Wednesday, January 25, 2012

B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1

B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1 "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!" Directed by Ben Jones.

So here we begin the third and final season. At the time we were beginning this season, I looked at this season as a "bonus round". We weren't counting on a third season, but luckily we got one and we were able to send off the series with some really unusual episodes and some appearances of DCU characters that, quite frankly, wouldn't work in any other animated show.



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

B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1



B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1 "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!" Directed by Ben Jones.

This episode even had a title sequence that was "Jokerized" which you can see here:


http://youtu.be/EAu8A7-39PE?t=3m10s






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

B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1

B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1 "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!" Directed by Ben Jones.

A laboratory in Atlantis. For some reason in this episode the writers wrote Atlantis as if it's inhabitants breathed water instead of breathing air under giant domes. I have no idea why they did that just for this one episode.





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

B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1

B:TB&tB season 3 episode 1 "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!" Directed by Ben Jones.





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

Thursday, January 19, 2012

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 26

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 26 "The Malicious Mr. Mind!" Directed by Michael Chang & Michael Goguen.

This "held cell" shot reminded me of the ones I did when I worked on "Fairly OddParents". Now that I think of it, Tara Strong did voice work on this episode (Tara Strong did the voice of Timmy Turner on Fairly OddParents).





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

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 26

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 26 "The Malicious Mr. Mind!" Directed by Michael Chang & Michael Goguen.

Drawings Batman has done after he is zapped with a ray gun that regress his age to a toddler.

Next Week: Season 3 backgrounds!

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

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 25


B:TB&tB season 2 episode 25 "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!" Directed by Ben Jones.

This was originally going to be final episode of "Batman: The Brave and the Bold", but the toy company came in towards the end of the second season and gave money for a third and final season. Ironically, we gave the toy company a playful jab in the final episode of season three (all jokes aside, we were thankful for the chance to do another 13 episodes).

Since this was originally going to be the final episode, the show was to "go out weird" and do some homages of lesser known Batman appearances. We did a Mad Magazine one, and a Scooby Doo one, but what was the third one going to be? Towards the beginning of production of season one of B:TB&tB, Chip Kidd's awesome collection of Jiro Kuwata's Bat-manga came out called "Bat-Manga!". A few of us color xeroxed some of the pages and had them hanging up around the office. "Wouldn't it be cool if we got to put some of this in the show"? A season later we did just that.

In between the segments, Bat Mite is featured in a live action environment. The book seen here was keyed by Craig Cuqro and I added texture to it. This was handed off to be texture mapped on to a CG model. This what it looked like when it was all put together (if you blink you will miss it):








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

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 25


B:TB&tB season 2 episode 25 "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!" Directed by Ben Jones.

These were some of the keys for the Bat-manga section. James Tucker wanted the segment to feel like they actually made an anime based on Jiro Kuwata's Bat-manga back in the 60's. We looked at "8th Man" that was based on a Jiro Kuwata manga seen here:







We didn't want to go totally black in white with our segment, so we stuck to the colors that were in the manga in Chip Kidd's book. There were subtle dust and scratches added in post to the final animation of the Bat-manga segment to make it feel it was lost anime from the 60s.



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

Monday, January 2, 2012

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 24

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 24 "Darkseid Descending!" Directed by Michael Goguen.

Batman's hidden Batcave entrance at the Lincoln Memorial.






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

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 24

B:TB&tB season 2 episode 24 "Darkseid Descending!" Directed by Michael Goguen.

If we were short on time (which seemed to be almost always) and we had an especially heavy background count (which was often), I would occasionally do color comps like these and let overseas finish the rest. I would choose backgrounds that were not on screen for very long. The reason for this was that it would not make sense for us to invest that much time to painting full backgrounds. The backgrounds here were probably on screen for probably three seconds each in the final episode.






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