THE DARK KNIGHT

I hope you all had a Merry Xmas. Apart from my sister's absence and too much nagging and many pep talks from my parents, I had a great, (sort of) relaxing Xmas. The highlight of which, I finally got to do some writing. I've been working on a proposal for Roger, and my good friend, Alex (who is a professional editor, my longest friend and all-round sorta good guy) had a look of it. Taking all his feedback on board I finally got around to re-working the proposal. I also wrote the script for the first issue, and I'm incredibly excited by how well it turned out. It dialed the whole idea up to eleven. I'm waiting with baited breath for Alex's final thoughts before I send it onto Roger.

In the meantime, here's a Xmas present I worked on for one of the trainers I used to work with called Beau. I accidentally bumped into Beau's girlfriend, Lucy at a train station and she mentioned she was looking for a Batman print for Beau. Given I wouldn't have time to work on one, could I recommend where to buy one? I mentioned that not only would I have time to work on it, I would love to work on it. The best thing was that Beau would never know what was going on as our meeting had been a total chance encounter. What a great surprise!

So thus began torrent of emails back and forward.

THE FINAL SKETCH:

I sent her a bunch of layout sketches, and after some deliberation we agreed on this which was actually the amalgam of three other layouts. We liked the idea of the rain, the three quarter menacing pose and the old Gotham rooftop. Lucy really liked the idea of the Bat-symbol and stressed emphasizing the muscles as "Beau loves the muscles!"

THE FOREGROUND LINEWORK

The next stage was the foreground line art. I had a bunch of goals as I drew this. I had done all my cowl studies when I drew the portrait of the Dark Knight for Ororo, so it was figuring out how the costume works. First up, he has to look REAL. While I applaud the stylistic choices in BATMAN BEGINS, my Batman has to look like a guy in tights. It's classic and it's what I like. Clark Bantram and Sandy Collora proved that it works in BATMAN: DEAD END (please check this out if you haven't seen it). As you can see, my line work is simplistic and merely indicative of form and shape. I had great fun doing some research finding obscure, fun and convincing things to put on the top of the roof. I moved the cape back over his shoulder so we could see the muscles on his arm more. It made him more powerful and less elusive.

BACKGROUND LINEWORK:


Next up I added the city elements. Lucy really wanted to see Gotham city. I found a bunch of skylines as reference and used them as the basis of what I wanted to create. I was looking for an epic, dark urban jungle sprawling into the distance. It may be a silhouette, but all those damn windows are drawn by hand. The trick was to make sure that Batman was the tallest most dominating element in the composition.

TONED FIGUREHere's where I have the most fun. This for me is where the magic happens. As I mentioned, the line work is merely indicative of what I want. It's shadow, form and lighting that breathe life into a piece for me. I researched billowing sheets, capes and cloaks for ages. I have a tendency to fall back to the Todd McFarlane "Spawn" style cape when I'm not concentrating. I love that look, but it's stylistic, not realistic. As I mentioned, I wanted this to be as realistic as possible. Finally I was able to cobble about three different photos into a good reference base for me. I was one step away from going outside with a sheet and hoping for a windy day. My favourite part is the cloak billowing between his legs. It has such a convincing reality to me.

CLOSEUP COWL
I really enjoyed exploring the different textures on the costume. The gloves, shorts, boots and cowl are all meant to be a shiny almost armoured, pvc-like material. The cape is a slightly more matte texture, as you don't want something shiny trying to hide you in shadows. I've included a closeup of the cowl and chest so you can see the detail. The symbol is raised and embossed with a shiny black texture. The cowl has large eye holes (so he has full vision). Screw the tiny eye-slits. I used to have a Batman mask (don't ask) and you can't see jack in it.

FOREGROUND TONE

I then moved onto the more mundane task of toning the background. I was aware that previous pieces had been a little too airbrush happy as I hadn't figured out my lighting beforehand. Keeping that in mind I was very careful to render the lighting and textures as accurately as I could so that only minimal airbrushing would be needed.

BACKGROUND PHOTO TEXTURE INSERTS

To finish off the toning of the background I scanned in some textures. Here's some very manipulated clouds which gave me some colour. Studying some night city skylines I worked up a reddish glow down the bottom to help merge it with my idea for the city's lights reflecting off the clouds. You can see here that the ground is a fun manipulated wet texture. The grating is something I found and just adjusted the perspective. I knew I was going to add steam over the top of these so I figured a scanned in texture would do the trick. I needed to have something there, so as I pulled steam away we could still see something lurking beneath rather than just flat black emptiness.

