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Chris Greazel

@chrisgreazel

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Industrial designer, illustrator, concept artist; in Southern California. Future cars, hot rods, aerospace, powersports, sci-fi design, etc.

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On this date (27 August) in 1979, deputy sheriff Val Johnson, while driving his patrol car, collided with an unknown flying object.

In the northeast corner of Minnesota, near the town of Stephen, not far from the North Dakota border, it’s about 1:40 AM on a dark and deserted rural highway, as deputy sheriff Val Johnson drives his Ford LTD police cruiser.

What happens next is considered a landmark UFO case in the category of law enforcement encounters.

Deputy Johnson sees a brilliantly glowing ball of light, smaller than a basketball, hovering low over the ground.

The luminous object suddenly accelerates toward his vehicle—then breaks a headlight, smashes the windshield, and bends the roof antenna.

After being rendered unconscious for nearly 40 minutes, he radios for help.

Another deputy soon reaches him, and finds the car sideways, halfway off the road.

Deputy Johnson is shaken and in a daze, as if in a state of shock.

He appears to have UV radiation burns around his eyes.

It was later determined his retinas had been damaged, in a manner consistent with exposure to extremely bright light.

An engineer from Ford Motor Co. concluded that the car's multiple windshield cracks were caused by unknown "inward and outward forces acting almost simultaneously."

All damage to the car, from front to back, is within a straight line, less than one foot wide.

There is no damage to the car’s bumper.

From an interview transcript, in Val Johnson’s own words, “ …I noticed a very bright brilliant light, 8 to 12 inches in diameter, 3 to 4 feet off the ground. The edges were very defined. I thought perhaps at first that it appeared to be a landing light from an aircraft…I proceeded south…about a mile and 3/10, when the light intercepted my vehicle.”

Both Val Johnson’s hand-wound wristwatch and the car’s electric clock showed 14 minutes of missing time.

The unrestored car can still be seen today in the Marshall County Historical Society Museum in Warren. by @chrisgreazel

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45 years ago (August 20, 1977) Voyager 2 was launched to explore the four outer planets.

It remains the only space probe to have visited either Uranus or Neptune.

It’s also one of only five to have achieved stellar escape velocity.

Voyager 2 has since left our solar system. by @chrisgreazel

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Marilyn Monroe’s Cadillac Eldorado.

Custom painted a unique shade of gold by future Batmobile builder George Barris.

R.I.P. N.J.M. by @chrisgreazel

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Summer of ‘77

45 years ago this summer, two films—which had premiered within two days of each other, during the last week of May, 1977—became instrumental in my eventual choice, over a decade later, of a career that would include both sci-fi entertainment design, and car styling.

When Star Wars was first shown, and I was living in St. Louis, it was sold out for weeks; with long lines of people wrapping around every local theatre that was playing it.

Once, when we couldn’t get in, we ended up seeing “The Car” instead.

In fact, it wasn’t until over a month later into July that eight-year-old me finally got to see what would eventually be retconned as “Episode IV: A New Hope.”

Then a week later, seeing the first Bandit film. (This explained why a new black and gold Trans Am had been on display in front of one theatre for months; being a cross-promotion with the nearby Pontiac dealer.)

Over the remainder of that summer, I would attend both films numerous times, in the accompaniment of various groups—both of extended family, and different circles of friends.

As an aside, my final viewing that summer of Star Wars, in late August, was in Chicago, at a venue that proved to be the most memorable—the huge 1400 seat, 1930s auditorium of the Esquire Theatre, in the Gold Coast neighborhood on East Oak Street just west of Michigan Avenue.

Star Wars went on to play on the single screen of the Esquire continuously for more than a year.

It wasn’t until over a decade later that this theatre was converted to a multiplex.

Earlier this week, I was told that the Esquire property, at 58 E. Oak St., is now a Cooper’s Hawk restaurant and wine bar.

Only the vertical sign and part of the original facade remain. by @chrisgreazel

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On the occasion of the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope being released earlier today (11 July)…

I’ve created a digital art interpretation of this photo; complete with the addition of a classic starliner.

Some of us have been waiting for this day since the Next Generation Space Telescope project was started in 1996.

This area of sky is smaller than a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

The imaged area includes the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, whose combined mass acts as a gravitational lens—magnifying and amplifying the light from the much more distant galaxies behind it.

This gravitational lensing phenomenon causes some of these galaxies to appear stretched out or otherwise distorted.

