Lady Tron wants to fight you on the Grid!

I simply love the design of Tron. It's such a fun environment to work in so it was with much relish and enthusiasm that I created the following piece of art: Ladytron - Bring on the Disk Wars!

For those that don't know, Ladytron is a comic character created by comics mage, Alan Moore along with artists extraordinaire Travis Charest in the pages of Wildstorm's Wildcats comic book series. Ladytron is an angst driven, anarchic, narcissistic cyborg with a criminal past and a perfect candidate to fight it out on the grid. For the purpose of this amalgam piece of art, I wanted to play up the Tron aspect of the character's name so I developed a little logo for Lady TRON.

Lady TRON logo

I started out with an initial character sketch (pencil on A4 paper) to work out the pose and over all design of the figure. With Lady Tron, I went through 4 revisions before getting the pose and design to work, adding more detail as I went from version to version.

Revision 4 sketch

Version 4 colour

I created a blue line version of the above sketch which I inked, scanned and coloured in Photoshop. It was at this stage that I realised the character was way too masculine and that the arms weren't quite working as I'd hoped. As I had already done a LOT of work in Photoshop to get the figure to this level of finished art, I decided that the quickest way to continue was to draw 'head' and 'arm' patches (see below) to fix up the artwork.

 

These were integrated with the original black and white line art and then coloured and added to the work-in-progress figure. This saved me having to go back to the drawing board and re-doing the figure from scratch, saving me a ton of time. This is where computers come in real handy.

Final art for Lady Tron character

I already had some environments in development for the world of Tron as I'd previously developed a TRON: Uprising Paige piece and was also working on some Batman / Catwoman / Tron amalgam pieces in tandem. There's also a reason why Lady Tron's right leg is cocked up, she's standing on a derezzed games program. This was sketched and inked, then coloured in Photoshop with the derezzed pixels being composited using Adobe Illustrator. Fun, fun, fun.

Derezzed Games Program - taken out by Lady Tron.

Background image sans characters

Final composite artwork. Lady Tron Disk Wars

Alternate version

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Damian K. Sheiles

The world of Tron is a dream to work in...

I've always identified with the world of TRON. From the very first time I saw the original film in theatres back in 1982 to the sequel, TRON: Legacy and the fantastic underrated animated series, TRON: Uprising. I'm sure I didn't quite understand all the terminology at the time when I was 10 years old, but I totally understood the concept and what they were trying to achieve with the computer design aesthetic.

For me, TRON: Legacy, lived up tho the hype. Joseph Kosinski is a very visual director - he tells you what you need to know visually rather than using too much exposition or dialog in his films. Check out Oblivion, a veritable feast for the eyes.

When a chance arose to produce an illustration that celebrated the villains in any "Disney" universe, I jumped at the chance to illustrate the main villain, Paige from TRON: Uprising.

TRON: Uprising - Paige Final Design 

Below is my step by step process for the final illustration that is pictured above. First I start with the composition of the main figure, Paige. It took me about 3 hours to get the figure and face right with about 3 revisions of the body/pose.

I drew the head at 200% finished size to allow me to achieve the detail I wanted.

The head would be added to the body using the Photoshop, the above line drawing shows the end result

Final colour version of Paige. Coloured using Photoshop.

Screen Capture of Photoshop File

Next I looked at putting my own design spin on the iconic Recognizer. I sketched out half of the design in pencil, then refined in ink. I knew that the final piece would be completed using Adobe Illustrator so I only needed to draw half of the Recognizer, that way when I flip it in the computer, I get a perfect mirror image, resulting in a symmetrically perfect design.

Drawing only 1/2 of the Recognizer allows me to achieve perfect symmetry when mirrored on the computer.

Complete composite line drawing

Screen Capture of Illustrator File

Final Illustrator artwork for Recognizer - all vector art.

The final design composition was completed using Adobe Indesign. This allows me to move the individual elements around with ease to create a dynamic illustration with depth and shadow. I use separate layers for the background, figures and foreground elements. Below is two alternate design concepts.

The background design is a composite of several different elements blended together to create "The Grid". The row of guards in the second image above were generated directly using Adobe Illustrator - duplicated for the purpose of creating an instant army. I developed two different guard designs but only ended up using the one style.

(Black) Guard Design drawn directly in Adobe Illustrator

Black Guard Army

Design Background Composition

When creating artwork, I enjoy using different mediums. I enjoy the process of sketching out designs by hand and then rendering in ink, scanning the line drawing into Photoshop and utilising digital colouring techniques to bring out the vibrancy of the figure drawing. I also enjoy the precision that Adobe Illustrator brings to vector line drawing - the TRON Recognizer vehicle took me a few hours to complete.

Even though the end result is produced using a computer, my illustration work often has a humble beginning at my drawing table...

Where it all usually begins...

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Damian K. Sheiles