At any given day you have to be ready with everything. It can be that the director says "this one's done and I need a new one." And you're like, "oh my god! I only have two months, no way!" So your design approach is completely different. You develop, let's say six things at the same time, and try to be ready everyday to give it away.
Daniel SimonIt's still the classic thing to get nice lines, but knowing that your computer model, on your little machine, is on the screen, is priceless. And that doesn't happen too often I don't think.
Daniel SimonSam's light-cycle, the car, and the jets are new of course, and other stuff. The new ones are sleeker and so contemporary, that if you could put them in a car design show they would hold up.
Daniel SimonEvery time you see an interior, where somebody has a cockpit, is the real existing thing. Every time you see the exterior zooming by, it's completely CGI.
Daniel SimonAlso one of my heroes is Syd Mead, who designed the vehicles for the first Tron. So, there are so many beautiful things happening here. And working with Joe was great. He's an architect, so I worked with other directors in between who were just about the action.
Daniel SimonIt [making tron: Legacy movie] was everything. I got pulled into a different country, in a different language, and a different society. In a movie, it's a completely different feel. In car design you know you have one year, and you have to go step by step. This is an organized catastrophe.
Daniel SimonThe funny thing is that Sydney, who worked on the first film [Tron], developed a bike that had an exposed rider, but they couldn't do it because the computers weren't fast enough, so they gave it a roof, which became the iconic one. Ironically what we do now is basically what they envisioned in the first one but couldn't do technically. I mean this a full on homage in every aspect.
Daniel Simon