This is Post 2 of 6 and part of this afternoon’s MonSFFA e-Meeting. Join us, as well, on Zoom (click here) as we offer a live presentation/discussion of Syd Mead’s career, and an appreciation of his art.

• Sydney Jay “Syd” Mead
• Born July 18, 1933, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
• Died at age 86, December 30, 2019, Pasadena, California, USA
• Industrial Designer/Concept Artist

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Syd Mead’s fascination with the future was sparked in childhood by his father, a Baptist minister himself artistically inclined, who read to his young son Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon science fiction stories published in pulp magazines and encouraged the boy’s artistic pursuits. Mead’s innate artistic talents soon became apparent; he was a natural, drawing as early as age 3. “By the time I was in high school, I could draw the human figure, I could draw animals, and I had a sense of shading to show shape,” he recalled. “I had a very accurate sense of perspective and colouration.” Mead knew by the sixth grade that he was going to make his living drawing pictures. “I could draw them so much better than anybody in my age group.” His father made certain that young Syd had at his disposal an ample supply of drawing papers, pencils, pens, and India ink, and Mead fast became adept at brushwork and various illustration techniques. His early work was rendered using crow-quill ink pens, watercolour washes, and Prismacolour pencils. Gouache, a water-based, matte, opaque paint would, in due course, became his preferred medium.

From these early fundamentals, Mead would go on to a stellar career as an influential industrial designer, noted for his futuristic automobile concepts, and later in the Hollywood arena, for his outstanding design work on Ridley Scott’s acclaimed neo-noir science fiction film Blade Runner (1982), for which Mead is perhaps best known and revered today as the “Grandfather of Concept Art” by practitioners of the trade. He is credited in Blade Runner as “Visual Futurist,” a term which he suggested ad hoc at the behest of producers, and which, serendipitously, is an apt description of the overall body of work for which he is celebrated.

Before we proceed further, a word about industrial design, which is the creative act of determining the features and form of a product to be mass-produced. As an applied art, industrial design seeks to perfectly meld functionality with beauty. Ideally, the intuitive, user-friendly product must operate as intended while at the same time exhibiting an attractive shape for maximum visual appeal. In colloquial terms, it has to work, and it has to look good! Form, however, must remain firmly in the service of function, never the reverse, and a variety of disciplines and considerations are typically applied to industrial design—science and engineering, ergonomics, materials, production processes, aesthetics, prevailing social trends and marketing factors, etc.

Mead’s family moved often throughout his childhood years, finally settling in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he attended and in 1951, graduated high school. His first job was as an animation cell-inker, background artist, and character originator for the Alexander Film Company, a producer of short advertisements/announcements that ran in advance of featured theatrical presentations or during intermissions.

He would one day revisit the animation field, contributing vehicle designs to Disney’s landmark TRON (1982), one of the first motion pictures to significantly employ computer animation. Further, he worked on a few Japanese productions, including Yamato 2520, a mid-’90s, ultimately unfinished OVA (Original Video Animation) and sequel to the popular Space Battleship Yamato series, as well as Turn A Gundam (1999), for which Mead became the first foreigner to design a mecha.

Shortly after his stint at Alexander, Mead enlisted and was stationed on Okinawa with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which saw him first exposed to Asian culture and captivated by what he described as “decorative geometry” and the “stylized depiction of scenario,” such motifs influencing his work thereafter. A month of R&R in Hong Kong before leaving the service later played a role in inspiring his cityscapes for Blade Runner.

Returning to civilian life, Mead designed window displays for women’s wear retailers The Lerner Shoppe before studying at the prestigious Art Center in Los Angeles, later renamed the ArtCenter College of Design, from which he graduated with honours in 1959.

