B:TB&tB season 2 episode 23

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 23, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 23 "The Knights of Tomorrow!" Directed by Michael Chang







"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 22

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 22, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 22 "Cry of the Freedom Fighters!" Directed by Ben Jones.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 22

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 22, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 22 "Cry of the Freedom Fighters!" Directed by Ben Jones.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 21

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 21, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 21 "Plague of the Prototypes!" Directed by Michael Goguen.

A police station in Gotham city.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 21

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 21, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 21 "Plague of the Prototypes!" Directed by Michael Goguen.

I think the Easter Egg in this scene was one that I don't think too many people picked up on.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

Jerry Robinson January 1, 1922 - December 8, 2011

Jerry Robinson, Batman artist and creator of the Joker passed away in his sleep last night. He was 89. Rest in peace Jerry.

 

 

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" season 3 color crew mug

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" season 3 color crew mug, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

Here is a pic of last year's Christmas mug. Just like the previous season, I had these mugs made for the color department and the directors I work with. This year's mug featured Batmite and his catchphrase "awesome sauce". Less than 20 of these mugs were made.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 20

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 20, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 20 "The Criss-Cross Conspiracy!" Directed by Michael Chang.







"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 19

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 19, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 19 "Emperor Joker!" Directed by Ben Jones.

Yeah,this one makes my head hurt too. This background was designed in Google Sketchup by Hakjoon Kang and then painted by me in Adobe Photoshop. Oversees then built this as a CG background for the finished scene.







"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 19

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 19, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 19 "Emperor Joker!" Directed by Ben Jones.

The museum scene in this episode had some Easter eggs hidden throughout. On the left, you can see the original comics that the pictures were based on and on the right, those same covers given the Brave and Bold treatment. Click on the image for annotations.






"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 18

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 18, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 18 "Menace of the Madniks!" Directed by Michael Goguen.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 17

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 17, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 17 "The Mask of Matches Malone" Directed by Michael Chang.

For those of you who are reading this that are in the United States, you haven't seen this episode (on television at least). I guess until this is released on DVD in the States, this can be considered a Brave and Bold "lost episode". This episode was written by Gail Simone who is best know for her work on the "Birds of Prey" comic book series. The episode includes a musical number that Michael Jelenic  & James Tucker wrote the lyrics for and James storyboarded the scene himself.


So why wasn't the episode aired in the U.S.? The episode aired in Australia first and the musical sequence raised a few eyebrows once people started to blogging about it on the internet. Because of this, Cartoon Network reexamined the episode and thought in hindsight, the musical number might be a little too racy to air "as is". The musical sequence was then reedited and additional animation was generated for the scene. The newly edited musical number was submitted to the network and approved, but as of this writing, has not aired - for whatever reason. With the series finale airing next week (11/18/2011), I doubt it will ever air in the U.S..


What is really a shame is, because the episode hasn't aired in the U.S., Dynamic Music Partners (Kristopher Carter, Michael McCuistion and Lolita Ritmanis), who did an awesome job of scoring every episode of Brave and Bold, can not submit their work to the Emmys. To date, the only Emmy nomination Brave and Bold has ever received was for "Outstanding Music Composition for a Series" for the "Mayhem Of The Music Meister" episode.


Anyway, in case you wanted to see the scene that caused all the hubbub, look no further:
 

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 16

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 16, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 16 "The Last Patrol!" Directed by Ben Jones.

In the teaser of this episode, we have the first appearance of Batgirl on Brave and Bold. The entrance on this background is a reference to one that was in the 1966 live action television show.



"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 16

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 16, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 16 "The Last Patrol!" Directed by Ben Jones.

Ben Jones is not only a fan of the original Doom Patrol, but also huge fan of Grant Morrison's run. So wherever possible, we snuck in references to Grant's run on Doom Patrol. If you look closely during the Paris scene, you can see "The Painting That Ate Paris" in the background.

One of the other places we were able to squeeze Morrison references were for the posters in carnival scene. Not all of these made the final cut of the show in the versions shown here however (mainly for legal reasons). The words "Flex Mentallo" were removed from his poster (I believe due to a now resolved legal dispute between DC and the family of Charles Atlas) and the poster for "The Austounding Clockwork Man" had to be removed altogether from the episode.

There were also plenty of Easter Eggs for fans of the original Doom Patrol series in the episode as well (such as a montage depicting recreations of vintage Doom Patrol covers).

Click on the image to see annotations.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 15

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 15, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 15 "The Siege of Starro!: Part 2" Directed by Michael Goguen.

For a lighthearted show, Brave and Bold touched on death more than a couple of times in the second season. After the big climactic battle of this episode, we wanted to have the backgrounds to have a more somber and reflective tone.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 15

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 15, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 15 "The Siege of Starro!: Part 2" Directed by Michael Goguen.

