Electric Car Update:
Inspired by the Hyundai N Vision 74 and its adjacent contemporaries in the field of retro futurism, comes our cardboard electric car submission. We found that the inherently boxy features of the N Vision 74 plays directly into the unmalleable nature of cardboard, enabling us to achieve more geometric shapes with minimal cutting and waste. Picture 2 is our existing prototype devoid of the wheel cutouts, windshield, grill, lip and fenders for the wheels. The bit-like headlights will run the length of the bumper, with the fog lights being strips of light running perpendicular to it. We intend to explore laser cutting for more continous features like the grill and logo. Deciding against air intake ports due to our prototype looking too similar to the American muscle car aesthetic, we plan on diving deeper into features of the bumper rather than the bonnet.
Final Update: The RetroFuturistic Car is Done.
One of the defining characteristics of the project was the heavy “go with the vibes” approach we had taken. There was no CAD or laser cutting utilized, instead we opted for tracing, approximations and intuition.
Using relief cuts, the bonnet was created by overlapping the two halves of a cut piece of cardboard, with every other piece being glued perpendicularly out of it. The exaggerated lip, fenders, grills and sharp features exist as defining characteristics of American muscle cars, whose features are offset by futuristic elements like the long rectangular headlight and fog lights that span the width of the bumper. This fine line between the features of old and new is one that retrofuturism often threads. It is also the zone we hoped to land in.
The biggest challenges we faced with the project were often scheduling conflicts and the amount of secondary work that had to be done due to our “vibes only” approach, often resulting in extra cutting and gluing from wrong dimensions and placement. All in all, it was a refreshing project.
