LAUAN601 : Summer Proposal

Potential Area of interest:

“Exploring Science-fiction world building through Mechanical and Robotic design. “

For my COP3 dissertation, I really want explore, in-depth, my core area of interest within the field of concept design and illustration, that is sci-fi mechanical and robotic designs. Having grown up watching series like Power rangers and Gundam, these subjects have always been absolutely fascinating to me. But as I grew older and begin to watch news sci-fi series like Star Wars, Evangalion and Ghost in the Shell and playing video games series Metal gear solid and Horizon Zero Dawn, it became an area of design that I want to see myself practicing and mastering in the future. Therefore, this topic for dissertation then will not only be interesting to discuss but will have major benefits not only for my theoretical knowledge but my practical skill as well.. With that said, even though I absolutely adore the highly-stylize and biological look of Japanese mecha design, I also wants to explore works from great western series as well, which I find sometimes have a better world building consideration behind it. The way I would approach this task then, is first to build a base of understanding in the forms of a brief research into the history of the sci-fi genre and the narratives it discuss, as narrative will then drive the design element. Then I’ll begin to look in the works of different notable artists and series (around 3-4 ) , analyzing the critical decisions that was made behind the design and its role within each narrative. Finally , I would attempt to connect the similarities and differences of each designs to one another, and then compare to the field of contemporary robotic design in real life, as to see how much our perception of “futuristic” has evolved overtime and how future events and invention will change it even more. For my practical then , it will be serves alongside my theoretical work as supporting image, including my own take in designs for each of the universe discuss and that of my own, as a mean for me to learn and develop my design skill as well as technical drawing abilities

Research sources :

Books:

- Chiang D (2008)  Mechanika : Creating the Art of science fiction with Doug Chiang ,  F&W Publications Inc.

- Le Blanc M. , Odell C. (2014) Akira , Palgrave Macmillian

- Hanson M. (2005) Building Sci-fi Moviescapes : The Science behind the fiction, Gulf Professional publishing.

- Holland S. (2009) Sci-fi art : A graphic history, Harper Collins

- Unno H. (2018) The art of fantasty, Sci-fi and Steampunk, Pie International company Limited

- Cohen D, Taylor R. (2017) The art of Ghost in the Shell , Titan Books

- Roberts A (2016) The History of Science Fiction , Springer.

- Bolton C., Ronay C I Jr, Tatsumi T. (2007) Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams : Japanese Science fiction from origins to anime, University of Minnesota press

- Szostak (2017) The Art of Star Wars : The Last Jedi, Harry N. Abrams

- Davies P (2017) The Art of Horizon Zero Dawn, Titan books.

- Zamprioli L (2012) Abakan 2288 – Kallamity’s World of Mecha Design

Websites :

Forbes – For interviews

Artstation – Art display websites

CG world – Magazine

Sci-fi-o-rama – Sci fi art website

Sydmead.com – futuristic visual artist

Artist :

Doug Chiang – Starwars     

                          
Ralp McQuarrie – Starwars

John Berkey

Yoji Shinkawa – Metal Gear

Kuino Okawara – Gundam

Brian Sum

Makoto Kobayashi – Dragon’s heaven

Masamune Shirow/Masanori Ota – Ghost in the shell

Lloyd Allen -

Syd Mead –

Joe Johnston –

Quotes: 

“ If there are cars and airplanes, looking at them I try and think what kind of unique aspect can I bring to that. As I am designing a mecha, making them look more like living things, something inorganic given an organic aspect, then that would be unique”.

Makoto Kobayashi – Dragon’s heaven

“I think a lot of my ideas just float up from my subconscious mind like a bubble from the bottom of the lake. George wanted Tatooine to be a desert planet, with twin suns and all these factors, so I was think, ‘Desert…extreme heat….no plants…just rocks and dust,’ and all the business of Tatooine just came up in my mind”

Ralph McQuarrie – Star Wars

“If we look at movies of the past , the future appeared further away. In the 21^st century, the future accelerates toward us at a dizzying pace”

“The world created by science fiction cinema –whether full blown fantasy or fiction a few degrees separated from the facts of the real world – have always been more about the present than the future they purport to predict.

Matt Handson- Building Sci-fi Moviescape

“As technology advances, the reality we can show is getting more precise. When illustrating the question I always ask in my mind is ‘What is reality?’ That is the foundation of any piece of art I create.”

Yoji Shinkawa – Metal Gear

"Today's audiences are too visually savvy. This makes my job very challenging. Designing the spaceships for Star Wars Episode I and II for instance, was very demanding even though the end results may make it seem easy. Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the most difficult to find. The X wings by Joe Johnston is a perfect example. Its seems so simple and obvious in hindsight but it was incredibly bold in execution and strong in design. Since then, the X-wing influences have become ubiquitous in science fiction spaceship."

Doug Chiang - Star Wars 

                            

              

  

LAUAN601 : A brief look at the history of sci-fi narrative

Though til this day, there is no definitive definition of what science-fiction is and when did it first begin, we can trace its roots back to the stories and myths of early civilizations such as the Greeks, Mesopotamian, and even Japanese. These stories, albeit heavily doused in fantasy and exaggeration, it discuss narratives that later on would very much be identified with the modern science fictions.

