Unit 69 - Influential Ideals and Concepts.

Through the course of the project I have developed Batman further and taken him into a context which was different from his usual heroic self. Batman has long been one of my more favoured heroes, simply because he doesn't rely on powers but on wit, strength and deception. But in a more conceptual focus, Batman provides a great essence to take pitch from, the character itself is beautifully designed, providing a great interface for any super hero to be based upon.

It is often I take inspiration from this character when developing my own, and I chose Batman as my character to develop simply, because he is so well designed, the idea, the concept and the understanding behind Batman, as well as the costume and way he is pressed across is a great backbone for any Anti-Hero character to follow.

Batman to begin with started off as a rather happy, cheerful and charismatic individual, which often could be seen in a rather comical sense and didn't show any essence of the darker side of today. He was rather scrawny and used a lot of gadgets and repellents to help him fight, oh.. and his boy wonder Robin. Of course, let us compare him to the Batman of today, you can see that he is a rather darker and more bulky in muscularity and demeanour. Nothing like the Batman from the early days, with this Batman is also a lot more like Marvel Hero Punisher, with a darker and leaner context within him.

Through this development I think that is the more interpretation of Batman that I influenced my character design and through the research of Batman I discovered the traits that signify the character depict a lot about him. Such as a passive attitude, a willingness to save other people, a dark persona and appearance, the ability to fight, seems to be rather intelligent individual, likes to use a range of gadgets in order to accomplish the task.

From this I have taken many aspects, such as his passive and rather dark attitude, and his ability to fight with my version of Batman. I have placed him in a large trench coat, which is something that is more common from the Hero Punisher, which is something I have taken many aspects from. I have also taken into account that I wanted my character to be in the World War 2 era as opposed to the normal fictional modern city of Gotham which is applied to the original Batman.

At first I was going to select a noir style, common in the Batman series "Gotham Noir" and which is more traditional in the old 30s type concepts. But seeing as mine was at the same time as old, it was rather conceptual on the basis that it was very action orientated, rather than detective and it seemed rather rustic and post apocolyptic as opposed to city based, Sherlock Holmes/Dick Tracey styled themes. With this in mind I decided to go with a more colourful, modern based theme and try to relate it to the common Batman comic styles.

The layout I chose was rather similar to a comic layout, I tried to keep the border lines relatively thin, and attempted to allow enough room for it to be overflowed to try to keep a molded concept, where it seems to interact between frames which is something that seems to be quite common in todays comic books, in trying to create not just frames of art, but a whole page of artistic concepts.

Target Audience is something I had to take into consideration, while I believe that the old Batman most likely attracted the younger generation at the time, the modern Batman of today seems to peak interest of people of all ages, I decided that I wanted to take Batman from this kind of area and place him in a more adult sector, which is familar with such concepts as die hard, punisher, kill bill even in some concepts of violence. As I made Batman more violent in this concept, I have to take into considerations age ranges, for this I reccomend 16+ at least, as I have taken quite a violent, war based concept with my new design.

Unit 13 - L05 - Digital Portfolio

Overview: For our Unit 13 - LO5 we was required to create a portfolio of our work and provide some details on our skills, attributes and interests, which would go towards creating our final CV. We had to also show awareness of different sectors within the industry for future reference.

Unit 69 - Storyboard Design

Over the course of the project for Unit 69, we was required to plan, design and develop storyboards within the industry. After some selective research into trailers, storyboards and characters, we where challenged to choose a character from the previous project we has done during our induction. I first selected Stewie, but in the difficulty of trying to find information and background on the character, I decided to switch to a more challenging piece, which was to create a storyboard based on the character Batman.

With my character in mind, we was told to practice drawing them, and try to take them out of context, go crazy with our designs to find something unique, something that was our own. I came up with the following designs.

These are my quick design sketches or trying my hand at alternating the appearance of Batman, the top full one, is sort of a replica of the 1999 Batman cartoon.  (See Right) I also attempted to create a more robitic batman, and see if I could attempt to create man in a more droid based individual, while it worked, it didn't really fall into the storyline I wanted, mostly because it fell more down the RoboCop line and wasn't out of context enough for my liking.

