Gianluca Gimini takes sketches of bicycles made by friends and strangers – they’re limited to two minutes – and then renders them as three-dimensional models. The “anigif” as he calls it, above, shows part of his process of creating the render, and he explains his inspiration:
back in 2009 I began pestering friends and random strangers. I would walk up to them with a pen and a sheet of paper asking that they immediately draw me a men’s bicycle, by heart. Soon I found out that when confronted with this odd request most people have a very hard time remembering exactly how a bike is made. Some did get close, some actually nailed it perfectly, but most ended up drawing something that was pretty far off from a regular men’s bicycle.
Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t.
I collected hundreds of drawings, building up a collection that I think is very precious. There is an incredible diversity of new typologies emerging from these crowd-sourced and technically error-driven drawings. A single designer could not invent so many new bike designs in 100 lifetimes and this is why I look at this collection in such awe.
Bicycles are unique. There is no one-size-fits-all design, so these drawings and renderings are very much reflective of that pool of thought and diversity of design. But they each seem a little quirky, a little off; that said, this single-fork design does actually work – or rather I recently saw a Cannondale Lefty in operation and was extremely bewildered by it! Also while some of his renderings you wouldn’t want as a daily commuter or weekender ride, some could actually be built and operated for a short amount of time (before they break!).
Here’s another sample of how Gimini goes from sketch to rendering:
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