Mead is among the Center’s esteemed alumni, this school having trained foremost artists like Ralph McQuarrie and Ryan Church (Star Wars concept artists), painter James Gurney (Dinotopia illustrated book series), and commercial illustrators Bob Peak and Drew Struzan (designers of numerous science fiction and fantasy movie posters). Automotive stylists Larry Shinoda, known for his work on Chevolet’s iconic Corvette, circa early 1960s, and Ford’s Mustang in the early 1970s, and Frank Stephenson, who beginning in the early 2000s, designed high-end touring and sports cars for European automobile manufacturers Ferrari, Maserati, and McClaren, also attended the school, as did genre film directors Zack Synder (Watchmen, 2009; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, 2016; Zack Synder’s Justice League, 2021) and Michael Bay (Armageddon, 1998; Transformers film series, 2007-2017).

After graduating from the Art Center, Mead was recruited by Elwood Engel, head of Ford’s Advanced Styling Studio in Dearborn, Michigan. The Studio encouraged free-thinking, imaginative originality, asking artists to conceive of visionary car and truck concepts for a space-age, Jetsons-come-to-life future. It is here that Mead’s career began in earnest, with automotive transportation quickly becoming a favourite theme of his work.

For full-colour illustrations, Mead limited his palette to about a dozen pigments and placed his gleaming, super-streamlined coupés and limousines in elaborate, fully detailed scenarios, whether at the busy street level or overlooking vast cityscapes and exotic locales. He peopled these vistas with a chic, elegantly, and sometimes rather scantily attired leisure class of “beautiful people,” often depicted arriving for some kind of event amid the stylish, technologically forward constructs of a wonderfully bright, shining future. Thereby was presented a whole picture, a marvelous and complete vision of tomorrow to anticipate with enthusiasm, and in which the automobile plays an integral part.

I have always admired Mead’s expertise as a draughtsman, his understated approach to creating the illusion of precise detail, and a certain flair in his painterly brushwork.

Mead was at Ford for a little over two years, contributing during that time to the design of a two-wheeled, gyroscopically balanced concept car dubbed the Gyron, and the sleek Ranger II pick-up truck, which, among other advanced features, sported a passenger compartment that would expand from a two-seater pick-up to a four-seater sedan configuration at the push of a button.

He left Ford in 1961 to pursue a golden opportunity, becoming partner at a small Chicago PR firm, the Hansen Company, soon to be renamed the Mead-Hansen Company, and receiving a considerable salary boost in the bargain. He enjoyed complete creative freedom at this agency as an illustrator of promotional catalogues for a variety of corporations, including U.S. Steel, for which he produced a number of illustrations that really put him on the map as a designer/illustrator. One of these paintings, depicting an all-terrain cargo transport traversing a winter landscape, later served as the inspiration for Star Wars’ Imperial Walkers.

In 1970, Mead formed his own company and landed several major clients, most notably Philips Electronics. He relocated to Southern California in 1975, opening new avenues in the motion picture industry for the exercise of his skills. In the 1980s he established working relationships with such Japanese companies as Sony, Minolta, Honda, toy manufacturer Bandai, PR/advertising firm Dentsu, and others.

Throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, he turned out architectural drawings and paintings, illustrations for the hospitality and consumer electronics sectors, as well as industrial equipment manufacturers. He produced commissions for Playboy magazine, and vehicle designs and concept art for a variety of Hollywood science fiction films. He had also, since 1973’s documenta 6 contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, West Germany, maintained a schedule of one-man shows and lecture appearances across the globe.

In 1983, he was invited by the Chrysler Corporation to lecture on automotive design, leading to other corporate and academic speaking engagements for Disney, universities like Purdue and Carnegie Mellon, and New York City’s Society of Illustrators. He worked with Hollywood’s Gnomon School of Visual Effects in 2004 to produce a four-part tutorial on DVD entitled Techniques of Syd Mead, in which he discussed and demonstrated his process.

