You've done a man's job, sir.

December 28, 2011 9:49 AM

The Blade Runner sketch book, via Future Noir
posted by fearfulsymmetry (29 comments total)

very best! fun :-)
posted by techno blogger at 10:01 AM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

awesome, thanks!
posted by bashos_frog at 10:08 AM on December 28, 2011

Amazing find!

Also: November 2019 is less than 8 years away.
posted by gwint at 10:13 AM on December 28, 2011

There is only one way to be disappointed by this FPP, and that is by confusing the concepts of "sketch book" and "coloring book."

I am disappointed by this FPP.
posted by griphus at 10:20 AM on December 28, 2011

Please add the NSFW tag because this is awesome sci-fi porn.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:23 AM on December 28, 2011

Loved how "Ridley's View" looked like it was pulled straight from the pages of old 2000ADs.
posted by rodgerd at 10:37 AM on December 28, 2011

I am betting against replicants and off world colonies happening within 8 years. Why does the world have to suck so bad when compared to science fiction.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:49 AM on December 28, 2011

This is awesome. I would love to have framed prints of some of those to hang in my office.
posted by The World Famous at 11:54 AM on December 28, 2011

Very cool to see Ridley Scott's own drawings in there and how much they resemble Moebius' stuff. I always thought the frozen geneticist (Hannibal Chew)looked exactly like a Moebius character.

Also, coloring book? This is concept art for the movie-a sketchbook in every sense.
posted by chronkite at 12:11 PM on December 28, 2011

Jim Steranko's Balde Runner
posted by Artw at 12:20 PM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Yeah the timeframe aspect is interesting. I remember growing up "the future" meant, about, this current point in time. Maybe 2020 or 2030. Of course, to a 8 year old 20 years in the future seems way off, right?

But thinking back, today I wouldn't think of 2040 or 2060 as being so far off to the point where it was unrecognizable (although I bet in some ways it will be)

But I think one reason why people thought that the future would be so crazy is that if you go back to the 1950s, 1960s the technology they had at the time was pretty much the same as it is today, except for the lack of computers. They hard cars, jet planes, and so on. But, you go 10 years back and there's this huge interruption in the form of WWII, and go back even further and for most people the world was completely different. The automobile industry was just getting started, most farms still used animals, there were hardly any airplanes, certainly no jets, or anything like that.

And so basically the entire modern world, in the sense of being accessible by normal people basically sprung out of nowhere over over a couple of decades. So it makes sense that people would think that the trajectories would stay the same.

Meanwhile, over the past 10 years, what have we seen? Basically the same thing as before except with better bandwidth and resolution.
posted by delmoi at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

A tip for iPad users: the site says you can't view the content, but if you change your browser id (to firefox 4, for instance) it works fine.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 12:35 PM on December 28, 2011

What's this? An ergonomic, intuitive image viewer? BUT I THOUGHT THAT WAS IMPOSSIBLE.
posted by troll at 12:37 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, if you say so, it's a tiny little square on my screen unless I zoom it.
posted by Artw at 12:38 PM on December 28, 2011

Meanwhile, over the past 10 years, what have we seen? Basically the same thing as before except with better bandwidth and resolution.

I have a thing in my pocket that can take better pictures than any camera I could afford 10 years ago, upload them to the web automatically to back them up, make a phone call, watch a movie, and access and search nearly every single word of written text ever generated by mankind. Oh, and it's also a full-featured virtual analog synthesizer, sequencer, and recording studio.
posted by The World Famous at 12:41 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow! You sure have found a lot of uses for your Pocket Pornograph.
posted by griphus at 12:43 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Worst euphemism ever.
posted by The World Famous at 12:50 PM on December 28, 2011

What's this? An ergonomic, intuitive image viewer? BUT I THOUGHT THAT WAS IMPOSSIBLE.

Well, if you say so, it's a tiny little square on my screen unless I zoom it.

Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:05 PM on December 28, 2011 [13 favorites]

fearfulsymmetry: "What's this? An ergonomic, intuitive image viewer? BUT I THOUGHT THAT WAS IMPOSSIBLE.

