CHARACTER DESIGN
A.R.I.T.O.
YEAR
2023
CLIENT
Nicholas Lim
A.R.I.T.O. stands for Assembly and Reconstructing Intelligent Textile Operator - a post-apocaliptic factory robot designed to manufacture t-shirts.
It is an older model and has been kept in storage for a while. When the apocalypse happened, all the newer models were destroyed and due to whatever caused the apocalypse, A.R.I.T.O. became sentient.
First Ideas of A.R.I.T.O. I had in mind something that could convey expressive faces and elements that would resemble the ones used in embroidery/sewing. A design aspect that the robot has are some sort of veins that dissipate heat, which we can see in orange.
Main sources of inspiration for design and materials.
Explorations for A.R.I.T.O. quirks - a built-in needle threader, a small bag, a power source and accessories. We’re gonna see a further exploration in the next images. The client however, was thinking of something way more industrial and hard surface. So we kept exploring.
Design explorations. The idea was offering many options and refining them until we could get to a result within what the client had in mind. Two quirks that A.R.I.T.O. has and I had to take into consideration while exploring is an holographic dashboard and a manual override system so that’s why they have lots of buttons and screens in the torso.
Design explorations results. In the end the client liked the bluish one.
Exploration on the heat veins.
A.R.I.T.O. is equipped with a needle threader system inside its arms, where he storages some threads and picks it up with a small claw inside its finger and rolls it into some small rollers between its hand plates and then puts it in the needle for quick sewings.
Right next to the thread storage there’s a spray can for dyeing fabrics and clothes.
Explorations for a speaking system. In the end the client choosed for one cilindrical speaker in one side only.
A.R.I.T.O. carries a small bag of fabric for the workers to sample or maybe some sort manual that contains fabric. Some explorations above. The one in the right was chosen.
Eyes exploration.
Explorations for exhaust elements.
Another very important quirk is the Customizable Embroidery System, which works like a magnectic drawing board kids use, but instead it’s like embroidery. So I took some embroidery machines as references and come up with two ideas, the second one being the choosen one.
Last but not least, A.R.I.T.O. needed a power source. I imagined something that could resemble a thread spool. The right one was chosen.
Final exploration for the power source.