Batman Knows Everything

BatmanKnowsEverything

I generally like Batman, though occasionally the absurdity of his existence, and his entire broody-guy know-it-all shtick are hard to ignore. 

I was playing playing Batman: Arkham Knight and something started to bug me. The Arkham game series gives you a grim-dark "mature" version of Batman, growl-speaking words like "Batcomputer" with a straight face. That in itself is enough to break the whole thing into ridiculous pieces. But what really got under my skin was the way it casts Bats as a complete know it all. He literally knows everything about everything and not a single person--not Alfred, or Robin, or the Penguin, or anyone--calls him out on his bullshit. 

No one ever says, "How do you know that?" Or, "No Batman, I can't do that for you, creating a cure for a genetic disability takes more than two hours." How is he an expert detective, a super black belt ninja, a software developer, an engineer, an architect, and also built like a linebacker? If Batman were software, he'd be suffering from some major feature creep. He can do it all! 

I think I can buy Sherlock Holmes knowing everything because every take on the character spends significant time on the things he actually doesn't know. They show you the downsides of his hyper intellect, and make a great case for having Watson around. But Batman knows everything and needs no one. He's kind of a douchebag. So I made some comics about that in my spare time, then slapped them all together in the above image. Enjoy!

Advanced Character Design with Stephen Silver, Part 2

The assignment this week was to draw a character to fit into a show of our choice. Stephen said art directors want to see that you can conform to a show’s style. So this assignment would be good practice.

During the lesson, Stephen showed off the styles of several shows he worked on, as well as some character development concepts he’d done in the past. At one point he pulled up a random picture of a 1920s business guy and drew him in the Kim Possible style. Then he redrew that same guy in the Danny Phantom style. Watching him just flip between the two styles was kind of amazing, plus it served as a great example of how some very small established rules can ripple out to create a cohesive style.

As an animation fan, and a father of two small boys, I’ve seen a lot of cartoons. I ran through several that I thought about trying—Gravity Falls, Rescue Bots, Kung Fu Panda. Before committing to one for the assignment, I decided to try a style out for fun. I went with Fairly Odd Parents, a show that I’ve always thought had a really clear style, and drew this picture of Taako from The Adventure Zone podcast.

Taako

That was a fun exercise, but I wanted more of a challenge. While that picture doesn’t fit perfectly in the style of Fairly Odd Parents, it’s pretty close. One more iteration and I’d get it I think. I wanted to take on something a little tougher. Something with rules that were a little harder to define.

So I went with the Mickey Mouse shorts on YouTube. My oldest son and I watch at least one of these a day. I love them. They’re so weird, and charming, and the way they stretch and pull such classic characters in crazy ways is fun to watch. Also, the backgrounds are gorgeous.

Before working on my characters, I did some research. Most episodes have at least one or two random side characters with unique designs, so I pulled screenshots of several of them. Like Stephen did in his lesson, I started tracing over some of them to try and break down the style.

Research

Research

It was hard.

Unlike the straight against curve design of Fairly Odd Parents, there wasn’t an easy baseline theme that all the characters adhered to. And yet there was definitely something, because they all fit.

So I designed three characters: a boxing kangaroo, a landlord bulldog, and a traveling lama.

Mickey Shorts character designs

I was as eager to hear Stephen’s feedback as I was to see him break down the style too. I was not disappointed. Here’s the feedback:

See what he did with that kangaroo? Amazing right? It’s clear he’s been doing this kind of work for a long time. When I drew these, I was focused inward. I drew the general shape of the character and filled it with detail—because from my research, they all had really clear silhouettes, and I wanted to maintain that. But Stephen pushed outward, and his ended up fitting the wacky (a great word for this style) tone even better.

After watching his feedback, I went back and re-watched a few Mickey shorts and could already see how his interpretation of the style would work. I’m definitely going to try to do some more. It’s a good skill to have, and seeing him so easily break a style down and produce something that would fit made me want to polish my skills so I can do that too someday.

That’s it for this week. Our next assignment is to caricature someone, because being good at caricatures can actually be super helpful when designing characters. I’ll have that feedback next week!

Advanced Character Design with Stephen Silver, Part 1

Two weeks ago I started Advanced Character Design with Stephen Silver over at Schoolism.com.

Stephen Silver is an incredible character designer and it’s a real treat to get to learn from him.

Our first assignment was to draw a cowboy using the things he went over in the first class (basically an overview of Character Design 1, which I skipped). He talked a lot about the golden ratio of 1:1:1.68 and how to use it to get an appealing design.

I first drew a bunch of cowboy faces to loosen up and play with some different shapes.

cowboy faces

I knew I wanted a cowboy villain after I explored that one on the bottom left. I also knew I wanted him to wear a cool duster jacket.

So I did some research and started iterating as seen here:


I turned in the image below along with this description (because a character isn’t just a drawing):

I wanted him thin and sleazy, the kind of guy who thinks he's put together, but wears an old duster he stole from a man he killed 10 years ago. He might look refined to criminals, but he's still a dirt bag.

Cowboy

Stephen liked where I was going with it, and offered some tips on how I could push things—his arms, his hat, etc.—to make him even more appealing. He also helped eliminate a few tangents.

Here’s the full video of his feedback. Pretty cool how just a few minor tweaks make a picture dramatically better. I feel like this guy was probably just one version away from hitting the mark, so I’m gonna consider that a win.

Because art directors want to see that you can work in an established style, our next assignment is to create a character and draw it to fit in a show of our choice. I’ll have that feedback in another week or so.

