Idea three/developing

For idea number three, I based the idea around sporting exercises, and I chose to have my dog swimming, and once again my first idea, didnt really have any kind of machine incoporated into it.

 I think my dog also had too many human characteristics, and his expression bought humour, to the piece, along with the swimming cap and goggles. I also was told by my tutor that the look of determination whilst he was swimming was appealing, which I was pleased about because I did want it to look like he was working hard. However, for this project, we didnt want the dog to have noticeable human characteristics and he needed to look more...well doglike, really. So I had to draw from resource!

I actually found it quite difficult to find an image of a dog swimming, especially sideways on, I struggled looking through books in the library aswell. I'm sure that many people don't really see dogs swim sideways on anyway, as their bottom half is submerged in water. But I tried to draw the above image anyway....

...And this was the result. I wasnt best pleased with it, I really struggled with the water, and the image as a whole I suppose, it was just difficult to do. I've never really drawn water before, it is definitely something I need to practise on as I would love to be able to draw it! Anyway, the shape of the dog was alot better that my original. But I still wanted a side on veiw of my dog swimming...So I took a little inspiration from idea number, and copied some of the same shape work of the dog, but I just changed his legs a little bit so that it didnt look like he was powefully running, but instead he was just treading water and doggie paddling along.

i think it worked quite well! I was really pleased with this developed doggie! I had got rid of his human features, and yet still managed to keep him secretly smug and have that determined look about him! I like how you can tell aswell that he is working his way through the water with some determination. I experimented too with his swimming hats and drew several different ones from resources. I just thought the more elaborate the hat, the funner the image. I also wanted him to keep his trunks on! 

Just a few of some of the designs that inspired me! I drew a few swimming cap ideas in my sketchbook. 

One think that I still needed to develop was the fact that I still didn't have a machine within my design, So i thought that maybre he could be chasing something, something that is making him swim faster to catch up. My tutor suggested maybe something like a duck or something. So during development I took this duck idea and thought of maybe a mechanical duck. But then I began to think about what dogs really enjoy chasing, and of course the majority of people will answer with "Cats" so I thought of the idea of maybe having a scubadiving cat, which I thought would be quite funny, however it wasnt really a machine. Then I had another idea, that I thought to be quite witty, I thought I need something that swims in water, but could also maybe look like a cat. So I thought of a CAT fish. Just to add a little bit of humour. I know that cat fishes ususally look like this.

 But I thought it was a bit of humour to use a pun on name. And that maybe I could make it look  more like an actual cat, with a fish body. So I designed mechanical wind up cat fish for the dog to chase through the water!