batman

Illustrations of Batman's Villains by Dennis Culver

PauloGabriel — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:18:24 +0000

I really enjoy when illustrators grab a theme and start to experiment based on that. Dennis Culver has done that using Batman's villains as his subject. Gotta say I really like the outcome.

Dennis reimagined most of the designs, but there's still some classic looking villains here. Personally I really enjoy the most famous ones like the Joker (he kinda looks like Joe Pesci here) and the Penguin (who gets that non-freakish, bad gangster look). For more of his pieces, please visit his portfolio at DeviantART. He'll appreciate it. Cheers! ;)

The Monk

Dr. Hugo Strange

Black Mask, Bane, and Calendar Girl

Scarecrow, Egghead, Harley Quinn

The Terrible Trio and Doctor Phosphorous

Joker

Great White

King Tut

R'as Al Ghul

Mad hatter

Manbat

Harvey Dent

Riddler

Grundy

Firefly

Penguin

About the author

Hello, everyone! I'm Paulo Gabriel, designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil, born in 1984. I have worked as a webdesigner since 2006, but websites and blogs have been a hobby for me since 1999. Here in Abduzeedo, I try to bring only the hot stuff for you... and hope that all of you enjoy my posts! For more cool stuff, you may also follow me on Twitter.

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Dark Knight Rises Poster in Photoshop

abduzeedo — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 05:36:31 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I saw the new Dark Knight Rises poster and I love it. The concept was beautiful, using negative spaces to show the Batman symbol. As usual I started to think about ways to do that in Photoshop, then last Saturday I started looking for assets and trying to put together the first concept. After a couple of hours searching for images I found good ones and had a nice start.

Today, Sunday, I woke up 6:30 in order to finish this piece and of course share with you my process. As you will see in this tutorial, the technique behind is pretty simple and straightforward. I didn't want to create exactly the same because I know it's impossible due the assets and I believe the original one was done using 3D.

So in this tutorial I will show you how to create the Dark Knight Rises poster in Photoshop. Be ready, it might take you a few hours, but the result is really nice and you will be able to apply this technique in other future projects, I am really sure of that.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I am using a portrait mode for the poster, the size is 2550x3500 pixels. After that fill the background layer with grey (#b0adad).

Step 2

The next step is find the Batman logo. Search it on Google, it's pretty easy to find. Once you have the logo, place it in your canvas like the image below. The color doesn't really matter, we will use for masking reference.

Step 3

As I said in the beginning this tutorial is a big photo collage, in which the most important thing is finding the right assets. In this part we have to place some buildings. I found quite useful images on Shutterstock and you can check them out here:

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-20863036/stock-photo-modern-buildings-in...
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-346534/stock-photo-three-corporate-build...
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-2286315/stock-photo-corporate-buildings-...
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-80798674/stock-photo-corporate-buildings...

Step 4

Start placing the buildings using the batman logo for reference of position and size.

Step 5

Here we have covered all canvas and the logo is our negative space.

Step 6

In order to create all the shatters and destruction in the original poster I used some other images from Shutterstock that I had downloaded while back. It's good to have these assets because you can always reuse them later. This one can be found at http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-73243228/stock-photo-abstract-character-...

Step 7

Just copy some shatters from the image and start placing in your scene. You can resize and rotate them, or even create a brush. I was lazy so I was copying and pasting them.

Step 8

In order to make the effect more realistic it's necessary to add some motion blur to these shatters. So for every block go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Use the building perspective for Angle reference.

Step 9

Here you have the scene with the shatters.

Step 10

Everything was too clean an perfect in terms of textures and colors. So in order to solve that I placed a big concrete texture on top of the other layers with Multiply for th Blend Mode. Don't worry about colors yet, we will get there in a few.

Step 11

Select all layers but the background and go to Layer>Group Layers. After that with the Magic Wand Tool (W) select the batman symbol. You can hide the batman symbol layer right after that.

Step 12

With the group selected go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection Now the buildiing and the shatters will be hidden on the area that th batman symbol was. It looks good but it's too perfect. So in order to solve that let's use the Brush Tool (B) and create a brush using a grunge brush. Just Google for grunge brushes in Photoshop. Tip: Reduce the spacing, use Shape Dynamics and Scattering in order to make a brush that is perfect for destruction effects.

After that start painting in the mask with black and the new brush. The idea here is destroy the edges of the batman symbol to make it very subtle.

Step 13

Add a layer on top of the others and then with the Brush Tool (B) and a very soft brush, start painting the edges of the canvas with black to create a vignette effect.

