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.
This is the "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" background paint blog. I will be posting at least one background painting I did for each episode of the series in chronological order.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11
B:TB&tB season 2 episode 11
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 "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
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.
Friday, September 23, 2011
B:TB&tB season 2 episode 10
B:TB&tB season 2 episode 10 "The Power of Shazam! " Directed by Ben Jones.
"Batman: The Brave and the Bold" ™Warner Bros. Animation.
Friday, September 16, 2011
B:TB&tB season 2 episode 9
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 "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.