
Bicycles from Sketches (2016) - datashrimp
http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html
======
markkat
IMO it's underappreciated how these mistakes are not a bug of human
intelligence, but a feature. They reveal a default non-literal interpretation
of the world, which can be made less abstract when needed. However, it's the
default abstractness that prevents us from making gross contextual errors
based upon a literal interpretation.

~~~
glcheetham
This feature really is a bug for Chinese speakers. The same phenomenon as
people being unable to accurately draw a bicycle, an object you're pretty
familiar with, is called "character amnesia" when you're unable to write a
Chinese character that you probably see every day and can read and understand
with no problems. The meaning of the character is definitely abstracted away
somewhere in your brain, but there might be hundreds or thousands of
characters you're simply unable to reproduce on paper.

The Chinese characters are composed of a specific order of strokes, and
sometimes it's like you can't bring a clear enough picture of it into your
mind's eye to be able to reverse engineer it with a pen on paper. I probably
experience this a lot more as a learner of Chinese as a foreign language, so
I'm pretty familiar with the feeling of "Character amnesia". It happened to me
the other day with 牙 (tooth) a pretty simple character that you'd think would
be easy to remember. Once you get the first two to or so strokes down though
muscle memory seems to take over and you finish it almost subconsciously.

From anecdotal examples, this is actually pretty common, and in mainland
Chinese sources I've read they seem to put it down to people using pinyin
(romanised pronunciation) input on phone and PC keyboards instead which gets
people out of the habit of remembering stroke orders.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia)

~~~
watersb
Neat!

Is your experience similar to spelling errors in written English?

I choose English because it's the primary (only?) language for this site, and
while there are definite rules for the correct sequence of letters for a word,
the rules for the language overall are not especially consistent. And it seems
to me that English has a bazillion words in common use.

I have from time to time experienced that very weird sensation, as I look at
an English word I've used in written language for fifty years, and it suddenly
for a time it seems totally wrong and incomprehensible. I recall staring at
the word "Our", thinking it could not possibly mean anything in English. This
is rare, and doesn't last long. So far.

But it gives me some insight into aphasia, perhaps.

And we need spell-checkers for our writing, because in a stream of words we
have written by pushing buttons, the brain elides the misplaced letters, it's
almost impossible to spot them all, much less work to simply hand to someone
else to read it fresh, then the errors seem obvious to them.

But it's the temporary, isolated dyslexia I find bizarre.

~~~
glcheetham
Yeah, you got it right, I'm a native English speaker. I wouldn't say the
first-person experience is entirely the same as forgetting a spelling, when I
misspell a word I usually get most of it right and mix one or two letters up
like piece/peice.

With a Chinese character, it's like you can't get the first stroke down and
you're unable to reproduce anything. But once you've worked out the first two
or three strokes, maybe by getting a dictionary, for me at least muscle memory
seems to just take over and you can kind of just finish it automatically.

It's interesting though, these little quirks definitely give some insight into
how the brain's underlying OS works. Funnily enough talking about dyslexia I
often wonder if Chinese dyslexia and English dyslexia is the same condition,
or if they're both completely different. Would an English kid be as dyslexic
in Chinese if they were bilingual, or would they find reading one language
easier?

------
reitanqild
This has been discussed at least a couple of times before but maybe I have a
new angle:

Somewhere during the last three years or so I realized I'm one of those people
who can hardly see mental images. Even my dreams seems to often be just
feelings og having been somewhere and done something.

However I can draw bikes my house and everything else that I know well (and I
often have too draw things since I cannot keep mental models in my head.)

Why is this, how can I draw something I cannot project in my head? Is it just
because I understand it so well that if I try to draw it wrong my mind hurts?

PS: My drawings are not nice, but they are somewhat correct, the frame makes
sense, the chain is in the correct place etc etc.

PPS: I keep wondering if I always was like this or if I lost it at some time
(if I lost it my best guess is there's a mild form of something like PTSD
because of a bunch of stuff that happened from I was 15 to 25).

~~~
amenghra
Do you think you have some form of Aphantasia? This post by Blake Ross might
be helpful? [https://m.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-
fe...](https://m.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-
blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/)

~~~
lqet
I always wondered whether a good way to describe Aphantasia to people who
don't have it is to ask them to "imagine" an odor. Most people can recognize
specific oders effortlessly and remember them for decades (example: you smell
some brand of aftershave, and you immediately know that this is how your
great-grandfather always smelled, who has been dead for 20 years), but you
cannot "think" of an odor and actually smell it the same way you can think of
an apple and see and inspect its image inside your head. Yet you "know" what
gasoline smells like, or fresh bread.

This leads to another interesting question: are there people who cannot
imagine music and other sounds, like speech? Is this related to Aphantasia?

A question even more interesting: _are_ there people who can imagine odors, or
combinations of them? I would expect this to be very handy if you are
designing perfume, for example.

