Cyberpunk

Introduction

Syd Mead

Influences

Introduction

Cyberpunk is a theme which is becoming more commonly used across all ranges of media, and has been rapidly growing since it's introduction to mainstream media in the early 1980s. The cyberpunk theme sets a scene in a highly technological environment but still tends to have a low quality-of-life atmosphere. Scenes depicted in cyberpunk media are usually places filled with neon signs and futuristic technology, but are often bustling with crime and anti-heroes.

An extension of the cyberpunk style is known in the film industry as "Tech Noir".  Tech Noir is a genre which combines elements from the Film Noir style, heavily popular in the 1950s with the dark, crime themes, with science fiction to create a dark, dystopian and yet futuristic and visually appealing scene.

The piece of film which can essentially be described as the archetypal example of Tech Noir and Cyberpunk is 1982's Blade Runner. The visual themes of the film give a very futuristic, and yet very dark theme, as directed by Ridley Scott. The screenplay gives a sense of a hugely vast and technologically advanced city but there is still a heavy atmosphere of gloom and struggle, which sets the tone of the harsh quality of life within this futuristic and dark environment.

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Syd Mead

One factor which played a huge role in successfully creating the desired effect for the cyberpunk themed world was the vision and illustration of the concept artist Syd Mead. He had previously worked with Ridley Scott, who later said in an interview that he told Syd how he wanted the setting to feel, and then let him create the environment from his own imagination without giving a set of strict rules to follow. The work that Mead produced was so accurate and representative of what Scott wanted to achieve within the film, that he tried to change as little as possible about the visualised scenes in when shooting the film.

Artwork of a street scene for Blade Runner by Syd Mead

A lot of the artwork that Syd Mead produced for Blade Runner is very impressionistic, and uses a lot of contrast between the dark, dingy areas and the bright, vivid neon lights that litter the street. Despite the bright neon lights with their asian symbols on them, the image still feels very dark and dingy as the main tone of the image is all in dark blues and greens. All of the lights in the image are either yellows or greens, which give a very subtle light, but this is magnified by the excellent use of reflection in the images, as the light shines off many surfaces while not making the image too bright, and keeping to the dystopian theme of the concept.

Another street scene, this time with a lot more emphasis on the lighting of the city

Mead also designed other parts of the Blade Runner imagery, including the interiors of many building and vehicles. They still keep to the dingy, blue-tinted colour scheme of the street artwork, but show a much greater level of technology and have less of an emphasis on atmosphere. These images show the futuristic side of the city spectacular, with all of the control panels and systems designed within the interior artwork.

The interior of a vehicle concept from Blade Runner.

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Influences

The visual styling of Blade Runner has since influenced many new forms of media with the cyberpunk stylists and tech noir ideals. Some examples of movies that drew inspiration from the stylings of Blade Runner include The Terminator and 1999 smash hit The Matrix. More recently the release of video games such as Deus Ex have shown heavy cyberpunk themes, as well as the turn-based strategy game ShadowRun, and all of the spin-off games derived from the title.

Currently, the game development studio CD Projekt RED are working on creating a game which is entirely based on the themes made popular in Blade Runner, named CyberPunk 2077. This game is not set to be ready for release until at the earliest late 2015. Cyberpunk 2077 focuses on the futuristic, highly technological world which is inhabited by a "degenerated human society", featuring some form of humanoid android figures, which shows that, thematically, the game will be almost identical to the ideals portrayed in Blade Runner.

Artwork of a female android character from CyberPunk 2077