Q2: Influenced? Answered

[GoldCylon]

What where some of your influences that helped design the new Cylon look?

[The Cylon God]

What where some of your influences that helped design the new Cylon look?

I don't know if there were any direct references we looked at when designing the Cylons... We certainly did our best not to veer too far off the originals. Of course we kept the iconic scanning eye just because it was the coolest and most unique aspect of the original. At the time, though, we were just trying to implement all of the producer's wishes, which didn't necessarily add up to a good design. In the end, part of the credit has to go to VFX Supervisor Gary Hutzel, who steered us away from copying the original too much and inspiring the new design.

My main concern was to make the new Cylons look meaner and sleeker, but if I were to credit a source of inspiration, I'd have to say that much of the Cylon's design was taken from human anatomy. Kind of appropriate given that, in the new series, the Cylons were trying to replicate the human body. I think the main difference between the old and the new is that the original design was meant as a kind of "armor" to sit on top of the body (in their case, a lizard-type alien race), whereas in the new version, the design was meant to mimic the function of muscles, which afforded us the opportunity to make them much thinner and take it away from the "man in a suit" curse.