As this particular region of space shown today appears to us now how it looked 4.6 billion years ago, any starship currently visiting would of course actually encounter a very different sight. by @chrisgreazel

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75 years ago on this date—July 8, 1947–the public information officer at Roswell Army Airfield issued a press release stating that the U.S. Army Air Forces had recovered a crashed flying saucer, at a ranch about 100 miles northwest of the base.

The term “flying saucer” itself had originated only less than two weeks earlier, in headlines when pilot Kenneth Arnold was misquoted by newspapers after reportedly witnessing nine advanced supersonic aircraft of an extreme, unconventional design, “moving like a saucer would skip across water," in the vicinity of Mount Rainier.

Their actual appearance however, while relatively flat and wide, was not 360 degrees circular as a true saucer is. Arnold’s own drawings (see my second page posted here) clarify this in a letter he sent the following month to the U.S. Air Force—a new service branch that had just been created less than two weeks after the Roswell incident.

Numerous other sightings of similar exotic aircraft were reported across North America from about mid-June 1947 and continuing well through that July. These included a publicized encounter, also of nine craft, reported by airline pilots.

In creating today’s illustration, for reference material I combined those drawings made by Kenneth Arnold himself; as well as photographs of a similar anomalous exotic aircraft, taken in Phoenix—a day before the Roswell press release; and numerous other eyewitness accounts, all describing ships of this particular design.

Even if accepting the official government explanation that any debris field—or three—found in New Mexico in the summer of '47 was really just nothing more than a few strips of wood, tape and other mundane components of a then-classified Project Mogul high-altitude atmospheric acoustic resonance espionage balloon, I still find these other concurrent sightings—and photographs—to be compelling. by @chrisgreazel

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Intercepting a Structured UAP Craft

On the occasion of World UFO day and inspired by several verified aerial encounters—especially over the past two decades—between aircraft and ships of the U.S. Navy, vs. various types of UFO.

These unknown aircraft are routinely exhibiting exotic propulsion technologies and extreme flight performance characteristics, while often brazenly operating within restricted military airspace.

They can appear as swarms of many objects simultaneously—seemingly entire aerial fleets.

(My illustration here—which I’d created in 2020–is not intended to accurately depict any specific historical encounter. Featuring a stylized 1950s saucer, it’s meant to be editorial art on the general subject.)

Could these numerous and exotic transmedium craft of various designs really be just highly classified aerial assets owned by, say, Lockheed or Boeing—as part of certain special access programs?

Or is something more significant at work here?

Observed craft have appeared variously as the classical saucer shape—one of them being described by a pilot as looking like a large “toy top;” or it’s a cube inside of a sphere; or else the infamous white Tic Tac—complete with four L-shaped lower protrusions, which may be, what—landing gear? Something related to propulsion? Antennas?

Perhaps some vehicle types come from different sources--and even competing agendas?

What do you think is their true nature and origin?

1) Some highly advanced but nevertheless Current Human Technology
2) Interdimensionals
3) Ultraterrestrials, who may live beneath the sea, and/or inside of mountains
4) Classic Extraterrestrials—Space Aliens, from elsewhere in our own physical universe, in nuts ‘n’ bolts spacecraft. Perhaps with underwater bases.
5) Extra-Temporals—Time Travelers
6) Some Non-Corporeal Energy Intelligence, able to assume material form or appearance. This may encompass interactive psychological phenomena. Also to include the paranormal—even what has been termed angels or demons; may also be Interdimensional.
7) Dolphin Undersea Empire
8) Glitches in Reality/Anything’s Possible if It’s All a Simulation
9) Other

Constructive comments are encouraged. by @chrisgreazel

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Nucleon, 1957-58

Perfect weather
For a streamlined world

There’ll be spandex jackets
One for everyone

The International Geophysical Year began 65 years ago today (1 July 1957).

Generally coinciding with this was the development and debut of the Ford Nucleon concept vehicle.

It was intended to be powered by an onboard compact nuclear reactor.

Shown at numerous venues until the end of 1958, the Nucleon was presented as a scale model styling study, in various colors, over time; and appeared both with and without the prominent rear fins on different occasions.

The Nucleon was inspired in part by the Atoms for Peace initiative.

