sick of it- good. The next time you open it (whether it's a week or month later) you'll be even more excited about finishing and have even more ideas. It's not been unknown for me to find myself start a model, then leave it for 5 or 6 weeks before coming back.
- Avoid what I call 'lazy design.' Where you just slap a picture onto a wall or draw a lot of different sized circles or zig zags onto the floor. Make everything interesting.
- Look for inspiration. I rarely base my house designs on other UK houses. Look at international BB houses and interiors of other types of buildings/sets for inspiration. Don't blatantly copy any previous designs. Just take inspiration. Check out architects like Zaha Hadid and Diniel Libeskind. Although they design buildings, their basic principles would convert well into a BB house interior.
- Try something different that hasn't been seen on BB before, whether it's as simple as a circular entrance corridor or something complex, that makes the reader think WOW, why hasn't BB done that before?!!
- Try to be realistic. Include things like door hinges and space for camera runs. Insert little quirks that you usually find in BB houses, like the lighting boxes on the ceiling and zinc cladding lining the garden.
- Rendered houses only look good if they are as detailed as you can get them. If I'm being brutality honest, I haven't seen any houses that I think look better rendered than if they were just posted as they look in sketch-up on TiBB before.
Also, when you design a logo, simple things like the words BIG BROTHER in a cool font with maybe just one effect over the top of it can look as good as a complex OTT eye graphic. You don't have to try hard to make something look good no matter what people in the design industry will rant at you :P
Another thing, it takes practise and experience to create a decent project. I've been working with Sketch-up and Photoshop for over 5 yrs now and still learn new things every month. I've also attempted rendering software for 3 years and can't fully get my head around it yet.
That might seem like a lot, but seriously, just take aboard half of that and you will have a fab house, your best one yet. I guarantee it!! If you want help with the model I'll happily fix things and throw a few ideas out for you :)
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