1940s-retro and 1950s-retro computers and other period high tech devices
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I was wadung along through someone's 3D rendered comicbook narrtive story a week or two ago, in which the characters were driving around in a 1950s-looking car, pulling an old style Airstream trailer, and arriving at vaguely 1950s-looking buildings with 40s/50s-era furniture. So, I'm going along, accepting the 1950s vibe of the whole thing... and then there was a scene with an Alienware laptop sitting on the floor, and I'm like, "Wait, that isn't 1950s! LOL!" A short ways later into the story, there was a very-recent desktop computer with LCD monitor, sitting in a 1940s style desk. I suspect the guy rendering the comic wasn't really trying for a 1950s vibe, it was probably more a case of "Okay, I have these vehicles, locations, and furnitures already in hand, I guess I'll use them in THIS..."
Nevertheless, it got me to thinking: If someone was very much trying for a very 1950s-vibe comicbook story, but for plot reasons needed to have computers and other sorts of more recent-era technologies in it, or even more advanced ones, and he wanted those machines to blend firmly into a 1950s-styled setting -- say, he was going for a GATTICA-esque sort of retro-future world -- it'd really be nice if there were HDTV sets, desktop computers, laptops. and other sorts of electronics that had the style of the 1950s, but were clearly more advanced. I.e. a TV set with an HDTV aspect ratio,with a case that is about as thin as HDTVs are today, but that is styled like a 1950s TV set. I.e. rounded sides and corners, bakelight-styled plastic, maybe some wood and fabric hilights, some metal-and-plastic knobs of the 1950s-TV type, etc. Desktop computers where the case is patterned after a 1950s radio (both the wooden and the bakelight types) and the LCD monitor also has a 1950s sort of design style to it. And the keyboard would look sorta like a 1950s typewriter keyboard, but without the back part where the paper, ribbon, and little swing-arm letter smack-the-ribbon thingies are.
There could also be similar sets of these devices done in a retro 1960s look, if someone was going for an Avengers sort of look (I'm talking about the 1960s British secret-agent show, and its remake of a decade or two ago, not teh Marvel superheros thing), with what these devices would look like in a more futuristic the-1960s-style-never-went-away world.
And going back the other direction, it'd also be neat to have these range of devices done in a 1930s and 1940s sort of look, such as would blend into a 1940s film-noir detective fiction, if THAT was set in a futuristicified 1940s. I.e. someone was going for a vaguely Bladerunning sorta vibe, but closer to the 1940s in ithe look of its tech.
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So are you saying someone should make this and YOU would buy it or it should be made for an imaginary customer (like the creator of that comic) to use?
Or is it just missing from the store offerings?
I ask because it's asking a lot - of a product artist to make something so obscure.
A better bet would be to take the classic item and actually SLAP the new-tech item inside of it- or do it in post.
Heck, mess around with shaders if need be.
"then there was a scene with an Alienware laptop sitting on the floor,"
My guess is the laptop is probably the Anomaly and is the out of place item, not everything else.
The creator probably thought "cool laptop with a green alien on the cover, how futuristic!" as opposed to trying to link to brand awareness.
That's why I frown on any kind of fanart or overly 'inspired by' items in the Daz store.
I'd hate to use something with a logo or marking on it, only to discover it's the icon for X property or the items is from a movie or videogame or...or.....
Mainly saying this sounded like a neat idea for an item, that SOMEone out there would probably use. I can imagine someone using this sort of prop in a diesilpunk render, for instance. Anyway, its often the out-of-left-field ideas that flit through someone's head that someone else then hears about and says, "Oh, I like that idea, I think I'll go make one of those."
Heck, I might someday, make something like this, I'm just not yet skilled enough in Blender and the like to pull it off.
edit: And for clarity, no I wasn't suggesting someone slap an Alienware-ish logo on these retro-future props, just that the rather distinctive-looking modern laptop was what popped me out of the willing-suspension-of-disbelief on that comic-book-narrative story I was looking at.
I thought you were saying you knew it was alienware BECAUSE you recognized their logo.
HAHHAHAH you were simply saying it was a modern laptop a'la Alienware.
Oh. I get you.
There's a few vendors that have themes and all of their creaions fit together in some weird and wacky way.
You start collecting. If you search hard enough you'll probably stumble something you can kitbash.
Yup, it was the mere fact of a laptop showing up in a context where everything else in the story to that point had said "1950s" in a big way, though it also didn't help that it was a very distinctive STYLE of laptop that didn't even exist yet as early as the 1990s. >>giggles<< But yeah,it also made me pause to reflect on how often in TV and movie sci-fi I've seen settings that sort of looked like another 20th Century era on Earth, but was on another planet, or in some parallel universe, or in some retro-future vista right back here on Earth, but which internally was more technologically advanced, and I found myself wondering why we DON'T see props like this show up more often for Daz Studio and Poser.