Always a supporter of technological advancement, Mead was not resistant to modern digital illustration, as some traditionalists in the art world are, but nonetheless largely refrained from adopting the new technology. “I admire a lot of guys that do beautiful digital work,” he once pronounced. “I know how it’s done. It’s just that for me to learn that technique as well as I know gouache, which I’m very familiar with…just doesn’t strike me as worthwhile.” The artist’s toolkit will always change over time—“the tool has been changing ever since early man scratched pictures of animals on cave walls”—but the instrument utilized is not as important as the knowledge of how to make a good picture. “I put paint on board with animal hairs on the end of a stick,” Mead joked, a method that served him well, and at which he was extraordinarily proficient. But the key to his success, he believed, is that he knew how to get the perspective right and combine that with adroit compositional geometry within the picture frame.

Mead announced his retirement shortly before his death in 2019, his designs for the Las Vegas of Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (2017), having been his last major project. Transportation remained a dominant theme throughout his 60-year career, whether by space-age automobile, luxury yacht, personal travel pod, spacecraft, or his polished, ultramodern Hypervan, which Mead described as a “high-speed, intercity, highway transport.”

After a three-year battle with lymphoma, Syd Mead passed away peacefully at his Pasadena home on December 30, 2019, with husband Roger Servick at his side, surrounded by Christmas decorations and an array of his artwork. “I am done here,” Mead said by way of final words. “They’re coming to take me back.” He was 86.

This is Post 1 of 6, first of six related posts which together make up our June 12, 2021, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA e-Meeting!

1) ZOOM CHAT OPENS RIGHT NOW!

We officially open today’s Zoom chat now, at 1:00PM, the same moment we’ve put up this first post of the afternoon. Our Zoom will run in parallel to the Web site-based content that will be presented throughout this e-meeting and will afford folk opportunity to catch-up, talk about The Nevers, Jupiter’s Legacy, Army of the Dead, Loki and other recent genre offerings, discuss today’s presentations and ask questions directly of our presenters, and of course, this being Montreal during the playoffs, cheer the Habs on as they pursue a remarkable 25th Stanley Cup! Go, Habs, Go!

To join our Zoom session today, click here and follow the prompts: This Afternoon’s MonSFFA Zoom

If you’re not fully equipped to Zoom by computer, you can also join in by phone (voice only); in the Montreal area, the toll-free number to call is: 1-438-809-7799. If you’re from out of town, find your Zoom call-in number here: International Call-In Numbers

Also, have this information on hand as you may be asked to enter it:

Meeting ID: 880 4618 9993
Passcode: 282522

2) HOPE RECEIVES A SHOT IN THE ARM!

As millions more doses arrive weekly, Canada’s national rollout of vaccines continues apace, and while provinces like Ontario and Manitoba have been facing a sudden stretch of exceedingly high infection rates, the COVID-19 numbers are generally coming down across the country, precipitously so here in Québec! Montreal and Laval having been moved into the less-critical orange category just a few days ago, there are currently no high-alert red zones anywhere in the province—none, nada, zip! In fact, numerous of Québec’s regions have recently been reclassified safer yellow, and even green zones, something we have not seen since late last summer! We also learned this week that in just two days, on Monday, June 14, authorities fully expects to downshift all regions of the province again, into either yellow or green zones! Also, Québec’s unpopular, interminable but apparently effective nightly curfew was finally lifted province-wide at the end of May, much to the joy of a weary populace. Some Public Health-imposed restrictions, too, have cautiously been relaxed as we gingerly edge toward a return to normal.

Most Québecers have, by now, received their initial jab, with first-shot percentages in some age cohorts ranging into the high 80s and 90s! A number of workplace vaccine operations and pop-up clinics have been set up in an effort to jab as soon as possible those who have yet to receive their first shot.

And, officials recently authorized that the second shot be offered sooner than originally scheduled and hopes to have inoculated the majority of citizens by the end of August! Meanwhile, youngsters and teens have been cleared to receive the vaccine and that process is underway with all urgency, the aim being to have school-aged children fully vaxxed by the time classes resume this fall.

