One thing that I have yet to upload on my blog is my old Transformer design project. That project featured a main character that changes into a 2011 Chevrolet Silverado 3500. It was 2009, and there were only teaser photos of that truck released at the time. Regardless, the reason for the use of a large American pickup truck is because I have always loved the large crew-cab dually pickup trucks from the General Motors Company.
The Transformers project is long dead now, for a lot of reasons. But, it ended shortly after I had decided on designing my own Chevrolet truck for the character, because I had gotten fed up with the quirky design of the 2011 trucks, and the custom look I was designing just would not look the way I wanted it to due to the unusual way the front end of the truck was designed (the headlights on those old Silverados were uncomfortably close to the wheel openings).
As the truck design project began, partially as a substitute for my failed Transformers project, I decided to focus first and foremost on a Chevrolet heavy-duty truck. The following image shows the design ideas I created for the initial design that I now call the "Old-School" look, due to my aim to go very traditional and somewhat retroactive.
This design is very conventional, almost totally work-minded. It has a solid metal bumper, separated headlights and grille area, and a body designed to take a beating. There really was nothing absolutely groundbreaking about this design, except for the fact that it was more solid in its physical appeal than what Chevrolet was selling at the time. One problem that I had to deal with was the fact that the front end design style was very close to that of the old 2008 Ford F-Series Superduty trucks...
After that old-school design was completed, I thought about how I could do something radical. One thing that I wanted to try was the idea of circular headlights. Now, circular headlights worked well on the old 1968-1972 Chevrolet trucks because the front grille was almost flat. My truck design has a more curved front end and corners for aerodynamics. Due to this, the circular headlights appeared incredibly off, especially for a pickup truck. It is as if the Volkswagen Beetle had a very tough, strict father who always had a frown on his face. However, the body was beginning to take some shape...
Almost a year later (due to a return to school and work schedules), I finally started getting a better idea of shape and some refinement for the front end. Still, I was going for round headlights, only this time they were housed in a trapezoid-like housing (the above two trucks). While this new, almost big-rig, look was working, it did not quite appear like something that would come from Chevrolet. Looking at it now, I feel that it could use some minor tweaks and it could actually work as an alternative look for the final design that I had finished. Eventually, I tried the old idea of stacked headlights and a horizontal front end theme, and I quickly scribbled the black ink sketch shown on the bottom left. This truck uses the same body design, but with a more traditional Chevrolet truck front end, and an invisible A and B pillar. When that sketch was completed, I new this was the one, and I was now finished with deciding on the basic look!
These sketches were finished around 2009 to 2012. It was about the time that I started opening my mind to all things automotive, and not showing any favoritism, bias, or prejudice. I started realizing just how exciting the automotive world really is, now that I am focusing on more than just Chevrolet and GMC trucks all the time. In fact, I feel that I started having a resentment towards General Motors at this point. The bailouts and the bankruptcy were angering the public quite a bit, but my resentment was a result of GM's questionable management more than those other things. I also had gotten rather tired of the often-times bland look of their vehicles, though recently, General Motors has been doing extremely well with their new releases, such as the 2014 Chevrolet Impala and the new C7 Corvette.
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