separating the concept boys from the concept men LOL

I think that mentorship is an important part of learning in general. Over the past year plus or so I've always sort out the advice of professionals. As much as students do and can help you as your peers, they often can be so focused in a myopic way that you can lose sight of what is important. A few of my teachers or professionals have mentioned that the 'design' part is very important, and that a lot of the time we focus too much on the 'illustration' part. So what we end up with is a bunch of illustrators who claim that they are or want to be 'concept @rtists'. One teacher flat out said to a class 'you don't understand; you need to have an IDEA'. The drawing aspect is a way of visually communicating, but it is NOT the end in itself. Being able to render out metal and glass and leather may take you far, but not far enough. Designing solely by shape will only take you so far. Many have indicated that the great ones have a sense of how things work, how they fit together and are built in real life. Some of the best creature designers LOVE animals; I know of one who ONLY watches channels like Animal planet and the hist0ry channel. Some of the best veh!cle designers LOVE cars, and you'll find some of the best environment guys sitting on a given Sunday with easels outside in the C@ny0ns painting the vista in front of them. So anyways, I've been building a model to scale based on some plans we got in class by an actual film art direct0r. My class is filled with art direct0rs who can look at a flimsy concept right away and say "that won't work; it will tip over" or "it doesn't make ANY sense". Many of them come from industrial design, theatre, tv, film or architecture, and have a great sense of design and they can ALL read set plans (ground plans/elevations, etc). I actually enjoy doing this kind of stuff a lot, when it makes sense. The M@ya stuff I tend to not like as much because it's not as specific, and you can push and pull in unnatural ways; in this programme it is very accurate and to scale and water tight; so I could literally take it from here, generate set plans or take it straight to a 3D printer. Love it. And that's how many of the people in f!lm do it. Oh, I'm working on the steps and this is an initial render of some stuff.