Originality

Have you ever tried to create something truly original? Something that no one has ever seen before? Something that bears no resemblance to anything in existence?

Things that I have designed and continue to design, are extensions of things that already exist. I tend to imagine the evolution of existing products or objects. I admire the artists that can seemingly think "freely" of constraints. But even those artists are building on things they have observed in nature or other man made creations.

I started creating my bike designs in 2004.









By looking at my art it's easy to tell that I'm heavily influenced by Syd Mead. In my opinion Syd Mead is the high mark standard of a conceptual artist. No one comes close. Whenever I'm looking for inspiration or have "artists block", I pull my copy of Kronevecta off the shelf and flip through it.

Syd Mead has created numerous iconic vehicles from the Spinner of Blade Runner, to the light cycles of the original Tron. It's widely believed that Syd Mead's four legged gyro balanced walking cargo vehicle (designed in the 1960's) was the inspiration for the Imperial Walker in The Empire Strikes Back.


My bike designs are a riff on the original light cycle created by Syd Mead 30+ years ago. So obviously, when a sequel to Tron is greenlit, the first thing ANY designer would do is reference what has come before. That is a simple explanation for the similarities between my bike designs and the Tron Legacy bikes as designed by Daniel Simon (although his are much cooler).


Now back to the original question- have you ever tried to create something truly original? It's an extremely difficult thing to do. The first thing your mind does is start to create wild combinations of things that already exist. For example, if you were asked to create a monster no one has ever seen before, most likely the first thing you will want to do is to remove the human elements from the creature. A creature with no limbs, no head. Maybe something blob like, or a gaseous. And already, just like that, you have based your creation on something that already exists.

Here is a great series of videos that discusses the topic of originality. I think you will find it very thought provoking and entertaining.

 

 Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.


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Hello, I'm Bryant Griffin and I've been a matte painter at ILM for the past 10 years. Welcome to my blog.

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This is my journal documenting the development of a sci-fi/adventure Cinematic Graphic Novel- my personal little project. Thanks for visiting.