The extreme cabin-forward architecture was intended to keep the occupants as far away from the reactor’s radiation source as could be practical.
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Additionally, the unconventional wheel placement was to accommodate and evenly distribute the weight of the necessarily formidable lead radiation shielding.
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The influence of then-novel supersonic jets on the Nucleon’s styling is especially apparent in the cabin’s cantilevered wraparound glass being reminiscent of the bubble canopies featured on the latest aircraft of the emerging atomic age.
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In fact, according to designer Alex Tremulis—whom I met after a presentation at Art Center in the late ‘80s—(and who also led the design team for the Lincoln Futura show car which later became the '60s TV Batmobile) there was even some UFO/flying saucer styling influence at work here. He’d said that airbrush renderings of otherworldly space machines had decorated the walls—and, furthermore and significantly, the theme boards for certain projects—throughout the Ford Motor Co. design studios of the time.
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(Here today, I'm exploring a “digital oil painting” technique, and going for an ideal balance somewhere between photoreal, and stylized impressionism; more of a fine art study, than my traditional "industrial art" car design rendering approach.)
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Ultimately, the Nucleon would go on, decades later, to become the most significant vehicle that was referenced when designing certain atomic-powered cars for Bethesda’s Fallout franchise. by @chrisgreazel

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40 years today (25 June 1982). by @chrisgreazel

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Flying Triangles

The A-12 Avenger II was a proposed American stealth attack aircraft jointly designed and developed by McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics.

I myself did some work on this project, decades ago; along with the YF-23, C-17 and others.

It was to be an all-weather, carrier-based replacement for the Grumman A-6 Intruder for the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps.

The craft was of a tailless flying wing design, specifically an isosceles triangle in shape. (Its Avenger II name was taken from the Grumman TBF Avenger of World War II).

Cost overruns due significantly to the development of the then-novel composite materials airframe, and also a new radar system, eventually led to the cancellation of the program.

This led the Navy to purchase the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet instead, which went on to replace both the A-6 and the F-14.

When I worked as an illustrator for Southern California aerospace companies and subcontractors, early in my career, in the pre-digital era, media was airbrushed acrylics and inks on illustration board.

Shown here in a similar composition and presentation style is a modern digital illustration that I've recently recreated. by @chrisgreazel

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Steampunk TRON. From the archives--work I did around 2011; for Sidequesting dot com, according to the file folder name. (Not quite recalling the specifics now.) I was recently reminded of the alternate-history novel, The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling; set it a world where Charles Babbage's steam-powered vision of an Analytical Engine was funded and built to full functionality; and the speculative consequences that may have resulted. (I combined that inspiration in creating this work.) by @chrisgreazel

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Rod-O-Rama

A custom-fabricated hot rod project; that I'd designed and sketched 15+ years ago.

You may've heard that scripts in Hollywood can take decades to finally get made into films. This is known as being "in development Hell."

Well, sometimes the custom-built hot rod scene can be similar in this regard.

I was originally approached about this project in the summer of 2001. A gentleman who owned a sheetmetal cutting and stamping company had collected a couple of rusty classic Buick frame rails; a running Buick 455 V-8, on a stand; an interior modeled after a Boydster II; and a vintage VIN for title purposes.

His plan was to custom-fabricate the body out of sheetmetal--as his business partner's son knew his way around the dark and esoteric arts of steel panel-beating, and proper use of the English wheel.

He also co-owned a company that made FRP body kits, primarily for selling via mail-order to the Import Tuner crowd.

His goal with this project then was to combine the two worlds of sheetmetal, and polymers & plastics composites; within one most unconventional show vehicle.

He not only wanted something cool and stylish for going driving with his wife; but also a unique hot rod that he could take to numerous car shows--partially for the purpose of promoting his businesses.

The name "Rod-O-Rama" was chosen as a nod to the General Motors Autorama and later Motorama car shows--staged annually throughout the 1950s--which showcased the wildest ideas of automotive styling.

Show cars of this era were often dramatically outfitted with features inspired by rockets and jets, including bubble tops (in this case, the roof is finished in brushed stainless steel, reminiscent of the rare 1957-58 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham).

These flamboyant show cars represented the pinnacle of GM styling director Harley Earl's approach to car design.

Specifically with my design here, the overall front fender shapes, Dagmar bumpers, and chromed oval center grille are all an homage to the 1951 GM LeSabre show car. Perhaps the most important concept car of the 1950s, it introduced many aircraft-inspired design elements, such as the wraparound windshield. by @chrisgreazel

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