Robin (Carrie Kelley)

Such a fun design to work on. I was pretty pleased with how MOI Animation handled the character. Ariel Winter did a fantastic job voice acting.

© and TM WB Animation and DC Comics

DK Superman Turn

Final design and turn for Superman. Interestingly enough, this may be one of the few instances where we use the Superman 'S' on the back of the cape.
   He's pretty stripped down from the initial concepts. I tried to keep some of the 'stair-stepping' that was prevalent in many of the Superman panels from the comic. I love the cape treatment FM threw down.

© and TM DC Comics and WB Animation

DK Superman Concept

One of the early passes for Superman for DK. The final looks drastically different. When this was done, we were still working out the kinks. The note from Jay O was he had wanted Superman to be the only 'good looking' or idealized character in this world. Everyone else appears 'ravaged' in a sense, particularly by time and place in this violent and gritty future Gotham (or something like that).

© and TM DC Comics and WB Animation

Carrie Kelly Head turn

One of my favorite head turns ever done. All the credit really goes to Bruce Timm for making it 'work' for animation. There really was no other choice but to cheat it. In this case, and more times than not, we had to focus on shape over reality. This doesn't really hook up, but our focus was to make it look passable from as many angles as possible. We only really would have been in trouble had this been done in 3d.

© and TM WB Animation and DC Comics

Armored Dark Knight Turn

Turnaround for Batman for the end sequence in DKR Pt. 2.

© and TM DC Comics and WB Animation

Gordon (Initial Concept Pass)

Weird to think this project was done over a year ago.  This is the initial development pass on Gordon. A lot changed in the final model, most notably the amount of wrinkles/folds. We also aimed to keep the shapes more graphic and easier to 'digest' for the animators/in-betweeners.
    This would be the third iteration of Gordon for me, though I would have to say, the Batman: Year One version remains my favorite.

© and TM DC Comics and WB Animation

Carrie Kelly

Initial concept presented for Carrie/Robin. Clearly evident is the amount of 'over-wrinkling' we did on our initial passes. An intentional decision was to keep her a bit 'androgynous' as far as body structure. Really, it was more a result of the uniform not quite being form-fitting as well as matching what was in the comic. If we had given her hips and a smaller waist I think some of the character would be lost.
    Hopefully I can dig up one of our character lineup sheets that had both the characters that Mel Zwyer was developing and the ones I was doing to see how closely we tried to match each other's style.

© and TM WB Animation and DC Comics

Mutant!

An early concept of Spot from DKR Pt. 1. Mel Zwyer and I were in the process of figuring out wrinkle and shape theories. At that time, we were looking at a good amount of the later 'Sin City' artwork that Frank Miller produced, along with the later, more iconic DKR artwork that is a lot more refined stylistically than what we see in the comic.
I can recall Bruce Timm laughing at this concept quite vividly, knowing full well how difficult this production was going to be.

© and TM DC Comics and WB Animation