Bleak Chic to Future Perfect

Syd Mead presents a strangely cheery demeanor for a guy who dreamed up the cinematic imagery for the collapse of civilization.

The legendary illustrator says happily, for instance, that science fiction is simply "reality ahead of schedule." This from the same mind that created the settings for the iconic 1982 sci-fi film "Blade Runner" -- a brilliant, disturbing vision of Los Angeles in 2019 that garnered him a reputation as Hollywood's most potent "visual conceptualizer."

By then, Mead had made his mark in the movies, designing the V'ger spaceship for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979). He would go on to define the electronic netherworld of "Tron" (1982) and design the Sulaco spacecraft for "Aliens" (1986), the Leonov ship in "2010" (1984) and the mask-making machine for this year's "Mission: Impossible III." He also updated the motorcycles for the video game Tron 2.0.

But nothing he's done has caught the popular imagination quite like "Blade Runner," with its spectacular flying patrol cars and societal decay. With the film's 25th anniversary next year and a director's cut due for release, Mead's futuristic perspective is on camera anew.

A documentary, "Visual Futurist: The Art and Life of Syd Mead," will debut in Los Angeles next Sunday. In it, the bespectacled guy at the drawing table is seen as a genius at fantasy. But how does the artist see himself?

"I think I'm disturbingly rational," Mead says in an interview. Or, make that "carefully crazy."

Mead, who turns 73 Tuesday, flew in from Pasadena, Calif., for a White House reception Monday for the National Design Award winners. The jury had a special commendation for Mead, honoring his influence on how others design for the future.

Richard Koshalek, president of Mead's alma mater, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, calls him "a major force" who anticipated the challenges of creating humane environments amid global urbanization and increasingly complex technologies.

Mead's role in the movies is pure art. He paints meticulous scenarios that bring scripts to life and provide the basis for prop and set construction. The visions are rooted in industrial design, as befits a graduate of the Valhalla of automobile design -- early in his career, Mead designed concept cars for Ford Motor Co. He left Detroit after developing "an uneasy feeling I was going to spend my life doing bumpers and trim."

He turned to illustrating corporate brochures. Wild, onion-shaped vehicles painted for a 1960s publication advertising U.S. Steel eventually caught the attention of John Dykstra, a special-effects wizard for "Star Wars" who introduced Mead to the movie business.

Mead traces his imagination to things he sees "in his dreams." Illustrated books, such as "Oblagon: Concepts of Syd Mead," show helmeted creatures watching over a mega-city far below. Armored trucks clump across a moonscape on robotic legs, moving like steel elephants. Fantasy weapons are sketched with stunning precision. The scale is inevitably larger-than-life, the light eerie, the silence deafening.

The scenes are bizarre, but the inspiration is rooted in real-world research into how things work.