The different styles of sci fi?

Elarionus

I'm about to begin working on a sci fi project, and I was curious what all the different types of sci fi were. I want to put together some mood boards for it before I present the ideas to my team. I know what the different styles look like, but it's hard to find reference when I don't know the names...there's that organic looking sci fi that Aquaman has, along with the buildings in Altered Carbon, with smooth flowing forms. Then there's the hardcore sci fi, with chamfered edges, the perfect panels, and everything is grey looking and clean. Then maybe some sort of grunge sci fi, like Star Wars, where it's all dirty looking and function comes before form I suppose. And then Disney's idea of sci fi, like land of tomorrow with lots of orbs and such...

I'm just sorta spitballing here, and I'm really struggling to come up with the right way to explain to Google the different things I'm looking for.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Don't use terms like hardcore scifi.

Try something like:

Silver Age Sci Fi

Golden Age Sci Fi

Neil  Blompkamp Scifi

Cyberpunk

Obscura

Raypunk is a classic one.

Elarionus

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Don't use terms like hardcore scifi.

Try something like:

Silver Age Sci Fi

Golden Age Sci Fi

Neil  Blompkamp Scifi

Cyberpunk

Thank you, this is exactly what I was talking about. I was just struggling to find some of the terminology.

sacboi

You can also search by genre, which encapsulates those already mentioned here plus quite a few more besides:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Science_fiction_genres

firestarter

You might want to google for cornerstone artists for sci-fi:

Syd Mead, Ralph McQuarrie, Peter Elson, H.R. Geiger, Jean Giraud.

marks

don't forget doug chiang, iain mccaig, ron cobb

Elarionus

firestarter said:

You might want to google for cornerstone artists for sci-fi:

Syd Mead, Ralph McQuarrie, Peter Elson, H.R. Geiger, Jean Giraud.

That's also a good idea! The problem I run into is that I can find the "look" of specific things, but not the artist themselves. Like this one type of sci fi, I managed to find three images just while browsing "curvy sci fi" but as you can imagine, most of the things that popped up were not what I was looking for.

But I did manage to find these!

Alemja

I wouldn't also just limit your search to purely scifi related things, but I would look into fashion, animals, plants etc that could fit the aesthetic you want or be used as inspiration. So many things in the real world are interesting and serve as a good base to start from. Like deep sea creatures make good aliens, or you can do art deco but find areas that can be updated with more modern materials or designs. Maybe figuring out what kind of look you want that is based off of real world designs could help you on your concept search.

FULGORE

Cyber-Renaissance

Ashervisalis

Let's not forget about vintage sci fi!

Alex_J

haha ^ 

so you can keep your robots as big rectangles and your monsters can keep the basic clay material. Such style!


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