~~~
kaybe
Wait, you cannot imagine odors? They are more vivid than images in my head.

~~~
lqet
Oh my god :(

~~~
function_seven
I love unintentional epiphanies :)

I can imagine odors decently. I didn't know this until I just tried it after
reading your comment. But yeah, I just imagined what a jasmine bush smells
like, my dog's poop, strawberry scent car freshener, baby powder, and distant
brush fire.

My best guess is that I'm imagining them at something like 30% fidelity, and
some are harder than others to synthesize in "my mind's nose"

It's not nearly as good as what I can visualize in my mind's eye, so your
analogy is still helpful.

------
thesuitonym
>Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate
how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though
we don’t.

They probably don't pose the question like this, though. I suspect you'd get
different results if you asked a person, "Can you draw an accurate
representation of a bicycle?" vs pestering them to draw a bicycle so you can
make fun of them later. I know for myself, if someone handed me a sheet of
paper and said draw a bike, I'd do it for fun, but it would not be correct.

~~~
rohansingh
I don't think "how to draw a bicycle" is the thing that your brain tricks into
thinking that you know. Instead, it's "what does a bicycle look like?"

If you ask most people if they know what a bicycle looks like, I think they'd
tell you, yes, definitely. But really they don't. They know that it has a
couple wheels and some sort of metal tubes, and that's a workable mental model
to convince yourself that you know what a bicycle looks like.

~~~
watwut
People can recognize bicycle from non-bicycle perfectly well. If you would
make bicycle with unusually large wheels, people would recognize that
perfectly. In particular, telling bike from random wheels and tubes is easy.

So yeah, people do know how bicycle looks like.

What people do not know is how to draw bicycle or any other thing. Unless
artists, they don't know to abstract important details from unimportant and
they are complete crap at proportions.

For fun, ask people to draw face. Everything will be at wrong place with wrong
size, but I still would not say people don't know how human face looks like.

~~~
anonred
>For fun, ask people to draw face. Everything will be at wrong place with
wrong size

That’s kind of an odd counter example to use. Most people will certainly draw
an anatomically correct face (for all intents and purposes) with two eyes, a
nose, and a mouth. And you’re unlikely to see anyone add three eyes, turn the
nose sideways, or move the mouth above the nose.

In contrast, this is _exactly_ what people are doing to bikes, as illustrated
by the ridiculously funny renders in the article.

~~~
watwut
> two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. And you’re unlikely to see anyone add three
> eyes, turn the nose sideways, or move the mouth above the nose.

That is not enough for realistic face. In the first place, people wont draw
these on the right places and with the right relative size. While the eyes
will be higher then mouth, they still wont be on the right place and it will
be extremely visible. The nose can be sideways, it sticks out and thus is
harder to draw.

Also, the beginners nose wont look like actual nose, eyes wont look like
actual eyes and so on.

It will be kinda like those bikes. Note that none of those bikes have three
wheels, two seats or four handles. All of them have seat around where back
wheel is, all of them have handles. There is one bike that have back seat
small and one that have pedals under seat. These are the worst proportions and
relative position wise, but some people will do stuff like that with human
face too.

When they teach you to draw faces, they teach you literal guidelines to get
thing at the right places and sizes. You are then supposed to erase the
guidelines. It takes effort to learn for most of us.

------
bewuethr
Some of them have now been built in real life!

[https://www.behance.net/gallery/77793195/Velocipedia-
IRL](https://www.behance.net/gallery/77793195/Velocipedia-IRL)

~~~
glaberficken
Wow thanks. This one should be "rideable" at least theoretically:

[https://mir-s3-cdn-
cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/c...](https://mir-s3-cdn-
cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/ca9dfd77793195.5c920cb34d072.jpg)

~~~
mactrey
I don't know much about bikes but why wouldn't the blue one with the solid
wheels be rideable?

~~~
glaberficken
I guess you mean this one? [https://mir-s3-cdn-
cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/f...](https://mir-s3-cdn-
cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/fe4d2e77793195.5c920cb34c961.jpg)

If so, it is not "rideable" because you cannot steer it.

~~~
saagarjha
I’m curious you could still ride it by leaning…

~~~
glaberficken
On a normal bicycle when you lean off the vertical axis, a compensation is
made by turning the front wheel towards the "inside" of the lean thus bringing
the bicycle again closer to the vertical. i.e. the bicycle (with the help of
your steering input) turns the front wheel to catch your fall. If you lean
without steering you will simply fall over to the side immediately! Don't try
to do this by the way =)

This is the same principle of balancing an upright broom vertically, handle
first, on the palm of your hand. When the broom falls out of balance, you
simply move your hand in the same direction to recover the center of balance.
A bicycle is balanced by exactly the same principle.

Edit: Relevant Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y4mbT3ozcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y4mbT3ozcA)

------
nradov
If you showed some people a sketch of something like a Ventum triathlon bike
they would probably say it was wrong or fake. The shape of bikes has been held
back for too long by tradition and outdated UCI race equipment rules.

[https://ventumracing.com/bikes/](https://ventumracing.com/bikes/)