Step 14

The image still was too clean in my opinion, so I added a few more shatters and also paint some of the white windows with black using a grunge brush. The idea is make the image really destroyed. Another detail is when you are make the edges of the batman symbol less uniform, try to make it was the buildings were really falling a part. So keep some windows and structure of the building visible. Use the image below for reference.

Step 15

Time to fix the color problem. There are many ways to do that, but my idea is find a quick fix. So go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue and Saturation. Change the Hue to 195, the Saturation to 8 and the Lightness to -7.

Step 16

Now go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. Use 29 for the black input, 1.00 for the grey and 155 for the white input. Tip: both adjustment layers have to be on top of the other layers.

Step 17

Here is the image after the adjustment layers. It looks really nice aready.

Step 18

Here lets add some clouds in the sky. Just use any clouds image you find, desaturate it and place it using multiply for the Blend Mode. If you place it on top of the other layers, use the same mask you are using for the buildings to show only the batman symbol area.

Step 19

Add a new layer behind the buildings layer and the with the Brush Tool (B) and a very small brush with black, start painting some sort of lines on top of the building like in the destructed areas.

Step 20

The original poster had some rocks falling from the sky. So let's add some rocks too. I used another image from Shutterstock for reference, you can find it here http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-24964786/stock-photo-zoom-of-gravel-gray.... I just selected one rock copied and pasted it in my design.

Step 21

Paste the rock in your design and select it. After that go to Edit>Define Brush. You will create a brush with the shape of the rock. Edit the brush and for the Shape Dynamics make sure you have Flip X and Y selected, also Size Jitter. Select Scatter too in order to make the brush very random.

Once you have the brush done, start painting some rocks falling from the sky. Follow the perspective and make the ones on top smaller than the ones close to the bottom of the page. You can see I used white for the color, don't worry about that, we will fix this issue with Layer Styles.

Step 22

Go to Layer>Layer Style>Pattern Overlay. Select Multiply for the Blend Mode and for the Pattern select Black Marble (it's a default one).

Step 23

Select Color Overlay. For the Blend Mode use Multiply and for the color use a dark grey.

Step 24

Now select Inner Shadow. For the color use White; for the Blend Mode use Color Dodge; for the Angle, this is really important, depending where the rocks are, use an angle that follows the perspective of the building they are in front of. In this case 121º. For the Distance use 28 pixels, for the Choke 0 and for the Size 25 pixels.

Step 25

Here are the rocks with the layer styles. Notice that the adjustment layers are on top of the rocks layer as well. Another important thing here is to apply motion blur (Filter>Blur>Motion Blur) to the rocks as we did for the other layers in the steps 7-9.

Step 26

Add more rocks in your design. Remember the inner shadow angle will vary according to the location of the rocks.

Step 27

Select all layers and duplicate them, after that merge all the duplicated layers into one. The shortcut for that is Command(mac)/Control(pc) + Alt + Shift + E. Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light at 50% Opacity. Duplicate this new layer and change the Blend Mode to Screen at 100% Opacity. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 20 pixels for the Radius.

Conclusion

Delete pretty much the whole layer with the screen mode, leave just a few areas around the batman symbol to create a sort of glowing effect. The design is practically done.

As you could see, most of the process was messing with layers and adding some blurs. The most difficult part is finding the right assets, once you find them it's putting everything together and adjust them to make the image look real. It's a really nice technique and I love this posters and recreate them to learn new things and practice Photoshop more. Now it's up to you. Have fun.

Download the Photoshop File

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

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Illustrations of the World's Finest: Batman and Superman

PauloGabriel — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Superman has always been my favorite super-hero... but it's been sometime that Batman caught my attention, since he's the only DC hero who doesn't have powers: he's just one tough dude. And they launched the Superman and Batman comics, I've been a total fanboy of them.

So, I went looking on DeviantART for some illustrations and found a whole bunch of great ones. These are amazing, seriously, and I just wish that some day there will be a Sup+Bat movie written by Frank Miller. It's always good to dream, right? I hope you enjoy these. Cheers! ;)

