50 Renderings of Watch
Many people used to like wearing and collecting watch before they get accustomed to check time on smart phone. It indicates the change we recognize time and technology. So I want to begin the fifty renderings with sketch of my favorite watch which I got four years ago from my mom as a gift. The part of it I like most is the mechanic structure that enables the watch hand rotating by energy from wrist’s moving, which is environment friendly. During sketching, I tried to write what I was thinking about around drawings, so the whole picture could be my mind map. The main stream of my thought is that we use watch to check time and schedule, because time is vital to everybody’s life. After digital device could replace watches, their meaning becomes more about sense of ritual.
The first 13 renderings are sketches on paper, with which I thought about the relationship between watch and history, watch and nature, also more functions to wear on people’s wrist.
Then I made some paper stripe and drew some stuff related to cycle and rhythm, because wearing watch is wearing some kind of nature’s rhythm and cycle of days. There is staff with pause and notes, ECG meaning a man’s own pace of living, plant’s life cycle and gears biting.
Inspired from sundial, I began to ask how watch looks like if clock is not divided evenly, for human perceive time in different ways. And time could have various meanings to individuals. Since people designed standard clocks, they could refine time by themselves. So I just picked some random places on the circle and wrote words or numbers flashing in my mind.
Then I imagined more dimensions of time and watch, not just one circle interpreting it. Though this idea is confusing and weird, I tried to explain it by prototype. If there are two layers of the sundial, and the upper layer looks like a sieve, the pointer would not just be a direction, but two holes which could appear on different area of the circle.
I’m obsessed with Dali’s clock lying or sitting with different shapes, so I drew three dials on tissue. One dial is clipped by a binder clip. The second dial is put into a cylinder. The last one just lean against the wall, and through a magnifier is number 3.
Below are some collage of pictures. The first is face of woman’s face at three ages, showing by contrast in one picture, which could indicates time passing. The second one is a hand wearing galaxy. The third collage is a running watch timing by songs, for sometimes I just listen to songs to estimate time when I boil noodles or go jogging. A popular song is about 5 minutes.
After these, half of renderings are done. Meanwhile, I found that the timeline I wrote to record the process of my work is a kind of timeline.
The following 6 renderings are some pattern drawn in Photoshop.
Then I made a model of watch in Maya, but the rendering view did not work in Maya, so I put the obj. into Unity, and changed several materials to put them into different environment.
Watches could interact with their environment, so I made these gif. pictures.
I really enjoy rendering an object in different ways, which enables me to observe things from diverse respects. I always like to think about meaning of life and time, and this project provided a great opportunity for me to visualize these thoughts, which helps me to dig deeper into design concepts.
