Syd Mead Freak (シドミード•フリーク)

tiger.com シド・ミード師匠 インタビュー（6-8）

●Q#6: In the early 80s, 'the StarWars era' we'll call it, the whole look of sci-fi kind of changed. StarWars was one of the first sci-fi movies that showed us a 'used' look. They made their world look like it was in use for centuries. Scratches, dust, dirt etc. Before Starwars, all the sci-fi movies looked somewhat, the same. Everything streamlined and clean with reflecting surfaces etc. We know your designs for blade runner (1982), 2010 (1984) alien 2 (1986). Especially in blade runner the design is very weathered... everything kinda has a used, almost rotten, look. Were you influenced by the direction that Starwars pointed to? A more 'realistic' approach...?

(Even in 2010 we see the difference! The Discovery spaceship design (very clean and white) from Kubrick's classic 2001 and your design for the Leonov (used and much more complex).

◎Syd Mead:
To answer the end of your question first? No. Training and years of creating scenario teaches you to create ambience that compliments the story. (Read previous answer no. ‘4.’) The starwars models were essentially solid models with lots of glued on model kit pieces that gave the surfaces a detailed, ‘must be real’ kind of look. Before the satellite launch era, ‘sci-fi’ was influenced by the romantic notion of streamlined missiles that flew through space. Now, the public is quite aware that a square box can be pushed through the vacuum of space at light speed, if you wish to prove Einstein wrong. Star Wars was the first movie of the ‘sci-fi’ genre to ‘wear’ the stuff. It was terrific. Bladerunner? Philip K. Dick, the author of ‘DO ANDROIDS DREAM of ELECTRIC SHEEP’ was a morose man who attempted suicide several times. His world was dreary, and I helped Ridley Scott create the visually dystopian world that he intended to show. My designs for BLADERUNNER wher influenced by the story, not by star wars.

2OO1 was released before the start of the ‘space age’ technology. It was the last major sci-fi film to retain what I call the ‘GE kitchen of tomorrow’ look; everything shiny white, pristine, slick. The LEONOV in 2O1O reflected the general knowledge that space craft did not have to be shaped like bullets. They could be lumpy, squared off, non-aerodynamic. (The shuttle is a cumbersome, utilitarian designed craft, covered with an arrayof custom shaped ceramic tiles that, up close, resembles a ‘brick airplane.’ It is NOT clean, sleek and even particularly ‘fast’ in the aircraft sense.

●Q#7: Concept art today is still a mix of traditional execution and digital. Would you say that concept art will soon reach a point where it will be completely made on a computer or do you think that there will always be room for the proven traditional way?

◎Syd Mead:
Tradition dying out? They still teach Latin! Traditional techniques are the original ways in which art was done. Digital algorithms duplicate, as closely as possible, those ‘classic’ techniques. Corel Painter even simulates the wetness of watercolor. There is, however, a certain delicate tactile interface between traditional ‘tool’ (brush, pencil, pen) that is subtly difficult to reproduce. I have tried a Wacom Cintiq on trial and did not like it. And still, the ‘tool’ doesn’t do anything by itself, unless you are doing fractal run-outs, or algorithmic mathematical run-outs. These can be beautiful, but they do not make a picture of anything.


●Q#8: As the 'godfather' of concept design/art for a lot of people, including me, it is no wonder that you worked on a lot of things over the years. There was no job that you "could not have got done", like you said in another interview. What kind of projects do you enjoy the most and what kind of projects are the most rewarding for you?

◎Syd Mead:
When I’m commissioned to work on a project, I’m hired to create a visualized image of what the end result should be look like. Any new challenge to my imagination is exciting, whether a watch (I designed two for NUTS studio in Tokyo: they were the only ones to sell out. We sold four images to be used on a ‘SYD MEAD’ t-shirt line for ADDICT in London. They sold three times their normal ‘name’ line edition.)

