For my latest art project, our class was given the prompt to design our own moving structure inspired by the Ghibli movie, Howl’s Moving Castle. After rewatching the film, a few ideas came to mind, and I begun working on the conceptual sketches.

My very first idea was a sentient flower picking robot. It carried a basket on its back and one arm for slicing the flowers and the other for scooping them up. I was happy with the idea, but it didn’t entirely fit the criteria as it was supposed to be a ‘structure’. So I scraped that and sketched up a moving treehouse again. For this one, I also liked the design, but I didn’t have a solid justification as to how the tree actually moved with its roots. Eventually, my professor and I decided that the silhouette of the water tank drill was the strongest design that best fit the goal of the project.

I took this design and made it a lot stronger and more readable by giving it more weight in the angle of the legs. I also reinforced the idea of big, medium, small and group the shapes so that it reads as (Big- Tank, Medium- legs, and Small- Inner workings). Whereas before, the shapes were much too nebulous and didn’t give off the feeling of a stable mechanism

‘Moving’ on to my final illustration, I imported the design I created and made a few small touch ups to it. Then, I began with flat colors in order to get the same energy as a Ghibli film. I had the most fun with the clouds, and spent some time rendering those in and adding jet trails to hint at other possible flying structures in the environment. I then added a rust to the plating to hint at the water drill being decommissioned, and I added a person next to it to emphasize scale and tell a subtle story.