Brett Underhill Presents: PorkchopBob: The Blog: May 2017

For years I thought about doing a Batman animation. Always seemed like a waste of time since there is no shortage of Batman fan art and animation, and maybe this was, but I had to get it out of my system. Years of character designs needed to get used in some way. I started going through my archives and found some old work that relates the long trip this animated piece took.

selected high school-era comic panels, 1998

I didn't read a lot of comics in high school, but I was watching a lot of Batman: The Animated Series. I also happened to pick up Alex Ross and Mark Waid's excellent Kingdom Come miniseries after seeing it in a store window shortly after it came out in 1996. Over the years, I've definitely leaned closer to Bruce Timm's illustrative style than Alex Ross' hyper-realistic style, which I thought robbed the characters of their majesty - they were too real, I don't need to see the seam on Flash's homemade costume. But at the time it influenced me as much as anything, since I wasn't really as into art in my teens as I was when I was younger. But a whole comic book made up of paintings was unheard of, it blew my mind a little. I ended up creating a 50-page comic that cycled through most of Batman's major villains, and everything from the realistic square chins to the watercolor owes much to Ross.

As time went on and watercolor became simply too much damn work, I largely abandoned realism for a more abstract and cartoonish style. It happened organically, but I do remember taking a college life drawing course and being completely bored with replicating reality by the 10th week of class. But as I have told my students, it's always easier to abstract reality if you can first replicate it, so I guess I had to get it out of my system. However, even in high school I had some more cartoonish designs of Batman and his universe of characters which were more influenced by The New Batman Adventures on Kids WB (lots of red skies).

Fast forward 15 years later and I am still sketching these characters from time to time, there's always a new angle to explore. A few years ago I considered doing a Flash animation but I never finished it. But the character designs remained relatively the same, albeit a little more simplified and angular.

Finally last Fall I decided to put something together for real. I wasn't really sure where it was going to go, so I started with the least important villain I could think of so I could establish the look I was going for. I chose Black Mask, and classic Black Mask, not the less imaginative black skull head that he now sports.

I picked about 18 villains that I felt were essential and just went one by one, which ever character inspired me next. Some of them I had concrete designs and ideas for, some not so much. Here are some sketches and final stills.

HUGO STRANGE

This one was easy, and definitely inspired by the mad scientist from the FALL portions of Samurai Jack episode Seasons of Death.

PENGUIN

What is there to say about The Penguin? I've always like that a lot of Batman's villains just wear suits since so many of them were created in the 1940s and are eccentric gangsters.

BANE

I'm not a big fan of Bane, and he received the most drastic re-design. I always thought the luchador mask looks silly. Also, there is a reason every animated incarnation takes liberties with his mask: so he can emote. I decided to ditch the mask and adapt his mask as a prison tattoo so we can see the intensity on his face. Also, it never makes any sense that he would have a big tube flailing around - it was gets easily sliced in the cartoons.

TWO-FACE

Harvey doesn't do much except flip his coin, so it was really just a matter of finding the right balance of acid burn.

VENTRILOQUIST

Really happy with the mix of texture on Scarface and the simplicity of Arnold Wesker.

THE MAD HATTER

Jervis Tetch works great as a lunatic. I wanted the sequence to be slightly creepy.

MR FREEZE

I had a hard time with Mr. Freeze's outfit. I toyed with the idea of putting him in white, since Black seemed like it would be hot. I realized I was over-thinking it and kept him in black. I didn't want to go with a big bulky robot suit, but some designs made him look like he walked off the set of Tron.

MAN-BAT

I had a great design for Man-Bat, but keeping him in the shadows was more effective for the sequence.

SCARECROW

Same goes for Scarecrow, who has always been a favorite character of mine. I love the hanged corpse design they went with for The New Batman Adventures, it was like a Edward Gorey-designed Batman villain. It's one of the reasons I featured a similar scarecrow in my thesis animation a few years ago. It took me a while to come up with this sequence, but sometimes you have to hide your designs in the shadows to make them effective. I did try to go with a mashup of Batman Begins and Slender Man-inspired Scarecrow, but it didn't quite read as the same character.

KILLER CROC

How much "Croc" are you going to put into Killer Croc? I kept him pretty close to his traditional more human form rather than a full on croc monster. The sequence is definitely inspired by the "Dallas, get out of there!" scene from Alien.

CLAYFACE

The idea of Commissioner Gordon morphing into Clayface is taken from the comic I created in high school. It was an economical way of using 2 characters in 1 sequence. I never really liked Clayface as a giant muddy monster, so I went with more of a Rodin's Thinker-inspired design.

POISON IVY

I wanted to separate the designs for the female characters considerably, so I went with a more elfin Poison Ivy. I really liked the image of her eyes as sunflowers for some reason, that she could become plant-like and camouflage herself. This was also heavily inspired by the Samurai Jack Seasons of Death episode.

THE RIDDLER

I can totally understand why the producers of Batman: The Animated Series had trouble with The Riddler. He isn't a physical threat, so it's kind of hard to come up with something that quickly features riddles and puzzles.

CATWOMAN

I had a hard time with Catwoman. The Darwyn Cooke goggles & leather looks great, but I wanted a more simple cat silhouette - lean and tall.

RA'S & TALIA AL GHUL

I bounced a bunch of Ra's ideas around before settling on moving outside of Gotham to a Lazarus Pit.

THE JOKER

I initially wasn't going to include Harley Quinn. To me she is Joker's "Robin", his sidekick. But she's gained so much fandom over the years that I decided I'd stick her in with The Joker (along with a Super Powers toy).