How it all started

I first saw a tape drawing while I was working in the Saturn Studio at GM's Tech Center in Warren, MI. I was the design lead for a 3 person team tasked to develop a Saturn concept vehicle. My two colleagues, a sculptor and an engineer, sat together as we watched a veteran car designer draw a full scale car profile in tape. It was revelatory for me. I never considered drawing this way before. The car designers do it because it's a little bit more controllable than a white board. And it's physical. It requires your whole body.

They also do it because it's a great analog to running your hand along a real car. And it helps the designers and sculptors "negotiate" the 2-D form together before the full scale 3-D clay model gets sculpted. As the design evolves, the tape drawing reflects all the iterations on layer upon layer of vellum.

The first photo above is the pencil sketch of my concept car on vellum. The second photo is the 1/5 scale tape drawing I did as an enlargement of my pencil sketch. It is partially obscured by the clay model we built using the tape drawing. The third photo is the half-finished model next to the tape drawing.

Comments

[Kresh]

I am loving tape drawing idea! Great work sir!