Batman-uary #3 - Rainbow Batman

BATMAN-UARY
Rainbow Batman

One last Batman-uary entry, just under the wire.  This time, it's the "Rainbow Batman" from Batman #241, with the original cover drawn by Sheldon Moldoff.  Sure, Robin calls him out for wearing the Red Costume, but most of the time the cover shows more of a pink Bat-Suit.  I decided to carry on that tradition by amping it up to HOT pink.

It amused me to do a Silver-Age cover with the anachronistic armored Batman from "Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice", and keeping Robin more on model with Shelly Moldoff's drawing rather than try to modernize him for the cover redux.

The basics of the story involve Batman using the different colored Bat-Costumes to distract everyone from Robin's injured arm and keep people from noticing Dick Grayson had an identical injury to his arm, too.  Ah, simpler times!

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STEP ONE:  Here are the scribbled pencils done on a 2,000px x 3,000px @ 300dpi canvas in Clip Studio Paint.  

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STEP TWO:  And here are the inks.  I will admit to cheating a bit when it comes to the lettering, as I just traced it--including the logos.  I considered just importing it into one of the various vector drawing programs, but then went with the hand-traced look.  Although, it may have inspired me to do future digital hand-lettering, rather than my usual generic comic book font.  Maybe.  Also, I obviously drew out one of the background armored suits and just copy/pasted 'em to get the consistent, Rainbow Batman costumes in the background.

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STEP THREE:  And here are the added colors.  I went back-and-forth as to whether to do shading, or keep everything closer to color flats; shading won out.

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STEP FOUR:  As a final touch, I ran it through the "Pixelate" filter in Photoshop to give it more of a BenDay Dot/Silver-Age feel.  I did the filter as a 10% opacity on its own layer, as to keep the effect subtle and to not have the moire pattern overwhelm everything.  In fact, it's so subtle, you probably wouldn't have even noticed it too much if I hadn't pointed it out.  Oh, well...

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint with an assist from Photoshop.

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Batman-uary #2 - Zebra Batman

BATMAN-UARY
Zebra Batman

Hey, it's Batman-uary, where I riff on some of the many peculiar and various costumes... or whatever Batman-related nonsense strikes my fancy and amuses me.  This time it's Zebra Batman from "Detective Comics #275"!

Zebra Man... Something something... lines of force, which show through the person's costume and skin...  While fighting Zebra Man, Robin accidentally activates the ray machine that gave Zebra Man his power which hits Batman...  Something something, Batman can't control the power.  It ends with them using Zebra Man's belt, which controls his power, to turn it off and Zebra Man becomes normal again; Batman puts on the belt next and does the same to himself to turn the power off and he becomes normal again, too.  Ta da!  The actual story is rather trippy.

Here's the cover to the original story for "Detective Comics #275" featuring Zebra Man/Zebra Batman.  I'm sure most people have seen it on one of the many, many "Top 20 Weirdest Batman Costume" lists out there.

And here's the original ad for "Batman: Year One" by David Mazzucchelli which I was referencing, being a huge fan of his work--both "Batman: Year One" and "Daredevil: Born Again".  (Yeah, I'm old enough to have bought them originally off the newsstand.) 

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All righty, stay tuned for the next installment of BATMAN-UARY!

Same BATMAN-UARY Time, Same BATMAN-UARY Blog!

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STEP ONE:  Here are the digital pencils done on a 2,000px x 3,000px @ 300dpi canvas, roughly scribbled out in Clip Studio Paint.

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STEP TWO:  Here are the digital inks to the Batman part of it, trying to ape David Mazzucchilli's drawing style as much as possible (although, there is a looseness to some of his pen work I would have been better off trying to emulate).

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STEP THREE:  The stripes where then added using the black digital ink, or carved out with the transparent/eraser brush.  I originally added some blue for shading, but then decided it went against the spirit of Zebra Batman: He should be black-and-white--no color!

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This was done digitally in Clip Studio Paint.

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Happy (Belated) New Year / Batman-uary - Part 1

 HAPPY (Belated) NEW YEAR/
BATMAN-UARY

Sure, January is nearly half-over, but what better way to ring in 2022 (Belatedly) than with Two-Face?  In this case, it is Two-Face from "Batman #50" (1948), so he's purple rather than the usual green-hue.

Here's the original cover, by the way.

We'll call it a Two-Fer--New Years well wishing and the first entry for this year's Batman-uary!  Harvey Dent, himself, would be proud of that one... Marginally.  OK, Two-Face would have approved if it was the second post of the year.  Oh, well...  Personally, I always thought it would be fun to explain most of Harvey Dent's transformation into Two-Face as psychosomatic, rather than the result of any sort of acid attack.  It just made more sense to be that way, to me, anyways.

So, anyhoo, it's BATMAN-UARY, where I do up some Batman-related posts for fun  (I admit it, I'm far more of a Superman guy than a Batman guy, but some of those way-out 50's designs and covers just scream out for something to be done with 'em).  I even went through the trouble of doing up a dumb logo for BATMAN-UARY and everything.  Yeah, my love of puns, portmanteaus, and grammar-based humor gets me in trouble yet again...

Here's to hoping the New Year is better than the previous two years combined (a low bar, I know)!

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STEP ONE:  Here are the really basic pencils, scribbled out on a canvas in Rebelle 5 on a 2,250px x 3,000px canvas @ 300dpi.  I did cheat a little bit and copy/flip the hands so they matched--a mirror effect for Two-Face.

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STEP TWO:  Here's the first pass with Rebelle 5.  While I like the way it works generally, I'm still getting used to it and the way it blends, etc.  The watercolor engine in Rebelle and some of the blending is pretty amazing... Now I just gotta start applying some of those effects to some of my posts in the future.

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STEP THREE:  I admit it, I got a little impatient and just imported it into Clip Studio Paint to finish it up, as I know exactly what most of the brushes I use do to get desired effects.  Well, that and I wanted to use the iPad, rather than sitting in front of the computer desk all day (they have Clip Studio Paint for iPad, but no Rebelle for iPad, alas).  It still looks a little "cutout" and "digital" for my general tastes, but I think with this one it may have been a little difficult to avoid.  Onward, to the next one!

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Done digitally in Rebelle 5 and Clip Studio Paint.

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