Well, if you say so, it's a tiny little square on my screen unless I zoom it.

Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23"

Orrrr, click to read, then click the icon that looks like a single page at the top for a per-page view that works with your arrow keys.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:35 PM on December 28, 2011

Psst, Happy Dave, that was a Blade Runner joke.
posted by troll at 2:24 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Nice find! Now I want one.
posted by carter at 2:46 PM on December 28, 2011

Happy Dave, describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:59 PM on December 28, 2011 [4 favorites]

I have a thing in my pocket that can take better pictures than any camera I could afford 10 years ago, upload them to the web automatically to back them up, make a phone call, watch a movie, and access and search nearly every single word of written text ever generated by mankind. Oh, and it's also a full-featured virtual analog synthesizer, sequencer, and recording studio.

Dude, 10 years ago was 2002 (basically). 3 months after the first iPod came out. People had stuff like that. I actually had a Casiopea, which was fun. It broke, though, and Best Buy replaced it with a iPaq, which I didn't end up using much. One thing, though, was that it wasn't internet connected. But I think there were PDAs out there that were by 2002. The biggest difference with today's devices was the low resolution display, a slightly slower CPU (I think about 200mhz, vs about 1-1.4 today) and much less ram, probably.

They weren't nearly as popular as iOS/Android phones are today, and people were all making money on the web, not looking to make money selling apps for PDAs, so a lot of the cool apps you can get today never really showed up.

Still, there were plenty of small, laptop computers at the time. Remember this thing? It came out in 1996. Other then being too large to really carry around in your pocket you could do all that stuff so long as you had a bag to put it in.

I mean really, have you confused 2002 with 1992 or something? There really was a major increase in what you could actually do with computers from 1990 to 2000, with much less increase. Probably the biggest reason is the clock-speed cap. I mean, all through the 1990s CPUs speeds were going up according to Moore's law, but around 2002 they pretty much hit a wall.

In 1989 you could get, maybe a 33Mhz 489. By 91 you could get a 50Mhz chip. By January of 2002, you could get a Pentium 4 running at 2Ghz, that's actually faster then most cellphone CPUs today, and a top of the line desktop CPU won't run more then twice as fast, unless you overclock it (and probably cool it with liquid nitrogen). Transistor sizes are still getting smaller, and people are using that to do massively parallel graphics systems using lots of tiny cores, but those often run around 800-1000Mhz in terms of clock speed.

Advances are being made in terms of power use, heat, and other things like displays. And cellphones all have GPUs now as well. But in terms of raw computer speed, it's just not going up nearly as quickly.
posted by delmoi at 4:19 PM on December 28, 2011

Ah, the importance of cinematography! Watching all these making of videos and pictures you realize — with a lesser director, Blade Runner could've easily turned out looking like Idiocracy.

Look at Timecop (yeah, with Van Damme), it also has a Syd Mead-designed future... that looks like crap.
posted by Tom-B at 6:02 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dude, 10 years ago was 2002 (basically). 3 months after the first iPod came out. People had stuff like that.

Yeah, I had one of those. That you're saying a Palm is "stuff like" what I described sort of blows my mind.

Still, there were plenty of small, laptop computers at the time. Remember this thing? It came out in 1996. Other then being too large to really carry around in your pocket you could do all that stuff so long as you had a bag to put it in.

Well, no, that couldn't do any of the things I described, other than basic internet connectivity to a far less expansive web than we have now.

I mean really, have you confused 2002 with 1992 or something?

Well, no, because what I described didn't exist in 2002.
posted by The World Famous at 6:21 PM on December 28, 2011

I would just add that I really did love both of the palm devices I had.
posted by The World Famous at 6:26 PM on December 28, 2011

troll: "Psst, Happy Dave, that was a Blade Runner joke."

Thanks troll, I know.
posted by Happy Dave at 11:14 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I had one of those. That you're saying a Palm is "stuff like" what I described sort of blows my mind.

