TRON: Legacy Starring Daniel Simon, Designer

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When Disney wanted to get people excited about the upcoming sequel to TRON, TRON: Legacy, they created this exhibit at ComicCon 2009 to reveal the design of the lightcycle. See video below. showcasing drawings by designer Daniel Simon and a full size model of the machine.
This gives a great perspective of the exhibit.

This one shows the drawings and lightcycle in more clarity.

I find it interesting that the concept designer is given such prominence, even over big name actors, directors or other factors. But I'm not surprised.  I've been a big fan of the original TRON, which was released in 1982 when I was eleven. I was/am a computer geek, designer, video game fanatic, and sci-fi follower.

Even then, I felt that the real star of the movie was the world that was created by legendary designer and concept artists, Syd Mead and Peter Lloyd. (To give credit, a whole team of computer programmers realized each image frame by frame using 1981 computing power.)
LightCycles - 1982 designed by Syd Mead

The designs were fascinating and unlike anything we had ever seen before. The recognizers, tanks, solar sailor, and of course the lightcycles are now iconic designs that only exist in the movie. I understand that they were restricted to using only primitive shapes and boolean combinations of those shapes due to the lack of computing power and surface modelling capabilities at the time.

CLU's tank - 1982


A return to this glowing world is what I'm most interested in seeing, Daniel Simon's revision of a fantastic environment nearly 30 years later. Much sexier, curvaceous, glossy, transparent and complex.

Daniel Simon's updated lightcycle design for TRON: Legacy



I believe, and as I'm sure many industrial designers like myself do, that Daniel should stand alongside Jeff Bridges, as the stars of the show.  Because, although Jeff acts as Flynn, the creator of the TRON world, Daniel truly is the creator.

Comments

Stefan Hermann said…
Nice content on your blog. cool concept research in here. ps. daniel simon, great guy^^
November 21, 2010 at 1:19 PM
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