So, the thrill is in accepting the challenge of a new kind of design task, watching it become solved to the satisfaction of the client and then moving on to the next. Rarely do I work on the same kind of problem in sequence to a similar previous one. And so, announcing a preference for ‘what kind’ is the incorrect question. The answer is I enjoy the complete range of design activity, from coffee makers to the interiors of supersonic and wide body private aircraft to super yachts to master plans for theme parks.

tiger.com シド・ミード師匠 インタビュー（4-5）

●Q#4: Concept art has been a big part of your career, with movies such as Blade Runner, to animated cartoons and videogames like Wing Commander Prophecy. You've worked for some of the leading Automotive companies, you even designed the interior for a 747 jet! What are the differences on how you approach and work out these projects? I can imagine that, to work out concepts for a movie is slightly different than to work out ideas for a videogame.

◎Syd Mead:
In my mind, any design project takes on the parameter of a story. Concept art is what I have become known for, an idea that is widely considered in Europe as frivolous. What these humorless pragmatists forget is that inspiration is the first step toward idea, and idea is the first step toward recognizing the desireabilty of the proposed result. The movies are to storytelling what the symphony orchestra is to music, the most elaborate story-telling medium we have available. To work in this industry by invitation multiple times is, to me, a great compliment to me. Practical design - that which ends up on a store shelf, on four wheels, or as an immersive entertainment environment, all are part of their own story. Without some sort of appreciation of ambience, utility matched to elegant solution, designs become mundane. Much of today’s automotive design is, in my view, stiflingly mundane. The visceral response to mechanical challenge essentially disappeared from most automotive design over two decades ago.

●Q#5: We've asked all the previous interviewees this, it always gets a great answer! What was the funniest thing you've put in an artwork, a mistake that made you angry back then but makes you laugh today? A little insight into what happened? We love to know that even behind the amazing talent, you are still human now and then.

◎Syd Mead:
I don’t know if it qualifies as ‘funny’ or not, but it DOES come under the heading of saving your ass past the point when you have the time to ‘fix’ it. I was finishing up panel three of a triptych for the 2OOO PEBBLE BEACH CONCOURS d’El’egance. It was beautiful and then a drop of water fell on the airbrushed vehicle I had just finished. Gouache is water soluble. When you airbrush it, you have an extremely fragile surface that can be stained by touching it with your finger, it bruises when pressed on... I was devastated! How could I... I didn’t have the time to correct it so, remembering my rendering instructors from years before, I created a decorative banner to hang gracefully down across the offending spot. It worked perfectly... actually lent a bit of three dimensional lllusion to that part of the illustration.

Another incident. I was working in my beach house studio and one of my agents stopped over to see me. I commonly worked at the same time that I ‘entertained’ friends. He had just bought a new Mercedes and had parked it right below my studio sliding glass window. I had a little step-out balcony. When the landscaping guys came up to mow the lawn, he exclaimed’

“Oh, I hope they don’t scratch my car.”

We were drinking beers in mugs. Mine was on the taboret behind me. He had set his down on the front of my table. I had just finished airbrushing a beautiful ceiling on an architectural interior illustration. As he moved quickly to look out the window, he bumped his beer mug. The beer spilled onto my illustration. I immediately tipped the illustration up and away from me, but the ceiling area was ruined. He looked at me and quietly announced;

“I think I better leave now.”

He did. He later proved to be a total asshole. When a drop of water falls on a gouache surface, the gum Arabic in the gouache sublimates out of solution and forms a ring around the wet spot. It has to be literally sanded down with emery cloth, and then painted over again. The beer incident cost me a half day in repairs, pushing the finishing of the illustration past midnight.

tiger.com シド・ミード師匠 インタビュー（1-3）

●Q#1: For everyone that doesn't know the man behind the spectacular pieces you bring to the world, first a little bit about your past and what drew you to this type of thing. How did you grow up and were you always fascinated by drawing/painting something? A lot of popular artists tell us they started very early with drawing and soon found out that they could make a career out of it, did you feel the same way?

