Tim Burton's Batman film in 1989 brought me the will and the passion to start drawing and eventually that brought me to collecting comic books. Now, being a fan of both Comic Books and Movies, I ended up starting a career as a Storyboard Artist for the entertainment industry to which I still humbly practice to this very day. I've also started to share my knowledge of the craft as a mentor to fellow students which brings me a satisfaction of sharing the knowledge and training the future storyboard artists of tomorrow.
Being a Batman fan since I was a kid, it was only natural for me to come back to The Bat later in my life.
I decided to start a personal project of mine for two reasons:
1- To fill in that void inside of myself that I had all these years dreaming to work on a Batman Project.
As a Freelance Storyboard Artist, I'm still hoping to achieve that goal someday either for a Live-Action Project film, short-film, video game or a comic book cover.
2 - I figured I've waited long enough and it was time for me to come up with my own project ideas about The Bat.
That being said, if you also have a void to fill in and enjoy watching the step by step process of how projects are taking shape, then I invite you to check in from time to time to this blog to see how it started, where it's currently at and most importantly, where it's heading.
If you decide to come along for the ride and jump on the bandwagon...
Thank you for your time,
Long live The Batman!
JC
P.S. I'll write down all the extra material from other talented artists that I've used in my short animation clip.
Amazing artists are out there, just reach out and you might find yourself being surprised at how much help you can get from them.
Big thanks to the following:
- Ivan Laliashvili for putting out a great tutorial:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/28q6vg
https://gumroad.com/laliashvili
- Batman Bust that was used for the Hologram in the Animation was done by the Talented Sergio Diaz.
Original file can be purchased here: https://artstn.co/m/dBboY
- Hologram Effect was done following this tutorial on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gRztKZlDWBA?si=cbF3CAFp-0BMygnr
- Tutorial for Advanced Hologram: https://youtu.be/PJ7BbSqq6rw?si=rsKhPXe3oHOX_d5H
- Waterfalls are from the talented 3D Artist Rui Huang: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WBPBmQ
Now the for the Goodies...
Version 01 started in blocking out Buildings in Blender 3D.
I sat down one evening, fired up the Blender Machine and Ivan Laliasvili's wonderful tutorial was on the screen before I knew it.
Great concept artist with amazing skills. Check him out if you want to learn a few neat tricks in blender about how to do some buildings.
After I was done with the initial 3D Sketch in Blender,
I took in into photoshop to play around with some filters and colors.
It took me about a week to learn and do the initial 3D work and do the Photoshop post processing touches.
I had so much fun that I decided to take another swing at it and I redid the whole tutorial.
The second week is where the fun began.
This time around, I took my time and played around with the composition of the buildings and positioning the sunlight and paying attention to the shadows. How they looked, how they fell in the scene and most importantly how they worked as a unit within the composition.
In terms of Visual Style, I wanted a mixture of Batman The Animated series and an "Industrial" vibe mix in there somehow.
Part of the black masses on the buildings are due to having only 2-3 textures that were done in photoshop and later applied as SKETCH SHADERS in Blender. Nothing really crazy to be honest but just random brushstrokes that were later applied as textures on the buildings to give that sketchy look.
The same idea was applied to the smoke and mist/fog effect.
Here are the images:
For the Fog/Mist
For the Buildings
After spending a good chunk of time on the composition and making sure to avoid any apparent tangents in the overall composition, I saved it as a Tiff image (non compressed) and imported it into photoshop to start the Post Processing Work.
(Bottom Image)
This is where the major 2D rendering phase took place.
The smoke fumes and plumes at the bottom of the frame and the big one on the Screen Left were done in photoshop.
I bought some really good Smoke/Fog brushes for photoshop on Envato.
I'm sure you can get your hands on some really good ones that are free if you can't spare the cash.
The lights on the buildings were all done in Photoshop as well.
