Scott Robertson leads a fantastic life.  Spaceships, aliens, race cars, and video games make up his not-so-average day.  It’s the kind of day that many — or day we say, all? — Designers would want to have just once a month.  With the freedom to draw just about anything he wants, Scott Robertson is an Industrial Designer living the dream.

So, you can imagine our excitement when we found out that he would be hosting a live lecture as a part of CCS’ monthly lecture series in Detroit.  We grabbed every recording gadget that we could find, headed to the art & design school, and prepared ourselves to be blown away.

Scott began the lecture with a little of his background.  His career started out much like a typical Designer’s: attend art school, get an internship (in his case, designing bikes for Kestrel), graduate and get a full-time ID job creating medical equipment and consumer products.  It was humbling to see that his beginnings were as mundane as ours appear to be, which lend to his incredible modesty.

He eventually taught at his alma mater of Art Center College of Design, developing futuristic vehicles as a method to teach his students and use as demo pieces. Realizing how disenchanted he was with creating plastic landfill, he transitioned from product design into the entertainment industry.  His natural entrepreneurial spirit tempted him to create a product that he felt could be timeless, one that wouldn’t have engineering limits or become trash, and certainly one that would allow for more freedom of his personal expression.  Design Studio Press was born, and out of it came his first book: Start Your Engines.

Scott Robertson’s design process isn’t typical.  Rather, instead of creation out of process, he creates out of emotion.  While he may have a vision of a concept to move towards, Robertson often relies on his tools to help him remain creative.  His work in creating creatures for his Alien Race series was based on a happy accident.

“We had a dinner party one night, and I had Photobooth open on my Mac.  With the mirror filter on, everyone took turns making crazy faces.  Humans are hard-wired to see faces in everything around us, so eventually we began turning ourselves into aliens.”

The resulting photos were brought into Photoshop and illustrated into highly-detailed and unique characters.

“That one was an onion.  In that one, my wife was holding an iPod over her eye.” Using several found objects — dead fish, plant roots — he has created over 5000 creatures.  This process netted him an unlimited library of photographs to begin from.  In a live demo on the stage, Robertson crumpled up a piece of paper and turned it into a ferocious, horned beast.

Its this type of thinking that makes Robertson unique.  I was taught to research the heck out of something before beginning a sketch.  Robertson just… sketches, often creating the story and history around the image.  A self-professed analog artist, Robertson works a lot in pen, marker, gauche, but loves Photoshop as well.  He’s recently begun utilizing 3D modeling software suite Modo, but may move on to some other tool soon after.  “I challenge myself to reinvent over and over again,” he says.

Robertson loves the process of inventing and learning.  The moment of discovery is important, but so is refining that moment and sharing it with other people.  Robertson compiles source books of inspirational images.  He’ll modify the heck out of a photo if he likes one small portion of it, and experiments in zoom blur and HDR photography for one-point perspective background images.

Fear of failure, he says, is the hardest step.  “Having the perseverance to let yourself fail allows progress. Having the wrong expectations about work can lead to fear. Leave yourself the proper time to fail and progress.”  Tools like Photobooth and sketching with his left hand instead of his right lead to no expectations.  Experimentation allows for reduced fear.

Through all that, though, Robertson relies on the basics of Design to create his work.

“Every designer needs traditional sculpting & modeling ability to inform their drawing ability, making transition to digital sculpting natural.  Designers need to learn and do as much as possible to be competitive.  It’s not how you draw, it’s what you draw.”

His comments read like a how-to guide for beginners, but the value lasts long into the professional world.

Robertson’s current passion is the development of Alien Race as an IP that he can spread across what he calls the “four quadrants” of the entertainment industry: movies, video games, comics, and toys.  Alien Race is just that: racing on the backs of bioengineered creatures from alien worlds.  He is also working on completing a new book about video game inspired vehicles.

Scott admits that he’s always in “rusty” mode, and that he generally never peaks.

That’s one kind of rust that I don’t think I’d ever want removed.

Scott Robertson presented lectures at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit during the week of April 25th, 2010.  His highlight lecture on Thursday, April 29th, was a part of CCS’ Toyota Lecture series.

Scott can be found online at DrawThrough.com and DesignStudioPress.com.  He has worked on video games (Spy Hunter 2) and movies (Minority Report) throughout his career.

We’ll have an interview with Scott coming soon… stay tuned!

Video courtesy fellow CDF’er Arvind at Driven Mavens