Saturday, October 31, 2009

Re: Animated

During my convalescence (I had an eye problem that's too complicated and dull to talk about right now - it seems to be on the mend, though) I bought and watched A LOT of the Batman Animated Series. At the risk of sounding redundant - cos everyone knows this, don' t they - it really was bloody good. Weirdly, the Joker episodes are the weakest of the series - as though the presence of Batman's arch-nemesis forces the show into a shape that doesn't quite suit it. The best episodes are the smaller, quieter ones, the morality plays, the detective stories, where Batman is almost a peripheral figure. The Joker of the Animated Series is an abstract, immutable figure, as fundamentally unchanging as Batman himself, so Joker plots mostly amount to: Joker does something evil/mischievous; Batman gets angry; Batman finds Joker and a) captures him or b) doesn't capture him (the honourable exception to this rule is Joker's Favor, which uses the big J as a plot element, and focuses instead on the woes of a perfectly ordinary Joe Bloggs).

Anyway, it's great. Also, Robin rules. His first "big" story - Robin's Reckoning - is an absolute cracker.

So, all this Bat-thinking got me digging through my sketchbooks for Bat-stuff. And here (some of) it is! I did these a couple of months back, with PITT pens and graphite pencil.

9 comments:

mattcrap said...

hopefully the eye problem wasn't a result of a wanking malfunction!!

glad you're almost all better, man. I still make my kids watch BTAS with me.
"Oh yeah, well I just had to sit through Little Mermaid, you will watch On Leather Wings and LIKE it!"

WJC said...

These are all cracking, Zorro being a Grand Finale.

Dan McDaid said...

MC - how the hell did you guess?!

WJC, thank you, sir! I like drawing Zorro a lot!

james corcoran said...

Loved that show, that's an excellent Gordon, the supporting cast were always so well fleshed out. The Jonah Hex episode was always one of my favourites

Unknown said...

Glad to read you're on the mend, Dan. Nice pics, love the Zorro and the Gordon too, his character really comes across, I think it's in the eyes.

Dan McDaid said...

James - cheers!

Faz - thanks a lot, squire. Yeah, I'm not 100%, but I'm definitely on the up (cue Dennis Waterman). I really like drawing the Commish - he's as visually striking and appealing to me as Batman himself. I think my Gordon has a bit of Burt Lancaster in him, actually.

Pj Perez said...

OK, you and I really need to get some work done. Your Gordon is a thing of awesomeness.

Le Mc said...

<3

Dan McDaid said...

PJ - fo' real!

Le Mc - thanks!