◎Syd Mead:
By the time I was 3 yrs old, I was drawing cars with people waving out the windows. I guess I always associated drawing things with the ‘in situ’ surroundings. To this day, if I draw a car or a design for a client, I usually start with figures. Nothing we use or design exists in a vacuum. By the time I was in the fifth grade (about eleven years old) I was doing intricate ink drawings with an instrument called a crowquill pen, a very delicate line making instrument. At that same age I discovered PRISMACOLOR pencils with a waxy filling. I made lots of drawings of mutated animals and actually got my first fee selling exotic dog pictures to my school mates for 25 cents each. In 1941, that would be, today, with the d　　eval　　ued U.S. dollar, several dollars. It kept me in candy.By the time I was in high school (grade 12) I knew I would make my living creating art.

●Q#2: You are well known for your vehicle designs, interior and exterior designs. Which genre do you enjoy most? The creation of wonderfully streamlined, futuristic vehicles? Or is it the design of places people 'could' live in that thrills you? What is your favourite thing?


◎
Syd Mead: ‘Favorite’ is a strange word. It implies something over something else. To me, my ‘favorite’ thing is the design and drawing procedure itself. I’ve painted horrible designs expertly for interior designers and architects, but I painted expertly. If I must make a choice, it is to paint scenarios that are fantastic, both in the way the occupants are dressed and shown, and the machines, entourage and details that make the finished picture a ‘peek’ into an exotic future that may, or may not ever exist.

In other words, I like to create glimpses into a fantastic world that is eclectic (as we become more creative, we learn to appreciate the past with more enthusiasm), egalitarian (personal advancement available to all in a stable, rational society. This social condition is the absolute opposite of the restrictive, pathological insistence typical of both orthodox Jewry and Islamic belief) and the appreciation of technology as a celebration of human intelligence. The futuristic vehicles, the places for people all this is both a joy to depict and a proposal for a future that is bright. This optomism is looked upon by so-called ‘realists’ as frivious. They are wrong. Depicting a bright, pleasant future is a hopeful rehearsal as a model for social advancement.

●Q#3:　When you look back from then, to how technology has highly advanced, what do you think about how technology will shape our lives, what will be involved and how it will be implemented into visual media?

◎Syd Mead:
TRON looks like it does because, simply, that was the absolute ‘cutting edge’ of computer imaging technology at the time. Steven Lisberger has to be admired for pursuing the making of the film, especially because he slipped the production into a window when Disney was in a state of flux. I doubt very much if the executives would have allowed a ‘non hand animated’ film to be produced at their studios had the company been in ‘normal’ management mode. Remember, the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences refused to admit the film into concourse because ‘they’ (Lisberger, at all) used computers!

I designed the various vehicles, set ideas and graphics to reflect what I was told by Lisberger; that shapes had to be relatively simple in a volumetric way. I designed, literally, to the lowest common problem denominator, a classic industrial design approach. The vehicles were three dimensional graphical entities. They couldn’t do my original design for either the LIGHTCYCLE though, because it involved compound, teselated surfaces. The SOLAR SAILOR I designed could not be formed because, again, it was basically a compound curve shape. All of the shapes in TRON were either additive or removed geometric solids, or were formed by extruding a constant section.

シド・ミード師匠 ANS インタビュー(2006) 13以降

13. Was Sunrise aware of the cancelled Gundam film from the early 1980's?
Did you share these earlier designs with production staff?

I do not know. The subject never came up, I did not mention it and to my knowledge
the staff guys did NOT know anything abut that incident. I had, however, produced
a poster of the GUNDAM MOBILE SUIT for Bandai years before the TURN A project was
launched. They all knew about that image, which was printed by permission in our
second Syd Mead・book co-published with Kodansha. That title of that book is OBLAGON.

14. From the creative standpoint, how did you approach the design of the Turn-A Gundam
and other mecha in the series? What types of cues or source material did you work
from on the Japanese side?

