Set Designer - vehicles
My role on Tron: Ares was use my real world motorycycle design experience to bring a sense of realism to the function and physics of the new lightcycle.
the biggest challenge was that since these vehicles were coming into the real world, they needed to be functional and believable as real vehicles.
In Tron: legacy, they grab a baton and the bike materializes around them. In Ares they actually get on and off the bikes in real world, there's this concept of perminance that doesn't exist in the digital world. So designing the bikes around these real world limitations, while still preserving the established design language and body position was a unique challenge.
Of course there's always movie magic and cuts to make it seamless, but the ergonomics of the bikes were a big challenge. The canonological riding position on the lightcycle is not a natural or comfortable way to ride a bike.
the first step was benchmarking the riding positions of the previous light cycles and looking for ways to improve.
from there we made a plywood mock up to quickly iterate on ergonomic adjustments
checking head range of motion
centering the chest support on the torso
getting the heigh of the knee support and footrest correct
On a typical motorcycle you carry most of your weight in your seat. Your arms do some work on excelleration and braking and, with the exception of agressive cornering, the footpegs are mostly just taking the weight of your legs.
when we started this model 100% of the weight was on the chest. Not terribly uncomfortable at rest, but hit a bump in the road like that and it knocks the wind out of you.
After a number of tests we got a solution where the weight is evenly split between the sternum and the shins. we also brought the chest up, easing neck strain and increasing mobility.