This includes :

Epic of Gilgamesh

Lucian’s satire True history : in which , one of the first examples of space travel, aliens (spiders) and interplanetary warfare (between the moon and the sun)

Princess Kaguya in the tale of the wood cutter is a princess from the moon , sent to earth to escaped from celestial conflict and is taken back to the Moon by her real family at the end.

New types of proto-science fiction began to shape under the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, - a period where knowledge of astronomy, science, and other forms of reason experienced a major push, forming new ideas and challenging the existing conditions of society and humankind. Galileo and Copernicus re-positioned human’s place in the universe, and the advent of the telescopes allows for astronomers to better map out the stars, including the surface of the Moon, which became more and more of a common destination for fictions instead of some far of land across the ocean.

the concept of "plurality of worlds" began to be taken seriously.  Marvelous voyages to the Moon, planets, and stars became commonplace.
Johannus Kepler, who developed the basic laws of planetary motion, uses them in Somnium (1634) to imagine living on the Moon. Francis Godwin describes a utopia on the Moon in The Man in the Moone (1638). Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1659) and Sun (1687) include marvelous inventions such as solar energy converters and talking machines.

Along with it, new thinking in societal order inspired the humanist Thomas More to create Utopia, in which he describes a society based on the principals of equality, shared ownership and productivity, and by doing so , chastised the failure of European society at the time (poverty by land enclosure by landowners due to the rising demand for wool).

And from then on , Utopia became a plot that is very much identified with the the genre of science fiction

During the the 17^th century, technology was also developing rapidly  to a point that cumulate into the Industrial revolution, and so , fictions  such as Francis Bacon, father of  scientific methods, ‘s  New Atlantis and Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s travel, revolves around the development of  what was at the time , fantastical invention and examine how it would effect of  human society ( the later of which taken a more pessimistic approach in the form of super weapon that the powerful use to oppress the weak. “

  Under industrial capitalism, vast numbers of people were soon spending their lives working for a handful of capitalists who owned everything the people produced, including the factories, coal mines, railroads, and ships. Not only were the workers thus alienated from the means of production and their own products, but they also found themselves increasingly alienated from nature, from each other, and from their own essence as creative beings. Human creativity now appeared in the form of monstrous alien forces exerting ever-growing power over the people who had created them

This led to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, considered the first true modern science fiction by many , followed by the consequential works of Jules Verne and H.G Wells ,  each examples of the multiple routes in which the author can build the fiction.

This were also the earliest the appearances of mechanical design and description being a major part to the sci fi narrative, such as the Nautilus and the Tripods from War of the worlds, as well as other examples such as the Steam man of the Prairies.

Early 20^th century marked a new period in science-fiction development, particularly in the US, where the notable stages were, pulp sci fi, hard sci-fi , the New Wave and soft-sci fi.

Pulp scifi gathered a reputation of being shallow in narrative, adolescent in visual (often opting for a plot involving skimpy-clad vixens taken away by alien monsters), and often have little to none relation to the basis principle of science, and more akin to out blown fantasy, however, the visual aspect of these magazine, (in the forms of covers,), with its colour and shiny metallic space suits and influenced by the optimistic, clean and bright vision of the future during the Atomic Age and the Space race, can now be considered classics

Hard sci fi then can view as a direct opposition to pulp scifi, with champions like John Campell, Iassac Isamov, and Rober A Heinlein, who ushered in what was know as the Golden Age of Science fiction. Hard sci fi authors celebrate the development progress of tech and science, and more often than not, built on a solid base of scientific principles.

In between , there is soft scifi, where works display a level of balanced between the scientific facts and the fantastical, this could includes, the prominent space operas saga, Star Wars and Star Treks

The New Wave was a period between between the 60s and 70s when writers of the trend deals with heavy experimentation of genre’s narrative, wanting to move away from the traditional direction of science fiction storylines, with a greater emphasis on style and a more high brown form of writing, as well as dealing with more controversial and contemporary societal and political subjects such as , sexuality,  environmental , overpopulation, distrust of government and coporations, and dystopia,. Scifi films in this period also reflect this shift in the genre, albeit perhaps not over -extreme example being 2001 Space Odyssey

By the 80s , with the the rise of computing technologies and the beginning of the digital Age, writers felt the urge to voice their ideas on its impact of the cultural and political landscape, which would give birth the the Cyberpunk subgenre first coined by William Gibson in Neuronmancer, in which , the vision of the future is often almost dystopia and apocalyptic in description. This would be reinforce by works like Ghost in the shell, Blade runner, all of which proved to be a influential and commercially successful. Cyber punk remains til this day to be one of the core pillar of influence for 21^st century sci-fi.

At this point, through learning of the history of the sci-fi  , we can observed how its narrative has been shaped by the society of which is was created, thereby influenced its visual development, this an idea, that will be repeatedly observed when discussing the particular artist below, as well as present a question on the prospect of scifi visual development going forward.

“If we look at movies of the past , the future appeared further away. In the 21st century, the future accelerates toward us at a dizzying pace”

“The world created by science fiction cinema –whether full blown fantasy or fiction a few degrees separated from the facts of the real world – have always been more about the present than the future they purport to predict.

Matt Hanson – Building Sci-fi Moviescape

 With New inventions like Boston dynamics robots, Google Deep mind AI, and the rise of VR as a platform ( VR singer, VR youtubers). How will that further push or perhaps alter the sci-fi narrative and design today ?.

Example: s A world with 2 realms ? reality and digital, virtually operated robots ? virtual relationships ?