Over at Dark Roasted Blend, you can look at a retrospective of the work of designer Luigi Colani; a man who has a pathological hatred of straight lines.
Colani-inspired designs showed up in the darndest places from the 1970s to the 1990s. The motorcycles in the original "Tron"(1982), and in "Akira" were pretty obvious Colani "tributes" (aka "ripoffs").
His 4x4 on the link masthead looks suspiciously like the one driven by Peter Strauss in "Spacehunter; Adventures in The Forbidden Zone" (1983). To say nothing of the cop cars in "Demolition Man" (1993).
His distinctly humpback-whale-like airliner showed up in "Heavy Metal" magazine- as a fairly convincing-looking interstellar spaceliner. (At least in vacuum and microgravity you didn't have to worry about lift, or whether or not the landing gear would hold up.)
Probably the most obvious Colani piece was the semi driven by Sam J. "Flash Gordon" Jones in the short-lived NBC-TV series "The Highwayman" (1984). That one, as I recall, had a Gazelle light helicopter docked in its tractor, with the chopper's cabin forming the truck cab.
They never did quite explain what happened to the folded rotors and the tail boom when it went 'round a tight curve, though.
(Yes, I do have a certain fondness for schlocky film and TV SF. Why do you ask?)
1 comment:
Colani-inspired designs showed up in the darndest places from the 1970s to the 1990s. The motorcycles in the original "Tron"(1982), and in "Akira" were pretty obvious Colani "tributes" (aka "ripoffs").
His 4x4 on the link masthead looks suspiciously like the one driven by Peter Strauss in "Spacehunter; Adventures in The Forbidden Zone" (1983). To say nothing of the cop cars in "Demolition Man" (1993).
His distinctly humpback-whale-like airliner showed up in "Heavy Metal" magazine- as a fairly convincing-looking interstellar spaceliner. (At least in vacuum and microgravity you didn't have to worry about lift, or whether or not the landing gear would hold up.)
Probably the most obvious Colani piece was the semi driven by Sam J. "Flash Gordon" Jones in the short-lived NBC-TV series "The Highwayman" (1984). That one, as I recall, had a Gazelle light helicopter docked in its tractor, with the chopper's cabin forming the truck cab.
They never did quite explain what happened to the folded rotors and the tail boom when it went 'round a tight curve, though.
(Yes, I do have a certain fondness for schlocky film and TV SF. Why do you ask?)
cheers
eon
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