I was originally hired to paint backgrounds for TRON. As the production moved forward, I was asked to repaint other artists' backgrounds from time to time, not to change anything, just to repaint them exactly as they had originally been painted. The reason for this turned out to be that my surfaces were smoother and thus shot better with the set up that was being used at the time.

I offered to run some tests to see if I could help with the conditions that were causing so many paintings to shoot poorly. I pretty much switched out everything to do with both the painting process, from the type of airbrush to the type of board, and also altered the photo set up that was used to make the large transparencies of the background paintings. It all worked and I was told that I would be running backgrounds for the show. Who was I to say no?

Because of the brevity of the remaining schedule, I couldn't give all backgrounds of a particular area to the same artist. I sometimes had to cast widely. To keep the look consistent, I kind of "digitized" the process. We used Liquitex® neutral grays, which came in a numbered series. I wrote the values I wanted used for every surface on every layout in the show. Kind of a paint by numbers. Background colors were added by the scene coordinators later, during the process of compositing the background with the character and effects animation elements.

In addition to casting the background layouts, I drew finished layouts for about 20 % of the show, mostly in-between continuity layouts based on Peter Lloyd's master shots, but I also was asked to create original designs and masters as well.

The clips show backgrounds for which I provided the layout as well as provided painting direction.