Building Instruments, Saxophones, piano, violin mainly

I have this project where it requires me to build a saxophone efficiently.

Realism aside, believability is the focus.


The animation will be cartoonish and we have like, several handdrawn animators to come up with a good concept for this

What is the best technique to approach modelling these things?
Bringing in real audience, who are possible master in musical instruments, it is also to be considered,
what are uniform, consistent, believable designs, while cartoonly stylized and understandable?

I have ideas like, bringing in the overall understanding of brass instruments and applying it as awhole
whenever building/ designing new instruments in animations.
But then, that’s all, so it’s pretty wide and far fetched, almost like, hitting in the dark, the first time music instruments are built.

Do you think this is possible?
I watched movies like ghiblis and animes that managed to draw and illustrate real life cars, and its machineries,
and led to believe that these things are constructed from zero, and is a system to be understood.
Before they are animated…

Let me know what you think, and maybe we can help and share each other ideas,
uniformized our idea of a good animation and designs.

Cheers!

well i supose you loft the base shape then do a lot of lofting for all finer pipe work, … till ready
Maybe depending on detail needs sculpt the main shape after lofting to better fit with all round holes in it, but i dont think you need that kind of realism. (there is a great sculpt addon sculpt tools, so you can merge various (sculpted and non sculpted) shapes).

Hmmm i understand it.

And yet, these things are so abstract to me…

Like, if someone tell you to build a motorcycle engine from scratch… and you know what’s a motorcycle engine look like,
and yet, you don’t know the names and the tiny details, airholes and curves that makes it safe…
Where do you look for these things, names and ideas?

Do you go to college for this then?