In the various Stargate TV series, we've encountered worlds that had a vaguely 1940s look to their archetecture, the colorscheme of their stuff, the design of their devices, but where the particular planet was clearly more advanced in some ways than our 1940s were. The same show also had other worlds that had a vaguely 1960s look to them and to their tech. I remember in at least one episode of Stargate: Atlantis where they had (yet another) 1940s-ish-looking world, but that world had near-desktop computers, of a fashion that... well, the makers of the show basically repurposed some old Predicta TV sets from the 50s or 60s, and pretended they were computers by placing them in the room and displaying black-and-white computer graphics on the screens and having the characters sit down in front of the TV set as if it were a computer.
For that matter, the last two episodes of this season of Doctor Who also had a world that had a very 1940s look about it, very 40s film noir, but the civilization clearly had a much more advanced technology because they were living aboard a gigantic space ship that was split up into floors that were miles tall, with entire cities or sprawling landscapes in each floor, and a simulated sky painted on the ceilings. Much of the story took place in a floor that had a 1940s-ish look about the buildings and interiors, and had a lot of 1940s-looking and 1950s-looking devices, such as at one point there was this little widescreen monitor that had a sort of 1950s-TV-set look about it that some of the characters were looking at, but in onesies and twosies, very occasionally here and there were devices that looked more like they were from the late 70s or so, such as at one point there was a computer terminal that consisted of a curved box with a big CRT as the front of it , with an integrated keyboard jutting from below that, the sort of desktop computer design that used to be ubiquitous into the early to mid 80s or so.
It all just leaves me wondering why we DON'T see more vintagey-but-futuretech props show up. You'd think there'd at least be diesilpunk-styled computers and TVs, and steampunk-styled computers and TVs. I went to the Daz3D shop and to some of the other DS and Poser places and I plugged in a search for diesilpunk stuff and for steampunk stuff, and saw no computers or TVs or other seperate little electronicky devices of that sort in there. A tiny smattering of vehicles and stuff, maybe, and some buildings and whatnot, but no small devices. Wierd.
On the other hand, if you go to Second Life and search their Marketplace for steampunk, just about every modern device you can think of, and some purely science-fiction devices, there's a steampunk version. There's everything from laptops to desk-sized computers to autodocs (basically a hospital bed combined with a surgical robot) to zapguns to hovercraft to jetpacks. If there's a device in today's world, or in near-future sci-fi, there's probably a steampunk version of it somewhere in SL... which is why it really surprises me there's not more of that sort of stuff here..
settings that sort of looked like another 20th Century era on Earth, but was on another planet, or in some parallel universe, or in some retro-future vista right back here on Earth, but which internally was more technologically advanced
I, for one, love that stuff. Star Trek was great with that. One planet was Indians, another was 1870 and then 1920....they did a colonial and victorian and such. One story had a Roman and even a Nazi empire.
When I go there, I have a backstory of a universal architect guildgods who decide the scheme of a planet's tech when it's being terraformed or settled.
Also finances play a part. They go from Bone to wood to bronze, all the way up to polymers. So today, if we were building a city from scratch could decide to go 'gotham' and have gargoyles on the ledges-
but it might be alien statues on the ledges, mixed in.
Or Vegas - all lights.
Skyscapers- all glass
Or run down 1980s'
a 1950s computer set up would actually be quite cool
One potental issue is the number of switches levrs, and dials, pushing up the polygon count. A "modern futiristic" set with an interface that owes a lot to the Star Trek LCARS system (may have the name wrong) is much less demanding.
MrSparky offers a neat freebie, a bank of consoles that can be shuffled for different looks.
http://www.poserdirect.com/free_thebigone.html
One might debate it looks more like something from the early 60s as opposed to the 50s, but at least it does not look "contemporary".
Sincerely,
Bill
This topic reminds me of FallOut tech :)
Would be very cool to see
On the same site, there's also a pretty neat reproduction of something not entirely unlike the old Altair, with lots of switches and blinkenlights (animatable in Poser, with a Python script). Doesn't look much like a modern desktop, though, but the first types of what we'd recognise as looking like a desktop computer, like the TRS-80 or Commodore PET, don't seem to have been made as 3D models yet. And they're definitely a bit too advanced for a 50s setting.
How about going all out and using an Interocitor? It fits the 50s period, and there's one made by Ptrope over on ShareCG.
