syd mead
I'VE CALLED SCIENCE FICTION "REALITY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE".... - Syd Mead
An American visual concept artist born in 1933. After graduating from Art School Syd worked for many advertising agencies and as a car designer and concept artist for car companies in the 50s. Later he was hired by NASA in the 60s to make realistic depictions and pre-visualization work on several real life spacecraft projects (which would help him greatly to develop techniques he would later apply to his very sober, sound, detailed and realistic looking science fiction works).
Syd Mead would become best known for his designs for 80s film productions such as Blade Runner (the Spinner), Aliens (the Sulaco spacecraft), Tron (the lightcycles, digital tanks, solar sailer, and Sark's carrier designs) and 2010 (the Leonov spaceship), all of which gave him notoriety in the field. In the 90s he also worked on the designs for the Turn A Gundam mecha anime series and the aborted Yamato2520 (a sequel to Uchuu Senkan Yamato).
On December 30, 2019, Syd died in his Pasadena home at the age of 86, after three years of fighting lymphoma.