https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaOQA-wcm2w
The opening sequence 3D wireframe graphics were rendered on a cluster of prototype ZX Spectrums and were the inspiration for ILM's groundbreaking work on Tron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJd6GtM5P9E
By the way, there is an excellent orchestral rendition of the theme music by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, seemingly from a recording for the 'On Screen' album in 1986:
Anyway, very cool that that Mars base is from 2020... It seemed so far way back then. The SciFi future with Mars bases and flying cars that never happened. We did get Smartphones though... What will humanity look like in 40 years? Unrecognizable probably.
As an aside, it's hardly surprising our American cousins haven't heard of Terrahawks. I doubt the tongue in cheek humour (typified by 'robot ball' Sergeant Major Zero) would translate well!
We were also familiar with the latex puppets because of Spitting Image and the Genesis "Land of Confusion" video.
And the idea of a ball-shaped droid with a Cockney accent just seemed like a big miscalculation, unworthy of the Anderson legacy.
But to be fair, if you go back and watch Space: 1999, most of the episodes aged poorly in retrospect except for one or two of them (e.g., Dragon's Domain still holds up).
Yet would be entirely baffled at the concept of a British panto.
> ball-shaped droid with a Cockney accent
That my friend, was the voice of the one and only Windsor Davis, initiating his role as St Mjr from 'It ain't half hot mum'. Though I do recall a Scottish zeriod ("droid") and one with a French accent and handlebar moustache.
Monty Python, and in particular Terry Gilliam's animation style, were both heavily panto influenced.
It was also a nerd rite-of-passage to watch Eraserhead which was directed by David Lynch, who then got to direct the Elephant Man.
The panto scene at the end of Elephant Man is one of the few scenes in a movie that wrecks me every time I watch it. Unfortunately it gets scrubbed every time someone posts it online.
Yes! And the noughts-and-crosses game they played during the credits:
https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbirds-Are-Go-Season-1/dp/B086H...
As well as being a huge fan of the originals
Similarly, with early CGI like Tron, what was the render/target resolution for film?
> They had pushed for Triple-I to build the DFP, the first (that I know of) high-resolution digital film printer for motion pictures. This was the next generation PFR, using an 8" CRT which had fast-decaying phosphors so that it could be used for scanning in film (using photomultiplier tubes built into a special camera) as well as printing. The imagery was amazing
> Since the Foonly only had enough disk storage to hold the frame being computed and the frame being printed, the numbers worked out like this: 30 seconds of film at 24 frames per second works out to 720 images each computed and printed at 6000 x 4000 pixels.
I believe this was the documentary I watched a couple of years ago re: the making of Tron that went into a lot of detail about the effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbgHMrLPQrE
Wow #2, Terrahawks was in a box in the back of my mind for a long time. Don't think I ever actually watched, I just saw it, if you know what I mean. But I was about 7 when it came out so that makes sense. I remember the Zeroids more than I remember any of the characters.
See the Terrahawks game on the Spectrum:
Is there a source for this, that would actually be interesting.
IIUC grandparent post refers only to the sphere & ships projected into 2d stills, not all of the titles. A software wireframe renderer seems "easy" compared to modeling the ships. Even if it took a day to render each one, this was all done in the service of a pilot episode, so probably not a lot of pressure. They're on the screen so briefly before fading to the filmed miniature, I suppose it would easily hide most issues.