Jorge Molina Manzanero

Pencils by Jim Lee, Colors by Jeremy Roberts

Pencils by Joe Madureira, Colors by iANAR

duss005

Pencils by Brian Buccellatto, Colors by Francis Manapul

Pencils by Ian Churchill, Colors by John Rauch

Pencils by Jim Chueng, Inks by Mark Morales, Colors by spidermanfan2099

Pencils by Gerardo Sandoval, Colors by Teodoro Gonzalez

Pencils by Ryan Ottley, Colors by Joshua Ravello

Pencils by Rags Morales, Colors by Nei Ruffino

Nacho Fernandez

HalBaby

Zuccarello

Alex Garner

Pencils by Gregg Paulsen, Colors by Mike Adams

Pencils by Jim Lee, Colors by clunkworld

Pencils by Rob Liefeld, Colors by Vincent "V" Brouard

Pencils by Jon Buran, Inks by burningloveletters, Colors by Cliff Benoit

David Williams

Pencils by Clayton Henry, Inks by Mark Morales, Colors by Galon

Philip Tan

Pencils by Adi Granov, Colors by Steve Schaffer

Mark Hossain

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Badass Batman Illustrations

PauloGabriel — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Who's the most badass all human superhero in comic books? Yeahh, the Batman! He's only got his ultra high tech armor and gadgets, and fights crime with his bare hands! We all love the caped crusader and seeing some badass illustrations of him in all his glory only makes us want one more movie!

And I don't really have nothing more to say, but I really recommend all of you to visit each artist's page for more great work! And when I say great work, I mean that. These guys rock! I hope you like it. Cheers! ;)

Ryan Lewis

Michael Harris

Pencils by Joe Ng, Colors by Adam Vehige

Pencils by mbreitweiser, Colors by Elizabeth dismang

cuson

Pencils by Andie Tong, Colors by Jeremy Roberts

Erik Von Lehmann

Manarama

Dmitriy Logunkov

Patrick Toifl

Anjin Anhut

Rafael Albuquerque

Pencils by Tom Schloendorn, Colors by beretta92

duss005

Pencils by Francis Manapul, Colors by Jeremy Roberts

Marcelo Di Chiara

adonihs

Pencils by Jennyson Rosero, Colors by artmunki

Pencils by Jim Lee, Colors by Jeremy Roberts

Pencils by Caanan White, Colors by John-Paul Bove

Paul Harmon

Pencils by Marc Silverstri, Inks by Matt “Batt” Banning, Colors by Phil Pochrzast

duss005

Mauricio Herrera

Erik Von Lehmann

Mike Mitchell

Stefani Rennee

Ryan Benjamin

Anjin Anhut

duss005

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The Evolution of the Batman Logo

PauloGabriel — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:05:07 +0000

This video came to me in the right moment. I've always wondered how come the Batman logo changed so much, different from other superheroes, such as the Superman. Each story line, each media, has its own Batman logo.

And it was cool to find out that someone out there had the same doubt about it, and decided to look for an answered, coming up with this awesome video, showing us what we could call an "evolution" of the Batman logo. Check it out, and I bet you'll really enjoy this if you're a fan of the greatest detective of all time. Cheers! ;)

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The Art of Master Bruce Timm

PauloGabriel — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:09:02 +0000

One thing is for sure: you've been exposed to Bruce Timm's work at least once in your life. Any of you. And now you ask me, who the heck is Bruce Timm? Well, Bruce Timm is one of the most famous comics/cartoon illustrators alive. If you ever caught the morning cartoons, then you know his work.

He's the owner of a totally unique style, easy to recognize miles away. He was the producer of the great Batman: The Animated Series, also he worked with Superman and mostly recently, he helped to create the Batman Beyond cartoon. That's right, that's all his traces. This guy is a freaking comics jedi. Anyways, here are some of his work, which I know you'll like very much. Unfortunately, I didn't find his own portfolio, but I did find a lot of his work at the awesome Pop Culture Shock.

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Inspiration: Comics and Graphic Novels - Part Two: Batman

Starchild — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:52:31 +0000

In Part Two of my Comics and Graphic Novels inspiration articles, I will be looking at the caped crusader, Batman. Arguably the most famous superhero without super powers, "he makes use of intellect, detective skills, science and technology, wealth, physical prowess, and intimidation in his war on crime" (Wikipedia, 2008).

Our second look at comics and graphic novels takes us to the most enigmatic hero of them all: Batman. With the amazing success of Superman (see Part One), DC Comics requested more characters for their titles, and artists Bob Kane and Bill Finger came up with the Bat-Man.

Originally intended to wear a domino mask, Finger suggested using a cowl instead of a simple domino mask, a cape instead of wings, and gloves, and removing the red sections from the original costume. With the disguise complete, now the task was to think of alter ego's alter ego. The name Bruce Wayne was devised from the Scottish patriot, Robert the Bruce and former American army general Anthony Wayne.

