During my sophomore year of college, I worked on a model for my 3 project in the semester. In the modeling class we went from modeling a camera, a DeWalt brand appliance, and finally a project called the mech-animal. The main objective of this project was to chose an animal within the animal kingdom and make it look like a mechanical version of the animal. It was more than adding gears and spark plugs, we had to make the design so if the animal would come to life, it would be able to move. I knew once the assignment was announced, I wanted to make a cheetah. As a kid I loved big predator cats. The way that they are strong and can be dangerous if you come to close always brought an interest to me. The cheetah in particular being the fastest mammal on the Earth, was one of my favorite cats.  

      When I first started out my college journey, I read a lot of blog posts from Andreas Deja discussing the designs of Scar from the Lion King and Shere Kahn from Jungle Book. He explained how the artists always focused on the shoulder mechanics of the cats when they were animating the characters. They wanted to give it the same dynamic as a real cat. This brought me inspiration to make Selena the Cheetah. When I modeled her, I wanted to give her the mechanics of a train for the shoulders, the pistons and pumps of a car, and the strength of endurance in the legs.

 

       As I was modeling Selena, I looked the skeletal body of a cheetah as reference, as well as documentaries about cheetah to look at their features on how they ran and hunt. These research elements helped me create an aerodynamic design that through silhouette you can tell it is a cheetah.