Ant Man Posters

I made these Ant Man posters because...well, I don't really know why. I have no real affinity toward the character. I just thought it would be fun. And it was! You get it right? Because he's like a bug. 

Anyway, feel free to grab any of these as a background, or if you want to buy a print, let me know and I'll put them on my Society6 shop. 

Making the cover of Movie Title Typos

“You want to take a crack at the cover?”

That’s what my editor, Steve Mockus, said back in early January. I hadn’t brought up the cover of my book for two reasons:

1. I was busy working like crazy to get the interior of the book done and hadn't thought about any cover ideas.

2. I wasn’t sure they’d want me to do the cover even if I had some ideas—they know more about what makes a good book cover than I do. If they decided to have someone else do it, I probably wouldn’t have protested.  

That being said, I was more than happy to give it a shot. Steve, Neil Egan—the super talented Chronicle Books designer who worked on my book—and I all agreed that the cover should incorporate movie posters.

Steve sent me this sketch for a general direction, along with this note:

Do not judge me I AM NOT A GRAPHIC DESIGNER.

I took that general direction and fleshed it out a bit. I used images I’d already finished, added some logo and type treatment to turn them into posters, and slapped together a very rough cover.

I also sent them a couple of images for inspiration. It was important that the cover be attractive, but also tell the story of what you’ll find inside, I thought all three of these would do that.

They liked the first one the most. They thought versions 2 and 3 were overly complex—you need to get the idea of the book immediately. I agreed (which I generally did for most things, because again, this is what they do for a living). So we were going to drill down into the first one. Neil sent me a document about cover dimensions and some picture inspiration for the marquee.

That weekend I headed down to Cancun for my company’s annual tropical trip/ridiculous company meeting. I checked into my hotel room, unpacked my Cintiq Companion and got to work. Side note: while some might feel it was a bummer that I spent most of my weekend in my room working while my coworkers were boozing it up on the company dime, I actually really enjoyed myself. The room service was free, the wi-fi was good, and this was my view.

Anyway, I worked on the cover all weekend, then sent what I had to Neil and Steve. This is what they were going to show others at Chronicle to get the concept approved.

Neil sent it back with some notes and cleaned up my sad typography. There were areas he thought I could push more, and we were still not sure which movies to feature.

It was getting there, but something felt off.

The biggest issue with the cover at this point was that it didn’t tell a story or offer a sense of place. That would be fine if it wasn’t implying one. There was a marquee, there were posters and lights, but they were all kind of just floating there. Parts of a scene, not a real scene. 

I didn’t know that of course. I felt like something was off, but it wasn’t until Neil told me that on a phone call a few days later that it clicked. He sent me some more marquee images he found and encouraged me to try out a few more concepts.

So I went back to the drawing board. This time I had a better idea of what I needed to communicate. I needed a scene, and I needed to highlight at least two movie posters. I spent a long time looking at images of every type of movie theater I could think of—from classic inner-city establishments to drive-ins. I came up with several concepts and sent them to Neil and Steve.

They liked the second one the most, and so did I. Oddly enough, the inspiration for that one didn’t come from a google image search of marquees, but from Marvel’s Agent Carter. Because I was working around the clock on this book I often streamed movies and shows on another screen to help me stay awake. The night I was working on these mock-ups I was checking out Marvel’s Agent Carter on Hulu. In the first or second episode she visits a club and I happened to look up from my Cintiq at just the right time.

Sadly I can't find the picture of the club. Oh well. You never know where inspiration will come from.

Sadly I can't find the picture of the club. Oh well. You never know where inspiration will come from.

I paused the screen and sketched a movie theater around that idea. Here’s what Neil had to say about this version:

What I like about this option is that it really feels more resolved and believable as a space, with just a few adjustments. When we pull out just a little bit, we can see the top of the marquee, and the sidewalk below. And the centrally placed ticket window is the perfect way to make it feel believable as the front of the theater, without having to use a bunch of space to draw boring doors. And the revised marquee with more dimension is really nice too!

Neil sent the sketch back with some notes and I got to work on the next iteration.

I decided to send Neil my line work before coloring so I could make sure I was on track. I sent him a refined version of the sketch, and he sent back more notes. Also, somewhere along the line we decided the movies featured on the cover should be Obocop and Lord of the Rigs.

From there I made some more adjustments, colored the image, and sent it back again. Unlike the initial cover I did in Mexico, I went with cool tones on this one. I liked the dark blues and grays better. That was one of those “why didn’t I do this the first time” kind of decisions. We were getting really close.

Neil added in the subtitle and underline under the marquee and also swapped the color of the marquee letters to orange. That really made the title pop against the cool tones (and possibly unintentionally, gave my book about movies some blue and orange contrast action—the universal movie poster colors).

And that’s it! There were some very slight adjustments to contrast to make the title stand out a little more, and when printed, the movie posters were given a cool reflective sheen, which you can sort of see in the image below.

The whole thing came together in a month and a half. It was a collaborative effort, and it was really fun to have Steve and Neil there to help me iterate.

As for the back cover, that came together much faster. Neil thought it would be cool to replicate the movie section in a newspaper. It would allow us to put some words on the back and feature a few more posters. He and Steve sent me the idea and some inspiration images.

I sent a version back, Neil did some refinement, and it was done—much faster than the front cover. Here’s the final result:

It’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around at times. I have a book, and it has a cover drawn by me! With Steve and Neil’s help I was able to make something that communicates what the book is about, shows off my art style, and also looks very pick-upable.

So, after September 22, when you see it in a store, pick it up! I’m really proud of it. Also, there’s funny stuff inside.