Much of the inspiration for Batman's look and personality came from the films of that time, including The Mark of Zorro, The Bat Whispers and older characters such as Doc Savage, The Shadow and Sherlock Holmes, for his master detective skills. From then on, Batman's adventures began, starting with The Case of the Chemical Syndicate in the Dark Knight's debut in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). As the issues rolled on, Batman's character grew and grew with every new villain, but with the war in full flow, DC Comics decided to alter the dark and bleak atmosphere of Gotham City and change it to that of a "bright and colorful" environment, where Batman became the commendable "father" of Gotham.

By the 1960s, Batman's popularity had begun to wane dramatically, thanks in part to the lack of interest in the genre. In order to regain fans, massive changes were made, including the yellow background added to the Batman logo, the removal of characters such as Batwoman, Bat-Mite, Ace and butler Alfred and a redesign of the Batmobile. In 1966, the well-known Batman TV series was released, starring Adam West as Bruce Wayne/Batman. The show was in initial success, with Batman comic sales of nearly 900,000. However, the camp undertone of the show began to wear thin on fans and it was eventually cancelled in 1968. The 70s saw a return to the Gothic feel of Batman, but this wasn't enough, and by 1985, sales had reached an all-time low.

It wasn't until a year later that Batman became reinvigorated, thanks to the famous comic book mini-series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. With Batman now 50, and witnessing the death of second Robin, Jason Todd, the hero decided to retire his cape and turn to drinking. Without Batman, Gotham became a Dystopia, with crime rife and overwhelming. According to Wikipedia, Bruce retook the mantle of Batman after he encountered a group of gangs known as the Mutants in the alley where his parents were murdered. A new Robin was introduced, name Carrie Kelly. The change of characters and darker feel of Batman had fans buying the comics once more. This was then perpetuated with the Crisis on Infinite Earths series, redefining the origins of the Caped Crusader and one-shot comic Batman: The Killing Joke, starring infamous villain The Joker. Coupled with Tim Burton's Batman film in 1989, Batman had become popular once again, and the fame hasn't waned since.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, 1986

Batman: Knightfall, when Bane breaks Batman's back, leaving Azrael to take the role of Batman.

Azrael as Batman

Without Frank Miller's mini-series, there would be no Batman Begins, and certainly no Dark Knight movies. Batman is one of the few superheroes people can feel especially close to, having lost his parents at a young age, and seeking vengenance, with nothing but his own body and mind, as he possessed no superhuman powers. People may also draw parallels with the change in character between the solemn Batman and the flamboyant billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, seemingly a two-faced character, but made so as to detract any kind of suspicion of a familiarity between the two identities. With the dark undertone of Batman comes some of the best designs, which tie in very well with the popular grunge designs of today.

And who could forget the Joker, Batman's long term counterpart. Some may say one could no longer exist without the other, something I tend to agree with, especially if you've watched the movies.

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About the author

My name is Starchild, aka Luke Davis, and I'm a student from England. I passed A-Levels in Graphic Design, Mathematics and Further Mathematics and will be studying Computer Science at Nottingham Trent University in October.

I was never an artistic prodigy at an early age, but I still doodled and drew things like any normal child. As I got into high school, however, I began to enjoy art more and more, and managed to get an A at GCSE, probably my greatest achievement to date. It was very hard work, but it was worth it. Initially, I wanted to do Graphic Design at university, but I didn't want to leave my other talent behind, maths, so I decided to make a compromise: do computer science at uni and still continue my graphic design work, but on a casual, freelance basis. With any luck, I'll get spotted.

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Batman Movies Posters

PauloGabriel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:56:05 +0000

Today is the grand opening of The Dark Knight, and we are all really excited! How much butt will this movie kick? A LOT. And to celebrate its opening, we're making a collection of all Batman Movies Posters (or just the best ones, as you wish).

We had several Batman movies already, in which Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney played the Dark Knight. Keaton and Kilmer, in my opinion were really good, and even though Clooney is one hell of an actor, he was a lousy Batman. But I guess eveyone will agree when I say that Bale is the right man for the job, right? We've seen him playing the Batman we were all waiting for.

Anyways, talking about posters, some are really terrible, like the one with Tommy Lee Jones as the Two-Face. I mean, seriously? We can totally see the evolution of graphic design here, where the two last films have really stunning posters, not reaveling too much, not being too corky or cheesy like Batman & Robin's posters. Well, just check them out! And long live Bale as the Batman. All these great posters were found at the best movie poster site out there: Movie Poster Awards. Every single movie poster we might ever want. ;)

Batman (1989) - Michael Keaton

Batman Returns (1992) - Michael Keaton

Batman Forever (1995) - Val Kilmer

Batman & Robin (1997) - George Clooney
This feels sooo wrong.

Batman Begins (2005) - Christian Bale

The Dark Knight (2008) - Christian Bale