Syd Mead lectures at CCS

Jay Kruz, Syd Mead and Karen Kruz with a piece of art Syd had done for Ford in the 1960's and hadn't seen since then.

Earlier this week I was honored to have played host to Syd Mead on the CCS campus.

I first met Syd Mead during my junior year at CCS when he came by the campus to demonstrate his techniques. It was a few years after he had worked on his epic Blade Runner with Ridley Scott. Over the years he's come back several times to CCS to speak and inspire the students. This time he filled the Wendell Anderson Auditorium to capacity to the point where I ended up listening to the lecture from the audio visual control room. He talked about his career- all the way from his childhood to his current projects. He was quite frank and honest during the question & answer period with the audience afterwards. My sincere hope is that his visit to CCS has inspired some of my students the way he inspired me years ago. It was an honor to have had him back on campus. Kudos to all of the people that attended and help make the evening possible.

Sketchbook drawings

As an instructor, I'm one to harp on my students to keep up a sketchbook. As a working professional I know I should as well, but due to time constraints, job, life, and every other third excuse in the book- over the last few years I've hardly kept a sketchbook for myself other than the ones I take on trips and vacations.

Well, within the last week I decided to jump back into it and re-discovered how liberating it was. No deadlines, no art direction, no restraints as to what or how I was to put images in the sketchbook. I didn't worry about how clean or crisp my line-work was; after all it was a sketchbook and not a finished art book. The images are sometimes raw, sometimes refined and all across the board. It was fun, uninhibited and just outright fun again.

The only thing is I filled the book in about two days and will have to get another one soon.