I basically selected a square of white color, copied and pasted it all around on the buildings on Screen Left and Scree Right. Creating those small lights at the end of metal beams and some windows. To change their colors I use the Hue/Sat/Brightness menu option.
They were all on individual layers and were positioned by hand. Once I was happy with the position of the lights, I collapsed them all on a single layer.
The Batman figure was hand painted in Photoshop on a seperate layer.
Once I was happy with the look, I duplicated the work in a folder then rasterized it so that I could start messing around with some plugins and filters.
Most of the work was done with the Nik Collection Photoshop Plugins: https://nikcollection.dxo.com/?utm_source=software&utm_campaign=nik-collection_6-3&utm_medium=inapp
After a day or two of contemplating this final image...I started to have ideas ....again!
So!....I got to work yeah!?!
This needs a Batman Hologram in the center of the Frame!
So I started hunting down tutorials on YouTube.
Found one that was really Dope!
After that, I hunted down a Batman Bust that was done by the talented Sergio Diaz.
I followed and applied the knowledge of the hologram on the Batman Bush and voilà!
A slight difference in both renderings but due to the nature of the overall sketchy look of the whole scene, I had to go to the EEVEE rendering for the hologram. For some reason, in Cycles the SKETCH SHADERS on the buildings are not showing up properly. It gives me a big white wash of a mess so I have to stick the rendering in EEVEE.
As for the hologram in itself, you can view the animation clips on my artstation profile section of the project.
AS you can see from the pictures above, EEVEE is a bit more "stale" in terms of brightness
CYCLES has more "brightness" to it.
I settled on this for look for now...BUT lol....I will revisit it and give it another shot in terms of looks.
So the original Blender Render is this one here:
After applying some post processing edits we got the following.
Here are the edits that I applied to the image in order to get the image above.
These were done in the software PRISM PLUS by NCH.
So after implementing this Hologram in there....I thought hmmm...maybe some lights under the Hologram would be cool... like...projecting the hologram in the air.
It sort of works but I have to work on that part as well in order to make it look like there's actual beams being projected in the air.
So...I skipped ahead and went straight ahead to add some waterfalls in the scene...I'll get back to the hologram beams later on.
...I went to work on the waterfalls.
Found some waterfalls from another artist.
Turns out he has a Patreon account.
I joined up his Patreon, and was able to get access to his waterfall native blender file.
I have to figure out how to slow down the stream of the water.
They're a bit too fast for my taste so I'll have to figure out a way to slow them down a bit.
So that's where I'm at as of today, Sept. 8th, 2023.
Let's start fiddling with stuff and see what kind of wickedness we can come up with for the next post!
Thanks for reading.
To be continued...
Sept. 9th 2023.
Alright, Alright, Alrighhhhhht!!!!
Came up with another version of the Batman Hologram.
Tutorial for this one is a long one and not the easiest to follow.
Lots of Geometry Node Tree wickedness which I'm not too familiar with.
I'm still working on this. Hopefully I'll be able to animate the hologram
lighting it up from the ground being projected in the air.
Tutorial for this advanced hologram: https://youtu.be/PJ7BbSqq6rw?si=rsKhPXe3oHOX_d5H
So far, here's what it looks like.
You can also check the rendered animation of it on my profile.
Thanks for reading.
Catch you soon.
Cheers.
Sept. 30th, 2023.
I worked on it last night.Adding some Zeppelins in the air coming towards the city.
I think that's it for this one.
It was a fun project to do and thanks for reading all the way to the end if you were interested in its development.
* Zeppelins are from a kit that I bought from AssetSmash over on blender market.
https://www.blendermarket.com/products/central-city-realistic-imperial-city-buildings-and-assets-3d-kit
Check them out, they got some cool stuff on their end.
* waterfalls are from: https://www.patreon.com/Ruihuang/posts
Cheers,
JC
https://dlrstoryboardartist.artstation.com/projects/LRlzbv?album_id=8229616