Gelbee Tigerfly / Wildfire Gel Blaster

Towards the end of 2021 I teamed up with Gelbee to create this neat little electrically powered gel blaster. It was a fast paced project with a very tight timeline, but that forced me to think on my feet and make design decisions on my own, only checking in at milestone points in the process. 
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There weren’t many constraints or requirements: it needed to have a grip guard (to house the battery pack) and have a removable stock. Most importantly, it needed to have clean and sci-fi aesthetics and clearly look like a toy. It also had to match the established style of the company’s first blaster. 
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I started out with the silhouette, as I do most of the time. However, when dealing with tight deadlines I like to trust my expertise and iterate as I go, as opposed to creating several different looking silhouettes. From the start I keep the internals in mind and make sure there’s enough room for them. 
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After the silhouette was approved, I blocked out all of the major shapes and made a basic greyscale render, followed up by a colored version. Knowing a 3D CAD model was part of the deliverables, I didn’t spend much time rendering out details in 2D; most shapes and forms will come naturally in 3D. 
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One thing to keep in mind here was manufacturing process. After all, every differently colored part would be a separate piece of polymer, so increasing the number of parts would increase the cost of production. This adds an extra layer of complexity to the design process which I find to be a welcome challenge. 
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After the model was done, I used side view viewport screenshots as a base for color scheme explorations. A little while after delivery, I was asked to design a matching muzzle attachment. This ended up not being included in production, but it was fun to design an attachment; something I actually don’t often get to play around with. 
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Overall I think it was a fun, different and in various ways also challenging project. It’s really cool to see just how close the final product is to my concept- and they even adapted the exact T-shaped stock attachment and locking mechanism I designed!