Hey guys! This past week I really got to enjoy a cool assignment in my Digital Illustration class. My professor, Bill Yermal, asked us to figure out something that we don’t enjoy doing. Then he told us to take that idea, and work it into a robot, who could do it for us.

I love character design, and this is one of the first times I’ve gotten to do an assignment related to it. I gathered a few ideas, and I’m still working on more! But I liked the idea of working on a kitty litter scooping robot. I’m not too fond of doing the task myself, even though I love my cats. I don’t think that’s anyone’s favorite part of having a kitty as a family member.

I spent a lot of time thinking about utility vs. design. I wanted it to be something to be useful, and that would make sense, while at the same time being something a cat wouldn’t be afraid to approach. Inside most of my cat shaped robots were little boxes, except for the one with the round head on the bottom right. In his case, he was a designed to walk around and scoop the litter boxes, his right arm being string to distract cats while he cleans, as a lot of times cats like to jump into the litter boxes while you’re cleaning them. This robot also has a little door so that you can pick up the bag from inside him when you can, for convenience.

The others have the litter box included inside, and a voice box to tell you when it’s time to clean it. The top left and bottom left were inspired by Japanese lucky cats, and were designed to have their arms pulled down as a switch to clean up the litter inside.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with all my designs, though the bottom left one is both my favorite and least favorite because it’s sort of cute, yet also somehow terror inducing if you can imagine it chasing your kitties around!

What do you guys think? Please comment below, and let me know if there are any robots you’d like to see or make yourselves! Until next week, keep on creating!