Striking Batman CG Animated Fan Piece by Meas Agun
I’ve got some awesome fan-made CG animated Batman video art for you to check out. The piece was created by artist Meas Agun, and he created the video below as a teaser for a much bigger idea. There’s a lot of thought that went into the development of this Batman creation, and I think it’s best to let the artist explain it in his own words. Read what he had to say, watch the video, and let us know what you think about what he has done.
"A few words… (First, I'm French, so please forgive my poor English.)
I'm not particularly a 'Comics' fan, even if I've read many when I was 13 or so, but as lots of people, I've seen and enjoyed most of the movies that came out these last years. Nonetheless, I conceived this video as an exercise in style: I wanted to create the kind of 'Comics' film I'd like to see. Not realistic at all, but closer to a proper Comic Book, with a painterly look as they often have on the covers (in this case, airbrush), and more important, with characters that look like their original design, and not an 'OK-ish' adaptation in the real World. Because Comics are all about aesthetic (mainly a glorification of the Human body for the visual part), and surely not what is practical in real life. After all, you don't read Comic Books because they depict our real World, but rather because they show heroes bigger than life. Anybody who'd wear tight colorful clothes to fight villains would simply be ridiculous in real life. So, I ended up thinking I'd prefer to watch a whole computer generated movie which would retain all these impossible, yet beautiful improbabilities.
"About the Batman movies (by Burton or Nolan), some things I never liked were for instance the rigid rubber hood that prevents the actor to turn his head which eventually led to create this kind of helmet he has in the latest movies and video games. I also hate the 'full armor' concept anyway. Come on, this is Batman, not Irondude! But the worst thing to me has always been about the eyes. Batman has plain WHITE eyes (like most of the Super Heroes); we just don't see Bruce Wayne's real eyes through the mask. This is capital to give him this non-human and dreadful appearance. Being able to see the actor's eyes is a crime to me. Besides, despite the fact that in Nolan's films, they worked hard to explain us why and how Batman would wear this theatrical costume, let's face it, it's just silly! And that's why it's insanely cool! I mean that, to me, what works very well in 'Comics' about strong aesthetic choices (unlikely costumes, impossible physical stuff and so on), simply doesn't in a realistic movie. If a dude were to wear a robotic armor like Ironman, maybe could he fly, but certainly not tolerate the enormous g-force that a single punch from the 'Hulk' would inflict on his body. He simply would be turned to some gory jam inside his beautiful suit, right?
"For all this, I tried to render a classical, generic look as seen in usual comic books, with white eyes, regular suit, and because I loved Dave McKean's "Arkham Asylum" graphic novel, huuuuuuge overweening horns. I don't care these would be cumbersome in a fight; it just looks awesome!!! And it looks crazy, which Batman is. I mean, he's the 'Dark Knight', tormented, enraged, insane… not a fair, pure white hero. He also is enormously tall (something like 7.3 feet, without the horns ^^), because he… well… he's a monster. And I pictured him being 50 years old or so, hurt and weary, yet powerful.
"Finally, this video is conceived as a teaser. The 2 gunshots remind his parents killed when he was a child, which is why I chose to use the pure and innocent voice of a boy at the beginning of the music. Then, comes the bat from the whirls of darkness, as a permanent obsession in his tortured mind; the flapping wings slowly turning to his waving cape, as he stands above Gotham in an iconic stance, ready to jump, while the music becomes gradually more epic with the use of brass instruments and full choirs. In short, classic, and cinematic!
"As for the programs used to produce this video (3D, modeling, texturing, painting, compositing, music and so on…), the question is irrelevant; it can be done with any of the existing ones. They are tools, nothing more. This video doesn't rely on a specific technology.
"Please, enjoy. Thank you for watching, listening, and reading."