~~~
devb
Or the safety bicycle design is so perfect that any attempt to “improve” upon
it winds up coming across more as an art project rather than a utilitarian
upgrade.

~~~
dredmorbius
In the case of standard racing bicycles, it really is rules rather than tech.

There are different formulae for road cycling (governed by Union Cycliste
Internationale), triathlon bikes (International Triathlon Union), and "human
powered vehicles" (International Human Powered Vehicle Association), typically
recumbent and with fairings, and others.

Top speed (undrafted) for HPV over a timed one mile is 78 MPH.

[http://www.whpva.org/land.html#220](http://www.whpva.org/land.html#220)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_bicycle#Distinction_bet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_bicycle#Distinction_between_road_bicycles_and_others)

------
martin-adams
What really surprised me is that the bicycles weren't made using 3D modelling,
it looks like he used something like Photoshop to compose the images.

------
blakesterz
I love these sketches!

Having worked in a bike shop for a bunch of years I'm really good at drawing a
bike, but recently I tried to draw the outside of my house. The front of the
house that I see nearly every day. My house that I've been living in for over
a decade. I couldn't do it!

~~~
cosmodisk
I'm the same.I can draw shoes,houses, spaceship and etc., however I can't draw
familiar objects. I think this is partially because I wouldn't be able to
describe familiar faces either,even though I see them on daily basis. It's
weird how the brain works: I remember the email with some API specs that was
sent to me 4 years ago but I struggle to remember what we spoke about over the
dinner just a day before.. Would be interesting to see if anyone knows why
it's like this.

------
vvpan
What blew me away is that the author is using 2d vector graphics to draw all
that. I think there might've been a follow up post where he shows the process.

~~~
dredmorbius
Animated graphic at the end of the post.

------
brudgers
earlier,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17699017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17699017)

and,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11478061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11478061)

------
rgovostes
I didn't know what part was missing from the first bike and it was a little
frustrating the author didn't explain! I have an idea now from comparing to
real bikes, but I am not confident that this bike would "immediately break."
From forces on the rear wheel?

~~~
mkl
It's missing the horizontal struts between the pedals and the back axle. Those
make strong triangle shapes, and without them the back fork is going to be
quite flimsy and unstable. The person's weight on the seat would put a lot of
torque on the welds connecting the back fork struts to the frame below the
seat.

~~~
mlillie
Thank you. The author really missed the big reveal at the end, I was also
wondering this same thing.

------
anm89
I love these more than words can describe. I would love to have them
reproduced and put them on my wall.

------
tomcam
Obviously a pitch for yourbike.io, YC’s Winter 2021 batch. It’s one of the
better BAAS ploys (Bicycles As A Service)!

~~~
esperent
Are you sure that's the right url? All I get is a page full of random ads on
yourbike.io.

~~~
tomcam
Sorry, I just made that up as a joke. I thought the clue would be the 2021
date!

~~~
esperent
Ah, I get it. I don't know anything about how YC works so I assumed you meant
candidates are picked a year in advance.

------
murican22
Designer: "I updated the mocks to match your requirements."

Product Manager: "Close enough."

Engineer: "..."

------
loeg
It's kind of hard to draw a chain and chainstays clearly. That seems to be one
of the common missing pieces. They're in a similar region of the bicycle.

------
pengaru
I'm disappointed nobody ever asked me to draw a bicycle from memory during a
technical interview. That would be pretty fun.

------
notatoad
it's easy to assume that these are people who don't have a lot of familiarity
with bikes, but pro cyclists don't do much better:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU)

------
nogabebop23
Tell them to only use 2 triangles - they might nail it but most people do even
worse!

------
praptak
I wonder what else seems simple but is actually hard to draw from memory. My
example is the simplest knot, although the difficulty seems a bit different
from that of the bike.

~~~
tobr
I would guess the tricky thing with bikes are all the similar looking metal
bars at different angles. It’s hard to perceive the overall shape of the bike
and remember how the pieces are connected.

So maybe other similar things that are assembled from several parts would be
hard: a folding chair, a pair of scissors, a suspension bridge, the Eiffel
Tower, a catapult, etc.

------
mcv
Some of these are gorgeous! Hilariously impractical, but gorgeous. Nice job.
Shame it's rendered; I was kinda hoping they actually made these bikes.
Although I suspect they'd be too dangerous to try them out.

------
amwelles
My friends and I did this, but with horses, during a camping trip once. The
results were hilarious and still something we joke and laugh about.

------
leafmeal
If you're drawing of a bicycle doesn't look like a bicycle, then you've never
drawn a bicycle before.

------
tantalor
Mods: add [2016] to title

