Inspiration: Fallout and Retro Futurism

Fallout and Retro Futurism

 The Fallout series is one of my most favoured Sci-fi franchises, it is a brilliant rendition to the 'what if?' scenario. It takes place around the 23rd century in an alternate reality where the culture of the 1950s just wouldn't die, but most of humanity does. In this reality, the cold war was prevalent until the bitter end. After nations began to run out of resources in the 2050s the world plunged into a global conflict that ended in 2077, when the then nuclear powers decided to launch their arsenals at each other, enveloping the world in a new apocalyptic dark age, this was called the 'Great war' and lasted only 2 hours. 

 However, 'Lucky' people survived the great war thanks to the sanctuary of underground fallout shelters called vaults, designed by the vault-tec corporation they officially provide "better living, underground" when in reality they were part of a series of experiments orchestrated by the united states government. Each vault varied in experiments, such as placing America's 1% in impoverish living conditions to see how they would cope mentally.

 As the player, the series has you control protagonists decades after the great war, surviving from raiders, radiated ghouls and super mutants as you explore post apocalyptic America. 
Concept art for fallout 3

Alongside fallout being a very enjoyable game to play, what I personally love is the technological advancements combined with 1950s culture, technologies like the sleek streamline fusion powered cars, domesticated robots and clunky power armour made the game look like it how we envisioned the future to be from science fiction magazines from the 1960s. 

Vehicle concept art from the book 'The art of Fallout 4'


The art style that is commonly linked with the world of fallout is known as 'Retro futurism', a trend during pre-1960 period where existing writers artists and filmmakers attempted to predict the future either in serious projections of existing technology in magazines like science and invention or in science fiction novels and stories. 

 When it comes to personal interests of art styles, retro futurism is a different spectrum of futuristic art that I admire. While I prefer the style of cyberpunk with it's grungy depiction of an augmented future, I particularly find retro futurism to be fascinating. Due to it being a trend during pre/mid-1960s the predictions they were making were aimed around present day, comparing our current technological advancement with these predictions it's interesting to see not only how far we have gone in the space of 40-50 years, but also how different our current technologies are from the futuristic envisions of the 1960s.     

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