TRON 1982

To go back to the source and see a different use of colour in the TRON franchise, I watched the original fillm which inspired TRON Legacy and led to Daft Punk's soundtrack.

The graphics were revolutionary at the time and some are still attractive; many of the generated sequences resemble nets or models from today.

There were several things I noticed visually;

the computer code was a bright blue, forming horizontal lines

there are lots of shiny, reflective surfaces in the real world sequences which create mirror image effects

when characters are emotional - eg. pain, love the colour of their suits intensifies and brightens

in the arcade the neon signs leave an outline when they are off, and almost blinding filled shapes when on

they mix clean cut lines with fuzzy texture to indicate movement

kaleidoscopic effects are used, and create almost lace-like electronic patterns

Neon accents. Colour hand painted onto film after shooting

Lace-like initial drawings of the I/O Port

These traits could be used in my work; these elements could dictate materials used (foil is reflective, flock is fuzzy) composition (linear, kaleidoscopic) types of image used (outlines, filled shapes) and when stitches in the lace are closer together or overlapping, the colour could be brighter.

Also, there is very little music in the film, sound effects dominate which is unusual now. Daft Punk's music fills in the texture and enhances what you see on screen.

In this fight scene the light emanating from one of the characters looks like the multiple shadow effects I achieved using the OHP:

I could make a few mock-ups of possible screen print designs with overlapping, colourful shapes  on photoshop to see if they look good, and to play around with composition and scale.

I also noticed a similarity between early drawings of a character's costume and the OHP-projected drawings of the negative space in the lace; both are linear, black and white, and extremely detailed.

Original part of the lace

Drawing of negative space

These similarities seem strange as lace and daft punk seem like they are totally different to one another, however by combining the bold sense of colour from tron and delicacy of lace, and  by visually interpreting the repetitive rhythm and contrasting textures of daft punk I should create some interesting results.