![]() ![]() The association of aircraft to their natural counterpart, birds, is commonplace in everything from their engineering to their names – Nighthawk, Falcon, Raptor, Blackhawk and Kestrel – but for Eric Watanabe, birds are not the only source of inspiration to be found in nature when designing an aircraft. “When I need help with proportions or beauty, and design, and textures, I always go to nature” Watanabe explains. With his sketchbook nearby, he often pulls over to give time to the idea forming on the paper in front of him. Other times an idea will strike while Watanabe drives through the desert landscape dotted with Joshua trees that surrounds Palmdale, jazz music playing from his car’s radio. Dimming the lights and setting pencil to paper brings feelings of quiet solitude that can sometimes light a creative spark. ![]() Never without a sketchbook, he will sometimes trade his office space for a stroll around the facility or an unconventional location primarily used for storage. “In the beginning,” he says, “I think there is something so natural to doing sketches with a plain old pencil.” As a result, Watanabe prefers to do his initial sketches monochromatic and loose, in a number 3 light-hard lead pencil, before darkening them and scanning them to digitize the design. The ideal, according to Watanabe, is to sketch as fast as your mind can think. The creative design process for new technology must remain fluid, similar to music, because an idea can change even while it is being drawn. The way that a flute and piano might harmonize and play off of one other brought together by a conductor, so too must the aerodynamics, the support, and the propulsion of an aircraft work in harmony, tied together by a designer. At this point the collaboration across fields goes into overdrive to modify the design and build up the full design around the wire-frame concept.Įver the creative spirit, Watanabe relates the collaborative process of designing an aircraft to that of a conductor and an orchestra creating a symphony. Then designers, like Watanabe, create a wire-frame sketch of the product that allows for the concept to be seen all the way through a skeletal plan of the aircraft to come. ![]() From there the engineers will give a briefing that can include a very rough preliminary concept sketch. In design, as well as life, it is important to take in and draw inspiration from your surroundings and to maintain a childlike sense of wonderment and creativity, according to Watanabe.Ī new concept usually begins only as a description of its mission and the parameters that it must meet. “They were like dinosaurs, they all had character, they all had a voice. “I used to love earth-moving machines - backhoes, bulldozers, cranes,” Watanabe says. Watanabe recalls his childhood toys often being the focus of his curiosity, frequently disassembled in his search to find the spark within them that made the toys seem to come to life. Even as a child, Watanabe was fascinated with exploring the way that things around him worked and fit together, especially machinery. While in school Watanabe initially studied drawing, painting and graphic design but was strongly influenced by his uncle, an industrial designer for Panasonic, to pursue his own degree in industrial design.
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