Creating the Hydrozoa and Sea Wasp

Alrighty. I'm going to explain my design process with how I ended up with the Hydrozoa submarine and Sea Wasp drones, as an example of my thought processes and techniques. I came up with the concept in early 2016 when I was preparing for my last trimester at SAE, as a side project to offer as distraction from 'Snatched' but to continue working on 3D. I had never done a submarine before, and was something I was eager to dive into (pun intended). Submarines are a definition of 'every piece used'. There is no need for greeble or excessive parts because the hull tends to be as slimline as possible to create minimum drag, and with confined habitable areas, everything is minimalistic, bare essentials and smooth.

Like all projects, a good chunk of the first stage is referencing, resourcing and making note of what has been done, what is currently out there, what's proposed, and other artist impressions. I generally look on Google Images and Pintrest, where I save myself a whole library of resource images broken down into categories. After a day or two at this, I had a sizable visual mood board to scout ideas from. I found myself drawn to the more realistic modern looking personal submarines; the practicality and function was clear for each part, and most had a sleek and modern feel about it. After some contemplation, I decided that I will incorporate another modern element that seems to be taking public interest, which is drones - hence was born the idea of a submarine drone carrier. Now, this proposed an issue, that meant the submarine was going to be slightly larger than I intended, and no doubt bulkier, which was starting to prove my original design plans misaligned. However, my plan was saved by my girlfriend, who was travelling to Hawaii at the time and informed me she will be touring around on a submarine they have there, called Atlantis. Looking at images of it, it struck me I could use this submarine as a base for my model. While although the internet had numerous images, I required some closer inspections, and my girlfriend could not get any shots I required. I proceeded to contact Hawaii about images/blueprints to the submarine, where I was then redirected to their engineering office in Canada, where my request was denied due to liability/legal concerns, which is fair enough. So, with images of Atlantis submarines now filling my screens, I began very roughly sketching out ideas for how the hull would look with drone bays attached. I tried a variety of ideas, from drones detaching from the hull like limpets to 'Battlestar Galactica' like launch bays on either side of the fuselage. Practically, they didn't quite work. Most ROV drones have a manipulator attached for picking up items, which would suggest the drones would need to be able to deliver goods to crew members easier. While although I did come up with a system that could have worked with the limpet drone idea, I decided to simplify the idea: simple maybe the hull of the submarine deeper, by adding another hull that would allow the crew to climb to a lower drone deck. WIth an idea in mind, I re sketched the idea very roughly, and was pleased with the basic silhouette: slimline and practical, with easy access for the crew to get in and out of the submarine, easy deploy and retrieval of the drones, and plentiful room for people to move around in without being too confined.

The modelling was done in Maya, and I ensured everything would be done to scale. I used images of the Atlantis submarine as reference only, but created my own shapes for the top and crew deck. The drone deck was created using reference imagery of C130, Aircraft Carriers and my own intuition.

I have two friends of mine that I continually bounced my designs off, as I know other people's opinions count and can offer great results, and these guys are always honest. If I had a good idea, they'd tell me. If I had a bad one, they would help me refine it. When it came to some of the extra features - such as the guard rails, hand grips and lockers around the submarine - asked them if what I had designed sold it, and they would say "no, should look more like this" or "yes, but it would be better if like this" or "yep, that's good - nailed it".

So, with the submarine worked out, time fort the drone. using the specifications of the bay door and drone deck as reference, the drones worked out to have a diameter of less then 2m, which sounded about right. At first I toyed around with existing shapes, which mostly consisted of a box with a camera, propeller and a manipulator. I designed a few of my own but in comparison to the mother sub, didn't seem quite right. Since the submarine has a cylinder body, I tried basing the drone on a similar design, and that showed some greater promise.

Initially, the manipulator for the arms were very simple, very blank. One of my friends encouraged that it should look very practical yet sophisticated, utilizing a lot of complex movements. So, I looked at a few more technical manipulators and redesigned for a lot of movement in the arm and fingers, with exposed inner workings all along the arms. I then took it another step forward, and instead of having one manipulator, I gave my drone six, spread out like insect legs, with the front, middle and back sets each different, each with their own purpose: the front used for grabbing/holding/moving things. The middle designs are based off cranes, used for carrying heavier objects such as crates or cages. The rear have a drilling mechanism, designed for securing a hold on ledges if perched in dangerous or risky areas with high flows. It was around this time I realized I had to give my submarine and drone a name. I looked on the internet for something fitting to a underwater drone carrier. Initially looking at ancient aquatic gods, I decided to make this simpler and simply looked up underwater hive/colony creatures, which is how I ended up with 'Hydrozoa', the latin name for the family animals like jellyfish belong to, whihc describes animals that live as a colony. Appropiately, I then concluded to name the drone 'Sea Wasp'.

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