This image was anither pratice at trying to find a good way to draw batman, after having some trouble with the jaw and mount of the character I decided I would develop a character that cover most of the face and allowed me to focus on the actually character itself, rather than the long details. 

These are my final chaarcter designs, I have chosen to go for a rather rustic looking bartman, instead of all the high-tec gagetery, I have select a more Post-Apocplyptic element, with a scarf covering his face, and goggles to help him since the dusty envrionment. With this I also managed to creaft a new storyline. Batman works a s a world war 2, mercenary fighting for the side that pays the most.

And below is the final design, I am rather happy with the outcome of this, at first I have to say on paper it didn't strike me as anything decent, but once I got it in Photoshop, and started to apply the different concepts, it quickly turned into something I am rather proud of, and would happily recreate again. 

I used a wide array of concepts, for this, such as applying filters like CutOut and turning up the attributes to create a more stand-out effect for what I really wanted to accomplish. As well was using images from numerous sources to help added the effects, such as the fire and explosion which I found was too time consuming to attempt to do in Photoshop myself, unfortunatly. 

I now begin my evaulation on this project and look back at the development process and discuss what I liked, and what I did not like, what I would do differently, and of course explain the tools and concepts I used to end up with this final design. 

What did you like about this project?

I particularly liked the design and creativity of it, it allowed me to explore a depth of imaginative concept drawing that I haven't delved in much before, it also allowed me to futher my skills and attempt to do something that bit more challenging in order to get a better outcome and something I am rather proud of creating. 

What I like about the actual storyboard, however is mostly the colour contrasts and how interesting the mode of colours make it, dragging your eye to the scenes, that interest you, such as for example my favourite scene, the last one. Which I found very cool, and all I simply did was apply a cutout to that scene, increasing the Fideility to increase the thinkness of the lines, and also the Simplicty to create a more abtract designed look. Finally, I applied a plaster effect with a red tone, to get the  view that I wanted, it was mostly by trial error, and worked out very well.

What don't you like about the project?

Other than the fact it's incredibly time consuming, mainly the basis of which my design was on. Originally I attempted to recreate Stewie Griffin, but in realising that in doing soo I was limiting myself and possibility of increasing my skills (As well as the fact there is so little history on Stewie Griffin), I opted to create a more defined approach, and went for Batman. Of course this proved difficult to replicate, and although the re-design was to my liking in a story wise aspect, I believe I could have developed him a lot more, and worked more on designing him, and the aesthtics of it.

This of course, is something I would like to work on more, if I had the chance to do it again.


What difficulties did you face?


There are numerous difficulties, one was actually drawing a design that worked, which is suprisingly not easy, even with an idea, trying to get the aethetics of it correct, proves difficult and time consuming, also trying to become more familar with the painting side of Photoshop, its all well a good learning how to manipulate images, and apply various filters and effects, but it becomes really difficult when you try to use Photoshop in a way that the professional concept artists do, it is quite a challenge to learn how to move the brush better with a mouse. (Should have use a graphics tablet really...)

What tools did you use when creating your project?

Well, apart from the pencil and pad of paper, we had to use the computers and the program called Adobe Photoshop (For your reference, Photoshop CS3). You can purchase a copy of this program from the adobe website, at www.adobe.com if you require it. 

Comparison

I have compared my work to that of a professional example. I have chosen to compare this to an example of Batman I found online, apart from the basis that the comic here is based on the actual Batman while mine was based on my design of Batman, thier is still alot of concepts which they use in the artistic and layout side of the story.

The layout isn't overally that much different from my own layout, and seems to provide a structure quite simple and basic. The use of figures and colours are pretty static in my opinion but work well for this basis. Compared, to my use of colours I have gone for a bright range of contracts and gradients to be used throughout. One thing I do like about this though is the use of movement, and stylising. Such as the sweeping of batmans feet in the second frame which are complimented by the use of sweep stripes in order to repict movement, I myself use this in one of my frames and something that seems to be a standard practice when creating comic/storyboards.

 

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