The inspiration for this post came from a sketch I found on Behance of a Fordzilla Hypervan by Keyu Deng. I love the Syd Mead quality of his work. I greatly simplified his design and turned it into a high utility sedan/cross over vehicle. My version is not nearly as original. My goal with this styling exercise was to shake up the proportions of a modern car but still make the design look attractive and relatable. As I’ve mentioned before, I love sketching one-box designs. It’s fun to imagine cars of the future with fast windshields, long wheelbases and no front or rear overhangs. Some designers never grow up!
I usually begin sketching side views to create the theme. I draw from many visual sources sometimes deliberately and sometimes not. The front was consciously influenced by the Fordzilla sketch and later on I realized the front resembles a B-2 bomber while the rear looks like the tail of a motorcycle.
This vehicle architecture would require four wheel steering because of the enormous wheelbase. I imagined this car as having four electric motors, one at each wheel while also being a plug-in hybrid.
I combined my original sketch with the Fordzilla rendering in Photoshop by clipping portions of Keyu’s rendering and re-proportioning them over my sketch (the one with the arrow pointing at it). I had to let go of some of my favorite ideas to create a simpler, more harmonious design.
I had great success with Vizcom by selecting the Palette: Realistic Product. I’ve included a composite of several of the results. I overlaid two versions of it with reduced transparency on my original rendering to add more color.
I had great difficulty generating AI videos using Sora and Runway since I was starting with a side view. Their interpretation of my design from other views was very bizarre. That’s why I strung together shortened videos thereby eliminating the strange AI generated tortured shapes. However, I was able to use a slightly rotated still frame from the Sora video to render over in Photoshop. This became my featured image.