Well, what can I say? What you wrote wasn't very specific at all. And like I said, even if you couldn't fit a device that could do those things in your pocket you could certainly find a laptop that could do them that could fit in a backpack. (excluding the camera, which you could get separately)

So really, we've gone from having those things in toteable form (with separate, but small digital camera) to having it fit in your pocket.

Looking at the list:

*take better pictures than any camera I could afford 10 years ago: Yeah digital cameras were expensive, but no matter what, the cameras in phones are limited by the size of the optics. So digital cameras from 10 years ago with large lenses were probably as good as most cellphone cameras today

*upload them to the web automatically to back them up: That is convenient, but it has more to do with the monopoly cellphone providers had in the U.S (and still have). With a deregulated cellphone system you could have bought cameras that could upload over the cellular network. And, if you had wifi available you could upload them with your laptop. Inconvenient, but not un-doable. And that's my point: We don't have anything we didn't have 10 years ago, just slightly smaller, better resolution and bandwidth and in a more convenient formfactor. (also, I don't actually want my photos uploaded to 'the cloud' i.e. someone Else's servers anyway)

*make a phone call, watch a movie, and access and search nearly every single word of written text ever generated by mankind.: This was completely doable 10 years ago. But there wasn't much video content online because not as many people had broadband, the codecs were a mess (quicktime vs. real) and so on. The text was definitely all there for everyone -- and 10 years ago napster was around so people could not only access every song, they could do it for free!

*Oh, and it's also a full-featured virtual analog synthesizer, sequencer, and recording studio.: First of all, obviously you don't actually have an analog synthesizer, by definition. But that software was out there fore laptops.

A cellphone, today, can do what a laptop+digital camera did 10 years ago (if, Okay not everything could be done with a PDA). We've gone from the packpack to the pocket. It's really not that exciting.

The only real advances, IMO are the glasses-free 3D displays (which no one cares about) and stuff like Siri, which is all done in the cloud. In fact, the real advance over 10 years ago is what's going in the data centers, but those aren't really things that consumers get to 'have' they're just things that consumers have access too.

The google self-driving car is just around the corner, and I think the next big thing will be robotics everywhere, that's going to be the first real application. So I think there will be cool stuff in the future, we're kind of in a lull. But tech isn't advancing nearly as fast as it was in the 1990s. (Again, compare the most advanced consumer computer in 1992 to the most advanced consumer computer in 2002 to the most advanced consumer computer today)
posted by delmoi at 10:33 AM on December 29, 2011

Ad hominem: I am betting against replicants and off world colonies happening within 8 years. Why does the world have to suck so bad when compared to science fiction.

delmoi: But I think one reason why people thought that the future would be so crazy is that if you go back to the 1950s, 1960s the technology they had at the time was pretty much the same as it is today, except for the lack of computers. They hard cars, jet planes, and so on. But, you go 10 years back and there's this huge interruption in the form of WWII, and go back even further and for most people the world was completely different. The automobile industry was just getting started, most farms still used animals, there were hardly any airplanes, certainly no jets, or anything like that.

And so basically the entire modern world, in the sense of being accessible by normal people basically sprung out of nowhere over over a couple of decades. So it makes sense that people would think that the trajectories would stay the same.

Meanwhile, over the past 10 years, what have we seen? Basically the same thing as before except with better bandwidth and resolution.

I think the real strength of Blade Runner, though, is that it doesn't really feel that different from our world. There are flying cars, sure, and the billboards are animated (well, they are now, too, but they weren't 30 years ago), and all of the architecture looks a little cooler, but that cityscape, with the billboards, and the tall buildings, and the way everything looks glamorous from above, but grungy once you get down to street level--that never seemed like a created future, to me. There's only one major technological achievement, to my eye, that is well beyond what we could achieve in 1982, or now, and that's Replicants, of course; creating intelligent life. Of course, what we do with this profound technological and epistemological breakthrough is use it to create a more perfect underclass to fuel the same system of shallow industry and consumerism. Blade Runner's a movie about the future, sure, but it's more a movie about the present.
posted by kagredon at 9:15 PM on December 29, 2011