Gallery: Dreaming Up Tron: Legacy's Sexy Sirens, Wicked Light Cycles and Other Killer Visuals
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HOLLYWOOD — *Tron: Legacy* boasts an adequate quest-type narrative, enthusiastic performances by its young cast members and a capable turn by Oscar-winner Jeff Bridges as he reprises his role as a genius code warrior exiled within a digital kingdom of his own making. But let's be honest: It's [*Tron: Legacy*](http://disney.go.com/tron/)'s alterna-world spectacle, not intricately crafted character arcs, that packs the big punch for this 3-D sequel to Steven Lisberger's original light-cycle fantasy. For *Tron*'s 21st-century iteration, first-time feature director Joseph Kosinski relied on veteran designers to stretch the boundaries of believability as he crafted the movie's computer world. *Tron: Legacy*'s visual wizzes gathered in Los Angeles before the movie's Friday opening to shed light on the sequel's upgraded light cycles, [recognizers](http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Recognizer) and sexed-up siren outfits. Also on hand: designers from Digital Domain, of *Benjamin Button* fame, who explained how they grafted the thirty-something head of actor Bridges, who just turned 61, onto the neck of body double John Reardon. Read on for *Tron: Legacy* concept art and a behind-the scenes look at the movie, as seen through the eyes of Hollywood designers Christine Bieselin Clark, Daniel Simon, Eric Barba and Steve Preeg. __Above:__ Sirens Concept Art ------------------ "In every great film you have to have the sexy girl," says costume designer Christine Bieselin Clark. "We didn't want that to be [Olivia Wilde](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Wilde) \[who plays Quorra\]. The one place in *Tron* we had these sexy women was with the Sirens. We wanted the Sirens' costumes to make you wonder, 'Are these Sirens real? Are they fake? Are they human? Are they robots? What the hell is going on here?'"
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Beau Garrett as Gem ------------------- To achieve WTF impact for lead Siren Gem, portrayed by [Beau Garrett](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Garrett), *Tron: Legacy* filmmakers looked to an unlikely source for inspiration: the automobile industry. "We designed these sleek costumes that play on feminine shapes and then made them look like cars," says costume designer Christine Bieselin Clark. "We wanted an auto-body kind of finish so the characters' curves feel like metal. We used metallic paint and pigment and things you would use on motor vehicles and created a fabric that we invented for this process. When you put those little touches of light in there, it just becomes a whole other being, almost."
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Suits for Disc-Hurling ---------------------- Suits were designed with *Tron: Legacy*'s gladiator-style disc-hurling games in mind, according to costume designer Christine Bieselin Clark. "It's the disc-game combatant uniform, so it had to feel athletic so you could move, but it also had protective qualities," she says.
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Skintight Suits --------------- *Tron: Legacy*'s costume designers did not do traditional fittings for the character's custom-molded outfits. Instead, they deployed digital body scans, says Christine Bieselin Clark: "We had the actors stand inside a little room and four lasers came down and took a full digital map of each body. We output that into a life-size foam figure through [CNC sculpting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNC_Router)." Clark, who now has a collection of life-size foam figures produced by computer-numerical-controlled routers, says: "We molded our suits off of those foam shapes to fit every inch of their bodies perfectly."
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Quorra: Bringing Out the Charm ------------------------------ *Tron: Legacy*'s costumers downplayed the sex quotient for Olivia Wilde's character, Quorra. "Quorra is athletic and she fights, so we wanted to show the arms," says Christine Bieselin Clark. "We gave her this pixie-like skirt that goes with her hairdo. These choices all support the character of this charming girl who's almost like Kevin Flynn's daughter."
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Castor: Channeling David Bowie ------------------------------ Outrageous impresario Castor, portrayed by Michel Sheen, runs the [End of Line Club](http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/End_of_Line_Club) in *Tron: Legacy*. The movie's costume designers immediately thought of David Bowie as a role model for the character. "'He's the epitome of a showman," says Christine Bieselin Clark. "We really liked the 1970s glam thing and wanted the character to be androgynous and flamboyant. If Ziggy Stardust isn't flamboyant, I don't know who is." Clark and Michael Wilkinson made Castor's costume from fabrics found in upholstery stores and auto-upholstery shops.
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Lights, Camera, Clothing! ------------------------- "The lights \[in the *Tron: Legacy* costumes\] were by far the craziest thing I've ever done," says Christine Bieselin Clark. "Nobody knew how to do it, so we went to every effects house in Los Angeles and gave them a little money to find something that would work." [Quantum Creation FX](http://quantumcreationfx.com/) came up with a polymer-based "stretchy thing that would bend, deal with sweat, not hurt anybody and still get bright enough," Clark recalls. Measuring about one-eighth-inch thick, the illuminated lamp-tubes were screen-printed and incorporated into the actor's sleek suits. "All the trim on the costumes \[is\] powered by lithium-ion batteries in the disc's hub, connected to this wiring harness that ran the length of the suit," says Clark. "It was all self-contained."
