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A-Level Product Design Coursework
A-Level Product Design Coursework
Brief: In order to succeed in a competitive marketplace, theme parks are investing greater time and money in immersive design and promoting their attractions. Re-brand a given ride and produce a visual identity of this, along with associated promotional material.
The ride I decided to re-brand was Colossus at Thorpe Park, UK. Opening in 2002 with Aztec styling, time has weathered the theming and the immersion into said theme has suffered as a result. My design centered around a large pyramid structure visible from anywhere within the region, featuring a near miss element at its base. Pathways were re-routed to improve guest flow through the region and make use of a dead space beside the attraction. Other changes involved repainting the track and running vehicles backwards to breathe new excitement into the attraction. The virtual model was created using No Limits 2 and Google SketchUp.
To aid the visual identity, a 1/100 scale model of the ride's new proposed station building was produced, including entrance sign. The Aztec face and entrance sign were 3D printed and hand painted, while the main body of the station was constructed using 24mm plywood and modelling foam, spray painted. Tissue paper vines climb down the model pyramid to exemplify its dereliction.
In the way of promotional material, I produced a poster for the new attraction's debut at the park. I didn't want too many of the changes to be shown in the poster as to surprise guests with unexpected new features on their arrival.
Popular theme park attractions often generate long queues, and the queue I had planned originally would not suffice. To extend it, I added a more queue in two new buildings on either side of one of the main pathways, with the line passing across the gap between the buildings, over the main path. The blue line shows the main queue and the red is the FastTrack line.
The original pyramid design had the track passing through, so to solve this problem, I created a cylinder (blue) slightly larger than the clearance envelope of the track and rotated it until it fell in line with the track’s path. I then deleted the exterior of the cylinder which didn’t coincide with the pyramid to leave a path large enough for the trains to pass through safely. It created a new near-miss element which provides additional thrill for riders.
Problems & Solutions
A key problem arose when spray painting the modelling foam: a chemical in the spray paint dissolved the foam. This was resolved by coating the foam in PVA glue prior to spraying.
Another issue involved SketchUp designing. I click and dragged the mouse to select a group of items to move all at once when designing the Aztec face. When dragging to select on SketchUp, you select not only every object you can see, but also hidden objects behind it. So, when moving objects on the face, I did not realise I was moving things behind the face too. This caused the line faults shown in the images. These issues were unfixable, so I had to return to a much older version and start over.
Future developments:
This project was conducted under a very limited time scale, so I wasn't able to produce the level of attention-to-detail I'd hoped. I'm proud of what I completed in 8 months, though I knew I could do better, so I began work on what became Fluch des Drachen.
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