At the moment, officials report that Quebec’s population as a whole averages out to between 75 and 80 percent having received their first shot, a significant marker achieved some three weeks ahead of schedule, which has allowed the government to get started in earnest on administering those important second shots to all. In just a week, second-shot numbers have climbed from 5 or 6 percent of the population having received the shot to about 10 percent!

There have been set-backs and missteps. Delays in vaccine shipments earlier in the rollout caused some concern but now seem to be largely behind us. Provinces like Ontario and Alberta had too soon rescinded safety measures and ended lockdowns in order to quickly reopen, leading to the explosive spread of new and considerably more transmissible variants of the virus, a situation which, fortunately, is now slowly abating. Several instances of extremely rare and sometimes fatal blood clots resulted from our use of the Astra-Zeneca shot, fueling the off-the-beam arguments of anti-vaxxers, and poor and contradictory messaging from authorities, not surprisingly, engendered general public mistrust and an avoidance of that vaccine.

But a reasonable evaluation cannot but conclude that Québec’s vaccination program so far has been especially well managed and successful. The key to our ultimate victory over the virus will be to resist the immediate and understandable urge to deconfine, unmask, and gather together again in small groups or large as the warm, sunny weather arrives. We can start to slowly, carefully, one step at a time do just that, but we must always remain mindful of the possibility that moving too quickly and carelessly could open the door to new variants which might be more resistant to the vaccines.

So follow the government’s rules religiously, lest we risk extending our collective misery longer than is necessary!

Globally, wealthier countries like ours will have to help poor countries get the virus fast under control in those jurisdictions so as to prevent humanity from suffering any further from COVID-19. If we vanquish the virus here at home but the contagion continues in India, for example, Canada, the U.S., Europe, and other nations would remain under potential threat. We’ve all experienced first-hand the terrible world-wide consequences a rampant, deadly virus precipitates, and none of us wants to live through another period like the last year-and-a-half!

Finally, of course, we’ve learned some valuable lessons these past many months. In retrospect, we probably should have closed our borders more quickly and completely, and shutdown more thoroughly at the outset. Canada will certainly have to regain the domestic vaccine-production capacity it once had, and rethink its approach to medical research and development. We should also strive to produce in-country our own supply of PPE in future. Canada, and indeed, the whole world should be better prepared for the next pandemic, unfortunately an inevitable eventuality!

3) HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

Next weekend, on Sunday, June 20, we celebrate Father’s Day! Those of you fortunate enough to still have your dad, give thanks. We are all coming off a particularly grim year during which many of us found ourselves separated from family by safety protocol-driven necessity, so as the pandemic begins to wane, give your dear ol’ dad a big, hearty hug, if that’s at all safe and possible! Otherwise, call to chat and wish him a Happy Father’s Day—he’ll surely appreciate hearing from you. Luke Skywalker exempted.

4) MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS

We remind club members that MonSFFA has resumed the collection of annual membership fees. Note that every active club member has benefitted from a full year of fees-free membership.

For most MonSFFen, our 2020 renewal dates became 2021 renewal dates. So if your annual membership fees were due in June 2020, that’s been bumped up a year to June 2021. If your fees were due last July, they are now due this upcoming July; August 2020 shifts to August 2021, and so on.

But what about those few MonSFFen who had, in fact, paid their fees last year, most prior to pandemic lockdowns going into effect and our suspension of in-person meetings? These folk, having paid last year’s dues, will not miss out on the fees-free year enjoyed by their fellow club members! Those who fall into this category will see their annual fees next become due beginning in 2022.

Of course, we welcome back any former members who may have let lapse their memberships, and we invite to join our ranks any prospective members who may have discovered the club via our virtual meetings.