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Pencil-Perfect -------------- Daniel Simon, raised in East Germany during the Cold War, studied car design at a special school after the Berlin Wall came down. "I always start with pencil, but there was no time to do beautiful artwork for *Tron*," he says.
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Nailing the Light-Cycle Stance ------------------------------ "Figuring out the stance for the light cycles was the biggest challenge on *Tron*," says Daniel Simon. "Stance is basically the theory of how a vehicle connects to the ground," Simon explains. "Everybody instinctively knows, 'This vehicle looks a little lame and that one looks sporty,' but it takes years of training to create. On other films, producers will buy three Ferraris, take the shell off and tell you, 'Put something else on.' The stance is already there from the Ferrari, and it looks cool. We created this from scratch."
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Ducati-Inspired Light Cycles ---------------------------- Daniel Simon, who moved to Los Angeles in 2008 to work on *Tron: Legacy*, drew on his background as a motorcycle designer for Ducati when developing the movie's upgraded light cycles. "If you look at the rear fender of the bike, I admit Ducati had a little input on that," he says. "When time is so pressing, sometimes you have to go into your library of experience."
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*Tron: Legacy*'s Wild Rides --------------------------- The car interiors seen onscreen are real, physical constructions, but the exteriors are pure CGI, says designer Daniel Simon. "I created the vehicles as if there were a magical/believable mechanism for everything, but there were no engineers involved."
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Magical Realism --------------- Pointing to the light cycle featured on the cover of December's *Wired* magazine, Simon says: "This *Tron* light cycle is completely digital. The air brakes on the bike that come out in the back ... are inspired by real race cars and jets. This is Flynn's parallel universe to the real world, and the air brakes are one example of how \[director\] Joe Kosinski is so into realism."
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Favorite Angle -------------- Daniel Simon's design biases are reflected in the final product seen onscreen in *Tron: Legacy*. "My favorite angle is the three-quarter rear of the bike, which became like an iconic picture," he says. "I overused it so much that we also see it in the final film a lot."
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Headcam ------- When Jeff Bridges performed scenes as [Clu](http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Clu), the actor wore a helmet with four tiny cameras on little arms that extended about 5 inches from his face. Wires ran from the helmet cams to the actor's back-mounted [identity disk](http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Identity_Disk), which recorded four streams of video footage. "That camera rig enabled us to triangulate every point on Jeff's face that we had marked up," says effects supervisor Eric Barba.
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Real Performance, Digital Face ------------------------------ Los Angeles visual effects company Digital Domain tackled *Tron: Legacy* after winning Oscars for [CGI work in *The Curious Case of Benjamin Button*](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/multimedia/2008/11/pl_screen). "Nobody has ever seen Brad Pitt at age 85, so we had some artistic license, whereas we've all seen Jeff Bridges at a younger age," says effects supervisor Eric Barba. Another key difference between *Button* and *Tron: Legacy*: While Pitt's old-man head was inserted post-production without other actors, Bridges insisted that he interact with performers on the set while delivering dialog ultimately voiced by his 30-year-old clone Clu. "Our challenge was to get Jeff's performance to drive Clu, because Jeff wanted to do it on-set, because Jeff already told us, 'I can't do that, I have to be interacting with the other actors and doing this in character.'"
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Bring in the Clones ------------------- Two-and-a-half years went into the creation of Clu, the menacing digital construct seen onscreen as a 30-year-old clone of Jeff Bridge's Kevin Flynn character. One of the first steps involved making a life-size cast of Bridges. Next, says *Tron: Legacy* animation supervisor Steve Preeg, "We made a maquette of Jeff's head and manipulated it a bit in the computer to get the look and age correct."
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Body Double in Play ------------------- Each time Jeff Bridges played Clu, body double John Reardon, off-camera, scrutinized the actor's blocking. "John would then mimic Jeff's movements so that the body gesturing was based on what Jeff did," says *Tron: Legacy* effects supervisor Eric Barba. "We wrote internal software that turned the data into what muscles would be activated at any one point for the configuration of those 140 \[sensor\] points on Jeff's face. After we captured Jeff's facial performance, we cut John's head off John Reardon and put Jeff's CG head on top of it."
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Essential Jeff Bridges ---------------------- Digital Domain used old photographs and movie footage to construct Jeff Bridges' clone Clu at age 30. "We figured out what makes Jeff look like young Jeff right down to the hair," says *Tron: Legacy* animation supervisor Steve Preeg. "Clu was conceived as having a very short military crewcut, but early on we realized, 'That's not Jeff in any movie, so we gave him that '80s coif and the 11 o' clock shadow." Preeg noticed that several facial features remained essentially unchanged over the decades: "Jeff has very deep dimples and very narrow eyes behind heavy, hooded brows.... That's still something he has now that carries over from his earlier years."
