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New Corvette Video Opens with... the Designers

By Rain Noe - January 31, 2013

in Cars

Guess what we're making

Guess what we're making

The 2014 Corvette has been unveiled, and the video being used to promote it reminds me how far the public perception of industrial design has come. Years ago, a commercial for a new Corvette would feature the car cruising down an idyllic country road, tearing up a track or whipping down an American highway. But as you'll see, the ad below starts off with footage of the team scraping out the full-sized clay model, with accompanying soundbites from designers Kirk Bennion and Tom Peters. We're then teased with some fleeting computer modeling and wall-o'-sketches shots before they hand it over to the aerodynamics team.

Sexy logo update, no? We'll get to that in a minute.

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cube

11 years ago

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Spot on DJ.
your comment needs to be placed in almost every design student- or young professionals laptop/tablets bag:)
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DJ

11 years ago

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To respond to the "why clay" question:

One reason is intent.

Most software programs for 3D modelling have 'rules' that must be followed. If a designer tries a new shape, Rhino might not stitch it for export. Solidworks loves to say "no". So the designer will change the surfaces to suit the programs' rules. By following the rules of the program, designers learn to build surfaces in similar ways, and everything begins to look similar. In essence - software teaches designers how to act. The programs are in control of the design.

With clay, there are fewer rules. Clay can be shaped like creased metal when designing a car, or can be shaped like a monster for hollywood.

By using an extremely flexible medium like clay, and working hard to perfect it, the designers are more certain that the original intent was transferred to production.

This process has been proven time and again, to produce the most beautiful results.
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Cameron

11 years ago

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Not a car design expert, but like you said, I believe clay is used for a continuum of iterations. It allows for a nice tangible understanding that is much cheaper and quicker to iterate with than digitally created models.
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Jason Fraker

11 years ago

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Thanks for the info, guys. I knew there had to be a reason. Now, tell me why a full scale clay model is still part of the game? It seems remarkably hard to make the clay model as accurate as a machine made prototype made of individual plastic panels fastened together. Is the clay medium used to allow for slight modifications to the whole piece on the fly? One of the designers mentioned shaving an inch here and adding a couple inches there.
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Austin

11 years ago

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Jason: They are to hide body lines and details so that photographers can't get a good look at new designs. Believe it or not, car spy photography is actually a career to some folks, such as Brenda Priddy.
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Cameron

11 years ago

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@Jason - probably because this model was going to go through outdoor track testing and they use those wraps to hide the car's surfacing to delay copying as long as possible.
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Jason Fraker

11 years ago

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Is there a practical purpose for the crazy bullseye wrap design on the wind tunnel prototype?
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bob

11 years ago

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it is always amazing to see the surface finish a clay modeler can put on a milled cad model- so sad that I look at primitive solidworks models all day
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