Planning Primary Research

 Planning research is an important aspect for experimenting and brewing new ideas. Fortunately for me since I had my characters design some time ago, I have a base for me to animate and create various poses to get an idea of how the project will go. However, it will not be enough to come up with first person like idea generation. So for this post, I will look at few various objects to further understand how they function and how I can implement them on my characters.

 One obvious trait about all the characters is the ability to morph their bodies into military like weapon. One way to understand how the ability should work and function is simply observing something like how a military weapon works. The disassembly and mechanism is a fascinating element of mechanical objects such as weapons but also other harmless objects such as the engine. I will look at broken down objects and their inner components to investigate.

 In this diagram, the rifle has been broken down to showcase its inner components and how they function. After observing and understanding the components, all smaller parts relay their actions to perform a bigger task, that is to dampen the explosion once the bullet is fired. There are various springs and rings installed to minmize recoil and therefore this idea can be taken for the characters when they use their weapon. This will allow to show the since of realism and not out of picture.

 Another element is the engine exploded view, this has much larger parts compared to a rifle but nonetheless has smaller intricate components to function. The engine works like a clock, and to understand the cyle I start with the basic element and that is main purpose to burn fuel to produce energy. All other components come together to support the bigger function which then completes the engine as a whole. 

 The secondary research for the project is to look at another character from a cartoon show called 'Generator Rex'. The main character, Rex Salazar, has the ability to morph his hands and legs into large mechanical weapons and tools to battle off against various monsters that have been infected by a virus. However, Rex's character design allows him to create exagerated sized weapons but the functionality is also widened due to its scaled size.

 This was one element that I looked at for my characters since I did not know how the design would have resulted if I were to go for much larger tools for the morphing ability.

 However the character Rex has been given me the idea in this regard and I can implement that for the characters, although not at the Rex's character scale.

Reference list:

Generator Rex. 2010. [show] Directed by C. Graham. United States: Cartoon Network Studios.

American Gunsmith Tooling. n.d. AR-15-Type Rifle Exploded Diagram brought to you by American Gunsmith Tooling. [online] Available at: <https://www.americangunsmithtooling.com/pages/ar-15-type-rifle-exploded-diagram> [Accessed 5 August 2021].