MORE INFORMATION
• Tailor-made Presentation
Understanding how the client will process your renderings may be just as important as the rendering itself.
Barry Justus, president
Poolscape Inc.
Burlington, Ontario, Canada
We use a combination of computer-aided and hand-rendered methods, and exactly how it’s done depends on the clients and the scope of the project.
Some people are happy with computer-aided design, but then there are others who want that extra little touch, so presenting them with hand-rendered sketches really works. We work with an interior designer as well, and that’s how she operates — it’s all watercolors and marker drawings, and people appreciate that.
Initially, after we’ve developed some ideas, we’ll show the client the project on Pool Studio, Google SketchUp or both.
I know Pool Studio receives negative comments from a lot of people, but I love it. It does look cartoonish, but the beauty is that when you’re showing a design to a client, you can change various features instantly in front of them. For instance, if you had a raised wall beside a pool and we’ve got it at 5 feet, they can say, “What does it look like at 6 feet?” I find the clients really like that. We set it up so they have their own monitor to view, and I can quickly make changes to the design as they watch.
Google SketchUp is a three-dimensional perspective drawing that looks more hand-rendered. It definitely has a softer, more artistic feel, but it’s much quicker than creating it by hand, so we can offer them sketches of different concepts and options, and it’s easier to alter. It’s pretty tough to nail a design first shot, so we don’t do a hand-rendered drawing at that stage.
Once we have the whole design completed and materials figured out, then we may do a hand drawing. It’s like a piece of art — we sometimes even present it framed to the client. When creating the drawings, we often copy from Google SketchUp or use a screen shot from Pool Studio and then draw it by hand. You can trace over the drawing to get your perspective right.
It’s just a quick method of redrawing the backyard, and then you could use watercolor or markers to make it into more of a hand-rendered sketch.
For final presentation, we do hand-rendered perspective drawings and sometimes a watercolor of how the project’s going to look.
