Cat Chair idea

Using what I know and what I have learnt, I have designed and came up with this idea for a chiar with similarities to a cat. I want to use the tail as the back part and the paws as legs (makes sense. I feel this is a step in the right direction and getting the design fully down is important at this stage. As for materials I have yet to narrow down my ideas.

Cat Chair... and I now know what style I want !

After looking at the work of Shawn Place I saw how to make things more subtle. I tried a cat theme before so ill try it again but this time i got a good idea of how i want this to happen. I want to base my design on black cats that sort of art style I know what i mean and can picture it but cant explain it so here is a picture .

Black cat style, time to draw

Its now clear! (more drawings)

So at this point I had looked at Shawn Place and I saw how he manged to show a bird and owl in a chiar so i tried my own bird inspired design and i am pretty pleased with them. I will try now apply what i learnt from this to another animal chair as the bird has been done before.

Drawings from a while ago

 So after my first lot of research i wanted to waste no time in looking at chair design and how i can add personality to the chair. I used the chair and concept Thomas Keeley used for his bat chair and played around with facial features and animalistic features. This helped to get a feel for what I am trying to achieve.

After a lot of research into animals i started to work on the idea of the cat and its shape being a chair, like when its curled up and when its sits. This was not subtle so I needed to look at a designer who did the idea well. 

Climb over the wall !!



Bird and Owl chair is a piece made and designed by Shawn Place. The chairs are based on owls and birds (amazing really) and Take just shapes from both these animals. This is subtle and well done and I feel there are influences from Eames here. I feel birds are good animals to look at for my project but also lookign at the shapes of animals more can be helpful. I have been looking at animal shapes but i feel this more confirms my direction and how i should go about it. ALSO

I have found this. The Sepii chair by design studio K and N collabrating with Yoho. The design is based on a cuttlefish, and this is shown through the many many legs. There is never anymore then 3 legs on the ground at one time. This again is a good example of subtle shapes to represent animals.KEEP THIS IN MIND

The wall

I have hit.......the wallllllllllllll. I am finding it hard to think im nice subtle ideas. Not sure if this is a case of more research is needed or to keep drawing till a good idea appears. But ill start looking round the ne and books and again and try learn how to make a more subtle chair

How to blow the animal in a chair concept out the water

During my research for animals and there features I came across some work by french design company Wild Design. I can find a name of the actually designer who made the orginal concept and also no reference to materials. Pretty useless I know but the visuals are great and the actually design is a very bold statement.

These are all 3D renders of course but never the less still look great. I want to be less subtle in my own design but Wild design highlight the main parts of the chosen animal well.

My research took me to these animal!

 

Looking through and after having a brain storm about wha animals I could use i started thinking of the shape some make and had a few lucky findings. I will uae these images to generate some ideas.

Animals in Products

 

Before jumping into the animal research i wanted to look at how other products have animal features in them and get a idea of how subtle or obvious I can be with the idea. Looking at some of these products I can see either obvious or sublte animal features in them and this will be a good way to gauge how my own designs are going.

Elmar Flototto designed the animal chairs (top right corner). The chairs use the colours i would liek to use in my own design and are great for kids to knock over sit on and play with. Obviously i am not wanting my chair to be like this but I feel Flototto has used basic shapes really well to represent the animals. The chairs are made of POLY-ETHERFOAM as well as PU varnished.

The animal chairs series (bottom right) is designed and made by Elad Ozeri. These chairs much like Flotottos use colour and shape welll to show the features of the animals in the product but Elmar uses the drunk and neck of the giraffe as back support, incorparating it into the chair. The chair is made of ACRYLIC and is cut then bent using heat.

Now on to Pictures of animals, captain obvious.

DIRECTION SORTED , ONWARDS!

After my chat with the tutor I now can confirm my direction is good and sorted. I want to look at how I can use animal and humans in my work to make the chair have a appeal and give it a personality. This will make it easier to make a emotional connection with the user. As well as this i will be looking at colour. It interests me because of how we want to sit on a chair with our favourite colour. I want to exploit this and try make my chair even more appealing

Next step shall be lookign at parts of animals and humans . ONWARDSSSSSSS!