Wooden Toy Car
In this project I'm tasked with using sourced pieces of solid wood, design and make a stylized wooden toy car. The maximum size constraints are 200mm long x 120mm wide x 120mm high. The wheels must be able to rotate.
Research
Ideation
At this stage we had to compile up ideas of the wood toys we want to create or find inspiration in, and we had to create ideation sketches to support the execution. After the development car sketches, we had to showcase the small variations in some features of the car as I come close to the final product. With the ideation sketches I came up with I wanted to design and explore a more futuristic toy car and I saw I was inspired by cars like the Lamborghini Aventador , Tesla Cybertruck and mostly electric cars because they hold this futuristic look which I sort after. In the end with my refinement sketches I chose to go with the Tesla Cybertruck because it seemed simple to replicate out of all the cars after I analyzed them all.
Development
At this stage after making our ideation sketches, we had to execute and make a mockup of the final wood toy car idea sketch we came up with and try bringing it to life. The mockup really helped me envision the car reference I picked and see it in a smaller state and after designing this mockup I realized the prototype had to have more detailing and thicker wheels and a more defined body shape so it can clearly resemble the real thing as wooden toy car.
Manufacture
I began to work on the final prototype and since the toy car had to have at least three different wood textures, I glued three blocks of wood with different textures together and began sanding and after a while I had a while with appearing cracks after sanding as you can see on the second image, but I ended up mixing wood glue and some dust to make my own crack cover paste and after it dried I just sanded it flat again. The time spent working in the workshop was calming even though it was stressful.
Decal Design
I chose these decals because they aren't really complicated designs that come with the Tesla Cybertruck as it is made to seem like a spaceship and has a very minimalistic design with decals, so I chose decals that show the windows, custom number plate and back lights as those are its highlighted features on the outside.
Outcome
This is the final product of the research and ideation of the wooden toy car, and this is the outcome of all those things combined. The wooden toy car had to have functioning wheels which make it move and the whole prototype had to be made completely out of solid wood and we had to try replicate the ideation to as close as possible copy.
REFLECTION
At first I picked the Tesla Truck as my inspiration and final ideation for the prototype wood toy because I thought it was an easy pick, but I quick saw after I began making it that it wasn't so easy and I ran into so may problems form shaping the model car to over sanding parts, having to restart some parts definitely had me down for a bit but after I caught on it became an enjoyable experiences. Even thought we had 2 weeks to complete the car and extension because of the power problems I didn't reach the maximum outcomes of how I wanted the prototype to appear although it was a very relaxing and fun project to spend time in the workshop and work on it till, they close. I learned a lot from this and think if I had the chance to make another, I'd pick something more complex to make it better.
