The form and idea behind the ray gun is powered by pure imagination, limited only by the mind of the conjurer. Toy ray guns have, throughout history, provided not only a child-like hero’s weapon and fantasy toy, but also a public expression of the fears, wonders and fascinations of the their time.
The popularity of ray guns, along with their companion heroes like Buck Rogers, was intertwined with our first explorations into space, the race to land on the moon, and the varying iterations of ray guns over time reflect the sentiments and the struggles that were contemporary to their time.
Objective
You are to design your own version of a Ray Gun for this moment in time. What this ray gun should reflect is, in your view, what are the current obsessions and fascinations of our culture, what are the things that need to be fended off, what should be protected and how will this be done?
What you do will not necessarily be literal. (For example, if a problem is global warming, you needn’t show an ice gun feature, and you needn’t include a holy water blaster to combat moral degradation…although you could do either of those.) You may also make things more down to earth and personal, such as addressing your own personal addiction to social media and being connected.
The form does not need to perfectly parallel the function in every way. But there should be some logic between the way the parts of the weapon come together and the things you wish to deal with conceptually in your piece. In short, the weapon and its features should feel like a cohesive whole.
The finished product will be a poster, which features the full item prominently in the poster, with an exploded view or a diagram as well which details all the features of the weapon. These features can be literal and physical, and may also be conceptual/intangible features.
Specs
- No color limitations
- 8×12 or 12×18 poster
- Requirements
- Title of the Weapon
- A slogan for it.
(This slogan and the name of the weapon should serve to help tie the features into a cohesive set that make sense.) - A full-detail image of the weapon, with color and depth
- At least 6 features of the weapon, diagrammed out
These features should not be random. There should be some sort of theme about the set of features. - Each feature should have a name and a short description of it.
- Vector. Vector. Vector.
Instructions
Sketch out ideas for your poster, which will include not only sketching the form of the item, but first figuring out what your approach is to the project.
Build your project in Illustrator. I want you to build this as a vector to get a feel for the thing you can do without Photoshop. You can bring in textures later, but do the bulk and the shapes as vectors.