Retrofuturism - Tumblr Posts
a snowbound odyssey
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DAY 534 - HOLD ME BACK
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I suppose the big reason I prefer to draw a line between steampunk (i.e., taking modern ideas about what a high-tech society ought to look like and projecting them backwards onto an imagined 1890s) and Victorian retrofuturism (i.e., taking what people who actually lived in the 1890s imagined the year 2000 would look like and running with it) is because the second one is typically way more batshit than the first. Steampunk gets you giant robot spiders; Victorian retrofuturism gets you a habitable Lunar surface populated by anthropomorphic bat people. These are both very cool, but the latter has a certain something the former lacks.
saturn fields
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Some retrofituristic sci-fi practice
My first experiment with molding/casting from a 3D printed master.
February 1960. Galaxy Magazine cover illustration of a future junkyard
You know that sort of technological/sci-fi aesthetic that was most prevalent in the late ‘80s to the mid-’90s that used a lot of grey to beige colors and angular shapes with heavily rounded edges and corners?
Syd Mead was certainly a big influence, though a bit sleeker than most examples:
One of the greatest exemplars of the aesthetic is the interior of the Enterprise-D on Star Trek: The Next Generation:
It seems to be designed to appear both futuristic and welcoming. The plastic usually has a grainy texture so it doesn’t look so shiny and cold. Light sources are soft, with the lightbulbs concealed behind corners or plastic coverings that diffuse the light; it was also usually a bit dimmer to feel more indoorsy and cosy. Pure whites are shunned. Chairs and couches are made to appear comfortable at first glance (even if weird angles and slopes would compromise comfort in practice). Ceilings and walls slope inwards, accentuating the low, cosy feeling. It makes me think of being in an airliner, since airliner interiors have a similar aesthetic (that worked to ST:TNG’s advantage; since the interiors reminded me of an airplane, it felt like they really were in a spaceship).
In some ways it seems to be a softer, cosier update of the ‘60s space age aesthetic, and there’s a smooth transition to the colder, shinier Y2K aesthetic.
From /r/oldschoolcool
the grip retrofuturism has over me is unreal, I want to live in this future.
all artwork by charles schridde for motorola / 1961