The Art of Tron: Uprising (Part 4 of 4): Landscapes

In this final post of this four-parts series devoted to the art of Tron: Uprising, we'll be taking a look at the various Grid landscapes in the world of Uprising.

Of the many aspects of Tron: Uprising that I've covered in this series, the Grid landscapes illustrate the paradoxical nature of the Tron universe. It is a world-within-a-world, something that is both infinitely vast and infinitely small, something that is derived from common technology we can see, hear, touch and use yet remains invisible to almost every human being. Adding to the Grid landscapes' ethereal aura is the omnipresent neon glow that appears to emanate from the Grid itself. Since the Grid and everything within it exists in a sunless, electronically-generated space, it is up to the Grid itself to provide light sources for its virtual inhabitants.

Emphasizing the artificiality of the Grid in both Tron: Legacy and Uprising is the contrast between the cities where the programs live and the wastelands that exist in between the cities. The sleek, multi-leveled environments of the cities represent virtual space that has been organized by careful construction, while the harsh, formless wastelands represent the ostensibly endless amounts of virtual space that has yet to be refined and given purpose by programming. As such, there is no real "natural" world within the Grid; everything is artificial, and therefore anything that has no foundation in programming is inherently crude and discordant. This is what made the arrival of the isometric programs (a.k.a. ISOs) from the wastelands such a surprise to both Kevin Flynn and the programs he produced--that structure, function and intelligence could arise from an unformed space and without deliberate creation.

Click below to see the portfolio of Grid landscapes from Tron: Uprising.

I pulled the above pictures from the sites of Joseph Feinsilver, Alberto Mielgo, Annis Naneem and Robh Ruppel, artists who contributed their talents to the production of Tron: Uprising, as well as from other sources. Additional art can be found on the Tron Lives: Uprising Art site.

The Art of Tron: Uprising (Part 3 of 4): Buildings and Interiors

In this third of four posts devoted to the art of Tron: Uprising, we'll be taking a look at the buildings and interiors that the characters inhabited in Uprising.

Even though Tron: Legacy is a direct continuation of the events in Tron, it differed greatly from the first film in terms of the programs' behavior and environments. The programs in Tron adhered to the programming that their users at Encom gave them, while the programs in Legacy behaved according to how Kevin Flynn structured the environment that he built for them in the stand-alone Grid. Tron: Uprising gave fans a closer look at the relationship between the Grid programs and their environments, and what Flynn might have had in mind when he originally built the Grid.

Unlike the Encom programs in Tron, the Grid programs in Uprising build, populate and maintain locations that are akin to locations built for humans: offices, garages, medical facilities, night clubs and shipping container yards. By building human-like environments for the Grid programs, it would appear that Flynn hoped to foster humanoid behavior among the programs (e.g., emotions and free thought). Nevertheless, the Grid is still a virtual, digitally-constructed environment with its own unique properties, such as the Escheresque area of compressed space that was seen in the Uprising episode "The Stranger".

Click below to see the portfolio of buildings and interiors from Tron: Uprising.

I pulled the above pictures from the sites of Jojo Aguilar, Joseph Feinsilver, Vaughan Ling, Alberto Mielgo, Annis Naneem and Robh Ruppel, artists who contributed their talents to the production of Tron: Uprising, as well as from other sources. Additional art can be found on the Tron Lives: Uprising Art site.