Note that there is no change to our fee structure. A standard one-year membership is still only $25; the premium Platinum Level membership, $35; a family membership (up to four people, single postal mailing address), $40; and the Platinum Family Level, $50. Make your cheques or money orders out to “MonSFFA” and mail to our new postal mailing address:

 

MonSFFA, c/o

125 Leonard

Châteauguay, Québec, Canada

J6K 1N9

 

To those MonSFFen who have recently renewed their memberships, we thank you for your prompt attention and patronage of this club.
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5) TODAY’S MEETING: INTRODUCTION

As we gather online for this month’s virtual club meeting, we take a moment to encourage all MonSFFen to book their second vaccine shot as soon as the option becomes available to them, and to please continue to take all necessary precautions in order to keep themselves and others as protected from the virus as can be. Even as some are eased, it is important that we not let up quite yet on those recommended safety protocols that remain in place. Summer has begun, the city, province, and country are slowly reopening, and the last thing we want to see is case numbers starting to spike upwards again!

This is our 15th virtual MonSFFA meeting. The afternoon’s get-together will unfold right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the next few hours, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 3:00PM, and 4:00PM, with a concluding post at 4:45PM. All content will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, note that the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.

Today we’ll be celebrating the art and career of “visual futurist” Syd Mead and quaffing Romulan ale or Klingon bloodwine in the bars, lounges, taverns, and saloons of SF/F, served by likes of Star Trek’s Guinan and Spider Robinson’s Mike Callahan. We’ll also talk further on sci-fi scale-modelling projects, and during our Show-and-Tell, demonstrate genre-themed pyrography! All that, and more over the next few hours!

As we cannot yet safely assemble in person indoors, this June virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA’s membership. Sit back, check out each of the afternoon’s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy! And join our Zoom this afternoon, as well (see first item for details)!

Don’t forget to comment on what we’ve presented. Let us know what you think of specific topics or the meeting overall. Your input helps us to tailor these virtual meetings for maximum interest and enjoyment.

6) MEETING AGENDA

In This Afternoon’s Virtual Meeting:

1:00PM, Post 1 of 6 (Introduction, Zoom Opens)

1) Zoom Chat Opens

2) Hope Receives a Shot in the Arm!

3) Happy Father’s Day

4) Membership Renewals

5) Today’s Meeting: Introduction

6) Meeting Agenda

7) Trivia Challenge!

1:30PM, Post 2 of 6 (Science Fiction Art)

8) Presentation: Syd Mead—Visual Futurist

2:30PM, Post 3 of 6 (Break)

9) Mid-Meeting Break (Display Table, Raffle, Zoom Continues)

3:00PM, Post 4 of 6 (The Saloons of SF/F!)

10) Presentation: A Science Fiction Writer Walks into a Bar… 

4:00PM, Post 5 of 6 (“Fancraft!”)

11) Zoom Chat: Show-and-Tell

4:45PM, Post 6 of 6 (Wrap-Up)

12) Trivia Challenge: Our List of 25 “Winter” SF/F Movies!

13) Thank-You!

14) A Closing Song by the Holderness Family

8) TRIVIA CHALLENGE!

We are well into the Stanley Cup playoffs and the Montreal Canadiens—Nos Glorieux, le Bleu-Blanc-Rouge, les Habitants, or the Habs—are in serious contention, which the storied team has not managed for many years! The last time Lord Stanley’s Cup was hoisted in Montreal was in 1993, the trophy’s centennial year. The Canadiens have won the cup a record 24 times and are in the hunt this year for a 25th championship.

Go, Habs, go!

The team endured a lengthy period of mediocrity beginning in the late 1990s, during which time les boys failed to advance much past the first round, if they made the playoffs at all!