Now, this was 1998 when I first started the job of redesigning one of Japanese anime's most high visibility characters, MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM! I wasn't intimidated at all. After all, I've
been doing professional design at that point for over forty years, in addition to about half a dozen feature releases. No, the challenge was accepted with elaborate information and
the enthusiastic support of the author, Tomino-san and the entire Sunrise staff.

First, I became acquainted with the idea of Robot in Japanese toy tradition,
and VHS cassettes of past GUNDAM episodes. I also was given several VHS cassettes
of Blue Submarine・and at Labor・by the Bandai guys to accelerate my appreciation
of the anime visual style. As a professional designer, a very important part of
any design project is to be sympathetic to the end product method of realizing one's
creative contribution to the process!

My first concern was to capture the mystique of the main character, the GUNDAM MOBILE SUIT.
As a gaijin, my first direction was a flim・version of the traditional sumo wrestler.
This approach produced a thick limbed character that had large organic-shaped feet,
leg segments and upper body and arms. At this early stage I was fortunate that Bandai
sent a man with the family name Inoue to the U.S. to finish final sound track
composition for the Bandai movie, GUNDAM SAVIOR at Lucas Film. This guy, Inoue
and his wife ARE the most influential GUNDAM fan club people in Japan. Inoue-san
gave me valuable hints and guidance in my re-stroke of my original heavy approach
to the new GUNDAM design. He said that I should think of a combination of
kick-boxer and thin sumo as my inspiration・UNDAM should be obviously athletic
with a fluid grace to movement and of course, intense mechanical design.

I will always give him credit for designing the successful new hero base for
the GUNDAM MOBILE SUIT character! Interestingly, the first approach became
actually known as the Sumo robot character!

In all, I designed seven robots (including the GUNDAM MOBILE SUIT) for the series.
The other six were:

壮umo robot,Flat fighter,・a gigantic robot for the Diane・moon people, a reight・robot that looked like an animated industrial crane, an aggressive robot with a huge armament carapace and the ultimate anti-hero robot;

TURN-X

I had been sketching the intricate idea components of this last robotic character, TURN-X,
on the plane from Los Angeles to Narita on one of the last GUNDAM・trips to Japan.
As a thank you・to the Sunrise team, we were favored with an and of creative phase
to a weekend at a ryokan on the Izu peninsula. I was given the Eestern style・suite.
After an incredible kaiseki dinner the previous evening ending with a hot dip
in the bath with some of the designers, I retired to my room well fed and feeling fabulous.

This reward・trip was during sakura. I woke up the next morning and opened
the windows of my room, stark naked and looking at an entire mountainside covered
with a cascade of pink! What an incredible sight! I was suddenly inspired and,
still totally naked, grabbed paper and ink pen from my briefcase and in about
an hour finalized the design idea for the TURN-X robot! Then, after showering,
dressing and packing for the return trip to Tokyo (with a stop in Shisioka・pelling?
to tour the Bandai action figure factory and meet the staff there)
I joined the rest of the company for breakfast and showed them the sketches of
the TURN-X robot. They were overwhelmingly approving in their opinion, and
with further detail refinement after I returned to Los Angeles, THAT was
the final design for TURN-X.

Each of the six (plus the 創ew・GUNDAM) had a unique silhouette,
unique articulation and unique persona. I am extremely proud of these
designs, and subsequent sales of the action figure variants validated the designs.

15. And so what was your impression of this work once you saw the finished product?
How well did the design translate to the animation?

I received episodes from the TV broadcasts (on channel 4?) and was immensely impressed.
My liaison lady confirmed that the series was enthusiastically

シド・ミード師匠 ANS インタビュー(2006) 3/4

7. In the 1980's you also enjoyed great success with your one man show exhibitions
and sales of your Oblagon book in Japan through Kodansha. Could you give us your
overall thoughts on this experience?