Now for all of you B'wana Beast haters out there, don't you feel bad that you referred to him as "lame" now?

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 14

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 14, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 14 "Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster!" Directed by Michael Chang.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 14

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 14, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 14 "Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster!" Directed by Michael Chang.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 13

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 13, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 13 "The Siege of Starro!: Part 1" Directed by Ben Jones.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 12

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 12, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 12 "Gorillas in Our Midst!" Directed by Michael Goguen.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 12

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 12, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 12 "Gorillas in Our Midst!" Directed by Michael Goguen.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11 "Chill of the Night!" Directed by Michael Chang.

"Chill of the Night!" was an episode set out to have a very different tone than previous episodes and is probably the darkest the series ever got. To reflect that, we approached the color a little differently. The usual orange skies of Gotham were now replaced with a red to give the city even more of a sense of dread. This is closer to how the color pallet for Gotham was in "Batman: The Animated Series" and just like B:TAS, we placed a lot more black shadows on the backgrounds. Another color pallet change in this episode, was that Craig Cuqro and Christina Long in color key department replaced the blue in Batman's costume with almost all black. Again, another way that color was used to shift the tone of the episode even darker.


"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11 "Chill of the Night!" Directed by Michael Chang.


Here's an example of how important it is that the background paint department and the color key department work together. When both departments are in sync, it should look like the color was done by one person. This episode was to have an almost nightmarish feel to it so we pushed to background colors to an even more surreal pallet. As weird as the colors are in this night club scene are though, notice how Craig and Christina have keyed the character on the right so she "sits" in that background. I put a copy of the character without the background (furthest to the right) to show how far they had to push her colors to fit into that background.


"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11 "Chill of the Night!" Directed by Michael Chang.


Sometimes the director wants to make sure that shadows and color for a shot are a certain way and we don't have a specific background layout for it, I will do a little comp for it like this one here.


"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11 "Chill of the Night!" Directed by Michael Chang.

For the montage sequence in this episode, I did a color script to cut down on the amount of finished backgrounds for the episode. I wanted to use a limited pallet for this scene, but unfortunately (for whatever reason) overseas made the caves brown instead of blue as I have them here. It doesn't look horrible, but I do cringe when I see the finished scene knowing what I intended it to look like. Oh well, you win some, you lose some I guess.


"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 10

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 10, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 10 "The Power of Shazam! " Directed by Ben Jones.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9 "The Super-Batman of Planet X! " Directed by Michael Goguen

This episode is one of my favorite episodes of the series. I think it's everything that is right with "The Brave and the Bold". It's weird, it's fun and it places Batman somewhere you wouldn't see in any other Batman show. Plus, we have both Diedrich Bader and Kevin Conroy voicing Batman in the same episode!

One of the challenges of Brave and Bold was that almost every episode was art directed from the ground up, which makes it challenging to produce in the time allotted. Like many of the B&B episodes, there were no reused backgrounds from previous episodes used here and the backgrounds seen here were only used for this single 22 minute episode,

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9 "The Super-Batman of Planet X! " Directed by Michael Goguen

Around this time I saw the documentary "Journey to the Edge of the Universe" narrated by Alec Baldwin. I loved how crazy space looked in that film and decide that whenever possible, I would depict space in "Brave and Bold" similar to how it looked in that film. I think it looks way more fun than just a black background with stars on it. If you haven't seen "Journey to the Edge of the Universe", do so...you won't be disappointed.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9 "The Super-Batman of Planet X! " Directed by Michael Goguen


All of the "Planet X" backgrounds seen here by the way, were drawn by Paul Rivoche. I was a big fan of Paul's since I saw his work it in the "Mister X" comic book years ago and it was really cool that I got to work with him here. Paul has a great blog that you should check out too:

www.rocketfiction.com/





"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 8

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 8, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 8 "Sidekicks Assemble!" Directed by Michael Chang.

"Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice...". I remember hearing that as a kid and thinking that this was the coolest show ever. Looking back at those "Super Friends" episodes, they don't look as great as I remembered them but, I think the six year old version of me would have been mighty impressed that I got to paint the "Hall of Justice" for Brave & Bold.


"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

Brave & Bold "Color Cave" door sign

Brave & Bold "Color Cave" door sign, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

I thought since I was showing the background paintings for Brave & Bold, I might as well show where they were made.

This is a little sign I made for the color department's room which we dubbed "The Color Cave".

The Brave & Bold "Color Cave"

The Brave & Bold "Color Cave", a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

This was the second location for the Brave & Bold color department and was where we did the tail end of season 2 and all of season 3. The room was originally for computer servers and because of that, the room had AC blowing constantly. This made the room occasionally noisy, but it was a really fun room to work in. Since everyone in the color department was in one place, it made it easy for us to communicate with each other and we had a lot of laughs when we were working here.