Funnily enough, I already have all those linked devices in my DS runtime. :D Anyway, AVXP's comment is much closer to the sort of thing I had in mind. In fact, there was a DrWho Christmas episode a few years back very much in that vein which was set on a world that was VERY Steampunk in its.... well, everything. But they were clearly advanced enough for space travel, and had advanced computers and videophone tech and whatnot. As for retro-future 1950s-ish, there's a merchant on SL that makes a replica of a computer device that showed up in lots of 1960s TV shows and movies where that prop had apparently originally been made for Lost in Space but then got rented out to other productions after that. It was literally built using the shell and front panal of an authentic 1950s desktop-sized computer. And there's actually a fascinating Youtube video on some guys who've built replicas of that exact same prop:
Now, imagine something with THAT sort of case, maybe narrower and more like the shape (well, width and hight) of a regular desktop computer of today, with spaces for CD-ROM/DVD drive and stuff, but also a bank of those blinky-lights, and imagine this machine has a 50s period typewriter-keyboard in front of it, and a widescreen monitor that LOOKS like a 1950s TV in the front (boob-tube display and all) when seen directly from the front, but where the case is only an inch thick from back to front, sitting on a 1950s period desk. That's the sort of image I had in my head for this.
Now, imagine something with THAT sort of case, maybe narrower and more like the shape (well, width and hight) of a regular desktop computer of today, but with slideouts for CD-ROM/DVD drive and stuff, but also a bank of those blinky-lights, and imagine this machine has a 50s period typewriter-keyboard in front of it, and a widescreen monitor that LOOKS like a 1950s TV in the front (boob-tube display and all) when seen directly from the front, but where the case is only an inch thick from back to front, sitting on a 1950s period desk. That's the sort of image I had in my head for this.
STOP IT!
You're going to drive everyone crazy looking for this kind of stuff(s). lol
Ironically, some of NightShift3D stuff is on sale.
https://www.daz3d.com/dystopia-lab-pack
This is one of those vendors thatc reates an entire world that fits together.
And his stuff is weirdly retro-future.
https://www.daz3d.com/communications-gear
sorta steampunkish
https://www.daz3d.com/rybolt-mechanical
Antfarm is another one.....
Most of this is called Dystopian, a term I never heard of till shoppping at Daz.
It was always called post-apocalyptic, to me, before....
But I guess that's to move away from the Mad Max dirt-buggies and mohawk haircuts.
Maybe the computer server products..
https://www.daz3d.com/server-room
https://www.daz3d.com/server-farm
Could be flipped into something....
Dystopian isn't new, it's just not commonly used because of the negative connotation it has. It's an antonym for Utopia, and is best seen in movies like Bladerunner or Minority Report.
Reminds me of the Bendix G-15 computer I used a bit in my youth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendix_G-15
Never forget the pebble-textured grey or blue paint for this era.
It's an antonym for Utopia, and is best seen in movies like Bladerunner or Minority Report.
Yeah, I just saw it in the name of a dozen products on here and was like, okay, what's this about, then?
When I gogoled it, it was like "Everything sucks" so maybe Hunger Games fits this mold as well.
There's also another one that escapes me, where it's all Victoiran like a futuristic Sherlock Holmes or Jeckyll and Hyde universe.
It'd be a lot of work to set that stage and remain faithful to it.
That'd be Steampunk, right? Or is this another subgenre of sci-fi that intersects with it?
this kind of stuff? My characters inhabit a 40ish time space area even when they're in space... but the radio could become a mac Plus type thiing...
another subgenre of sci-fi that intersects with it?
Another one. Or maybe not. The one product I was looking for is advertised as steampunk so that must be it.
I'm probably confusing them- Steamboy (the anime) or the Japanese industrial look.
Basiclly, most of these are based on 'What if a cultural design style stayed the same while technology continued forward?'
The future vision is usually heavily based on the current system.
So many sci-fi properties imagined a future with skies filled with zeppelins.
Just like the 80s pictured the future with spandex and virtual reality. lol
Like those homes of the future videos from the 60's that you can find on youtube :)
and again I mention fallout as everything was styled in the 50-60's style but with robots and hover cars (Imagine a 1960 cadillac except with no wheels and extra bits and bobs on the rear for the new engine.)
they did have tires one of the biggest goofs (reality wise) in fallout was hundreds of cars with no tires remaining on the hubs.. like they all melted in the atomic blasts but then there are piles of tires all over the place... the army trucks still have their tires...
but busses, and cars and pickups are sitting on their riims...
but overall Fallout 3 and NV and 4 are prime examples of 50s design with Washington DC having a heavy dose of Deco and streamline moderne
Did they? it's been such a long time since I played them. I just thought the futuristic 50's setting was really cool and unique.
Getting back to the original post - I am surprised there isn't more of this stuff around, what with the popularity of Fallout. Coflek-gnorg does some work in this area, with props that are loosely steampunk but which could work in dieselpunk. You may want to check him out elsewhere as he doesn't seem to sell through Daz.