CITY RENDERING
Lucy wanted Batman to be as noir and desaturated as possible. I mean, let's face it, he's black and grey with some yellow on him. But in order to merge him into the background, I thought I should do the background colour elements first. The city itself is a combination of hand painting every damn window, painting in a whole bunch of manipulated city textures, and light airbrushing to create the glow from the streets at night.

FOREGROUND COLOUR:
I added a very subtle red glow to Batman's left side to merge him into the city. It also helped make him more three dimensional. I added very subtle colour elements to the foreground roof elements. As Batman is pretty much colourless, I didn't want any bright colour elements distracting us from him. As such, the palette is muted. I added some subtle red reflections on the rear elements to tie them into the city in the background. I created the Batsymbol separately and it is a combination of layer effects and subtle perspective distortion to overlay it onto the clouds above Gotham.

STEAM EFFECT
Right from the sketch I knew I wanted Batman standing on top of a steam vent. For all his seriousness, Batman is extraordinarily theatrical. Despite his no-nonsense attitude, he knows the value of showmanship to create as much fear as possible. Covering his feet lends an ethereal, non-real feeling to this powerful, aggressive figure. I knew I didn't want to do this with the airbrush. It would look fake and forced, so I created a steam texture and painted it in with the clone stamp tool. I then went in with a gentle eraser airbrush and allowed elements like the grating and more of the fold of the cape between his legs to show through.

AIRBRUSHING
As I mentioned before, I had been going overboard with the airbrush because I wasn't making effective decisions at the earlier toning stage. Having done that on this piece, I was able to keep my airbrushing to a minimum just highlighting the left side of his body and certain choice elements.

RAIN
Lucy loved the idea of the rain, and I'm glad she insisted. Her insistence made a good piece, great. I was watching Batman: Dead End and noticed that when you shoot rain at night, it fades to invisibility in the shadows and pops on the brighter elements, especially light sources. I created a rain texture and painted it over Batman on three separate layers. In the past I had used a subtle colour layer effect to unify my pictures. I found that the rain did this for me. It unified all the elements into one single piece.

CLOSEUP

Just to give you an idea of how much I think about this, here's a closeup of his utility belt. I did a bunch of research to see what everyone else was doing, but I was generally unsatisfied with previous ideas. They were usually too noisy or too simple. The locking mechanism is on the top and bottom of the buckle and both elements need to be pressed firmly to release. It is essential that it can be done with one hand. On either side of the buckle are his different gas pellets. There are five on each side. Enough for an arsenal, and few enough that you can count each by touch to figure out which one you want to use. Next to the gas pellets are his shuriken in the shape of a bat-symbol. The idea is that there should be about 5 in each clip. There is an indentation in the middle of the shuriken so Batman can flick them out with his thumb for easy access and hip throwing. The pouches are off to the side so they don't inhibit running or front kicks. They are also flexible so they don't inhibit side kicks. I figure his grappling gun is on his other hip.

The narrative behind this is it's a first person view of a criminal who has run out onto a rooftop to get away from the cops below. He's just burst onto the rooftop looking for an escape. He turns to his right and sees the Batman. Knowing that fear is his greatest weapon, the Batman has chosen where to stand for maximum dramatic effect. He's ready and poised for the coming confrontation.

I would argue that this is the best piece I've ever drawn. I love the hell out of it. It just ticks all my boxes and has turned out exactly how I wanted it to. Lucy and Beau were appreciatively impressed, and that made it even more worthwhile. Merry Xmas, Beau!

GOING AWAY PARTY: So I'm off to live in LA via London for three months. Here are the details for my going away party. Everyone's invited, even if I haven't met them! So bring em down.

FUTURE BLOGGING: I'm back on track and out the other side of the holiday woods. Expect regular posting.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: World War Z by Max Brooks. God, I loved this book. I haven't had this much fun in ages. While the son of Mel Brooks doesn't leave you gut laughing, he lacks none of his dad's wit and intelligence. It is the most brutal, realistic depiction of a zombie apocalypse I've ever seen. It knocked my socks off.

COMMISSIONS & SKETCHBOOKS: Still taking new orders. Delivery dates are moving into mid Jan. Sketchbooks (there's a photo on some post) are $10 + $2 postage in Australia and $5 overseas.

Hope you all had a great xmas!