The color department for season 3 was myself, Craig Cuqro, Christina Long, Hector Martinez, and Eric Nordberg. I annotated the desks here so you can see who sat where and who did what in the color department (click on the picture to see the annotations).

The Brave & Bold "Color Cave" (lights out)

The Brave & Bold "Color Cave" (lights out), a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

This is what the room usually looked like. We kept the room dark so it we could get an accurate color reading from our computer screens.

Not shown in this picture though is a table we had in the middle of the room. We would have meetings with the directors and go over the storyboards to take color notes. Also, this table was used to place seemingly never ending parades of donuts and baked goods on it. God help you if you are on a diet and you worked in this room.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 7

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 7, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 7 "A Bat Divided!" Directed by Ben Jones.




"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 6

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 6 , a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 6

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 6 , a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 6

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 6, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 6 "Clash of the Metal Men" Directed by Michael Goguen.

Occasionally a section would pop up in an episode of Brave and Bold that frankly, there was not enough time to paint every background. When this happened, I would do a color script like this one for overseas to follow.

Since we already had a black and white film in previous episode, I wanted to give this section a look as if it was at one time a color film, but the warm colors have been washed out from sunlight and heavy use.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 5

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 5, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 5 "The Golden Age of Justice!" Directed by Michael Chang.

Well this a change of pace for B:TB&tB's usual color palette, huh? In this episode we go back to the days of the Justice Society of America in WWII (back before color was invented). Notice that the JSA logo is a subtle nod to the old DC comics logo.




"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 5

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 5, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 5 "The Golden Age of Justice!" Directed by Michael Chang.

The black and white scenes that these backgrounds are from are old news reel footage within the episode. There are a series of flashbacks in the episode and color is introduced gradually in them as the flashbacks get closer to present day.





"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 4

BBB_S2_ep4A, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 4 "Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure!" Directed by Ben Jones.

These were from the teaser featuring "Enemy Ace". The background on the left was sent without the biplanes on it and was just a setup to see what it would look like with the props on it.





"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 4

BBB_S2_ep4B, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 4 "Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure!" Directed by Ben Jones.

A fan favorite episode and a favorite of mine as well. This episode Batman is hardly in it and it focused on Aquaman and his family touring across the country in a Winnebago (think "National Lampoon's Vacation" with super heroics).

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 3

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 3, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 3 "Death Race to Oblivion!" directed by Michael Goguen.

Mongul returns in this episode with Brave and Bold's nod to Hanna-Barbera's "Wacky Races" show.

This ended up being Woozy Winks debut since the episode were shown out of order. He originally first appeared in episode 1 of season 2.




"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 3

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 3, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 3 "Death Race to Oblivion!" directed by Michael Goguen.

Whenever possible, we would come up with a color theme for a character's technology. Whether it's their weapons, vehicles, buildings, or even laser fire, the colors would remain consistent. Notice that the colors of Mongul's "War Planet" tie in to the colors of his original "War World" from an earlier episode:

www.flickr.com/photos/william_joseph_dunn/5800469677/in/p...





"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 2

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 2, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

One of my favorite things we did in season 2 was the opening title sequence that looked like a "Challengers of the Unknown" cartoon as if it was done by Hanna-Barbera in the late 60's/early 70's. The characters for this section were drawn by Lynell Forestal and Peter Girardi put the whole thing together. Peter even "aged" the film with little scratches and pops to look like it was lying around for a decade or two.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 2

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 2, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

Here are a few more pieces for that same title sequence, as well as a video clip to see how it all came together:

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1 Directed by Ben Jones.

O.K., on to season 2! Well, this is the first episode of season 2 according to our production order, but it wasn't the first one aired by Cartoon Network for whatever reason. I will be posting the backgrounds in production order.

We had some welcomed additions to the background crew in season 2, one of them being Fedja Jovanovic who drew Kite-Man's secret workshop (seen here).

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1 Directed by Ben Jones.

Another Fedja designed background, Plastic Man's home. A monument of tacky if there ever was one. I made sure that the colors reflected that as well.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 1 Directed by Ben Jones.


This was for the teaser for the episode, but was originally going to be the teaser for the "Music Meister" episode. Ultimately it had to be cut from the "Music Meister" episode because of time constraints, so it was used for this episode instead. Because of this shuffling, I think this is one of the few times we had Batman team up with the same character in both the teaser and the main episode.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" color crew mug

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" color crew mug, a photo by William Joseph Dunn on Flickr.

Alright, so now that I posted at least one background painting from every episode of season 1, I thought I'd post something different before we get in to season 2.

For Christmas in season 2 I had these mugs made for the color department and the directors I work with. Only 15 of these mugs were made.

Next week: paintings from season 2!

"Batman: The Brave and the Bold"™ Warner Bros Animation