As the pandemic nears an end, a Stanley Cup victory would make for a welcome signal of our return to normal! After all, it was once quite normal for this city to boast of hockey supremacy. We were all thrilled a couple weeks ago by the Habs’ come-from-behind, game-seven series triumph over the heavily favoured Toronto Maple Leafs, our long-time rivals. We followed in short order with a sweep of the Winnipeg Jets! And now it’s on to Las Vegas to face the Golden Knights in the conference championship, with a ticket to the Stanley Cup final as the prize! Finally, after so many years of frustration for Montreal hockey fans, does ultimate victory await?

Go, Habs, go!

All of that to set up a trivia challenge in honour of this city’s famous ice hockey team and the drive for 25! Thus are we tasking sci-fi fans to name 25 science fiction and fantasy movies set, at least in part, on an ice planet or during winter! We’re talking feature films, here, or TV movies, not episodes of an SF/F television series. So Star Trek’s “All Our Yesterdays” or The X-Files’ “Ice” would not qualify. Miniseries do not cut the mustard, either, so John Snow’s exploits beyond the Wall don’t count! Animated cartoon movies, like Disney’s Frozen flicks or the multi-film Ice Age franchise, are also out.

Now, when we say “in part,” we mean that at a minimum, one scene of some substance in the film must be set in icy, snowbound conditions. So a brief shot of snow-capped mountain peaks in the background during a sequence of dialogue or action is not enough. And because, of course, most Christmas-themed movies are set in winter, and the whole Santa Claus thing is, technically, fantasy, and there are a lot of these films, we will allow you to include in your list only one Christmas/seasonal movie.

While many sci-fi films are set in futuristic cities, on barren, rocky planets, or lush, tropical-jungle worlds, there are nevertheless more than 25 “winter” movies in the genre film catalogue, obviously! We’ll post our list of 25 in today’s closing Post 6 of 6 at 4:45PM for you to compare to your own. But as long as you’ve written down 25 SF/F movies that meet the criteria outlined above, you’re good!

Have at it, and go, Habs, go!

MonSFFA’s next virtual meeting will take place this Saturday, June 12, beginning at 1:00PM, and you are invited to check it out!

As always, we’ll be posting on the club’s Web site throughout the afternoon a variety of interesting and entertaining presentations. In tandem, we’ll also host a Zoom get-together throughout the course of the afternoon so that folk may chat and discuss with, or ask questions of our presenters directly on the agenda topics!

Our June 2021 meeting will offer as principal programming first an overview of the career of foremost “visual futurist” Syd Mead, and an appreciation of his artwork!

Mead is regarded as one of the most influential industrial designers and concept artists of the modern age. He has been described as “the artist who illustrates the future,” and for some 60 years beginning in the late 1950s, his outstanding design work, architectural drawings, and striking concept illustrations for the automotive, consumer electronics, and steel industries, as well as for some of Hollywood’s most prominent science fiction films, have been termed “reality ahead of schedule.” Mead’s sleek, ultramodern styling has defined a technological future that continues to influence contemporary designers and filmmakers.

We’ll also have some fun with an exploration of the bars, taverns, lounges, and saloons of SF/F, from The Prancing Pony in Bree to Callahan’s Place to Star Trek’s Ten Forward to that seedy cantina on Tatooine!

These establishments are convivial places for an adventurer, space-farer, swordsman, or warrior to sip a whiskey and soda, quaff some ale, enjoy warm blood wine, or an iced raktajino! So raise a glass of your favourite and come hear tales of hard science fiction, or of the mysteries of magic swords; tales that might begin with “A science fiction writer walks into a bar…”

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And don’t forget to tip your bartender, Barliman Butterbur, Mike Callahan, Guinan, and especially Quark!

We’ve also booked a couple of our sci-fi scale model-builders for a Show-and-Tell, and arranged for a live “fancrafting” demonstration of pyrography!

Be advised that at this point in the meeting, we will be allowing Linzi to wield a red-hot metal poker! What could possibly go wrong?

All of that, and more…

So don’t miss MonSFFA’s June 12, 2021 e-Meeting, beginning 1:00PM this Saturday at: www.MonSFFA.ca