In 1983 we received an invitation to supply art for a one-man show at the LaForet
museum in the Harajuku district of Tokyo. I went over with my PR guy and a friend.
The visibility was keyed to the Japanese release of BLADERUNNER (by Toho?).
The experience was fantastic. I had gotten a liking for Japanese style food
in my 1961 trip so I was completely at home with sashimi, sushi and could actually
eat firm ice cream with hashi. Anyway, the hospitality was flawless.
I was on television with kids prompted to chant SHIDO MEEDO・as I walked down
the studio aisle to the stage for my televised interview. The next day while I
was on the street in the Ginza going to have drinks at the Lion place, two young
Japanese guys recognized me, I stopped at their calling my name and signed autographs!

That exhibition was the beginning of my high visibility in the Japanese professional
and corporate society. At the time, I met a PR lady who was high-born, whose family was
old・Japanese money (Mitsukoshi Department Stores) and who had attended middle school
with the royal son at the special school in Akasaka precinct across from the guest palace.
Her exquisite knowledge of Japanese etiquette and both social and business manners
contributed greatly to my visibility and consultant success over the next twenty years.

8. In 1989 you were first approached by a Japanese studio to do designs of the ship,
all interior sets, costumes, and various "prop" pieces for Space Battleship Yamato,
could you tell us how you were first approached to do this work and your reactions?

I first started on the re-design of Battleship YAMATO in 1988 with a company in
Tokyo headed by an interesting man named Nishizaki. He had an animation studio
in the Philippines and access to healthy cash flow. I was flown over, put up in the
Akasaka Prince Hotel in a suite. This allowed me to work on sketches 訴n situ・
and have consultation conferences locally.



The project extended into 1989 and then went into lapse. I don't recall at the moment why, but I was staff the project until it revived in 1992. I then really got into elaborate CAD
drawings of deck plans, costumes, on-board hardware and perspective views of all major
spaces onboard the YAMATO. I received a model of the original YAMATO designed by
Matsumoto-san and went to work. By coincidence my partner, Roger Servick found an
advertisement for a 1:2OO scale model of the original YAMATO BATTLESHIP from the end of WWII. We put that together and that gave me a visceral appreciation of scale, level of detail
and, most importantly, the 組estalt・and emotional projection of the ship. It was then
that I realized that what Matsumoto had done was to shift classic battleship proportions
into a kind of 壮ubmarine ・aircraft;・a kluge of silhouette, empennage and surface markings.

It was at this time also that I bought my first Macintosh computer with a CAD program on
disk. I also bought an eight pen plotter that was driven by the CAD program so I could
print out the elaborate drawings I was doing on the computer. NO MORE SPILLED INK!
NO MORE SMUDGES! And, I could enlarge the work area and complete scaled detail easily.

Nishizaki-san made several trips to Los Angeles during the second go-round of the YAMATO
project. I completed all of the black and white perspective drawings of selected
volumes in the ship, then completed numerous full color gouache illustrations showing the ship from exterior views that visualized significant story every frames.・The project produced
a soundtrack CD and a snap-together plastic model by Bandai. To my knowledge none of the
episodes aired on television. The project ended with the ignominious arrest of
Mr. Nishizaki at Narita airport and his subsequent legal troubles.

9. Did you travel to Tokyo again to collaborate on this work? Did you meet or
collaborate with Yamato creator Leiji Matsumoto on this project?

As answered above, yes. I made several trips to Japan in connection to the YAMATO job.
On each of these trips, Mr. Nishizake extended elaborate generosity to me.
This included having a TV equipped van and driver meet me at Narita airport,
putting me up in a suite at the Akasaka Prince hotel and elaborate kaiseki dinners.
On one of these dinner occasions I met Matsumoto-san and gave him a baseball hat from,
I believe, the Los Angeles team. (I had been advised by my liaison lady that
Matsumoto-san collected baseball hats.) Matsumoto-san gave his complete approval
of my new design, so I felt that not only had I re-created the mystique of the
battleship YAMATO, but had not violated the admiration of the original YAMATO anime creator.

10. As you know, the specifications fo