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I was in the mood for revisiting old drawings that I did, and a conversation with a poster on another forum got me in the mood for taking another stab at the Knightfall designs for Azrael's Batman, or "AzBat" as he had been called.

While this was fun to draw, I have to say- I'm not a fan of this. At least not for Batman. Mostly because, as I said in my original piece, it just doesn't look like Batman to me. It doesn't say "Batman." It says "90's," and not in a good way. It doesn't look like a natural evolution of Batman's costume. Not the next step. Or a darker version of it. It looks like a 13 year old's idea of what a "Cool" Batman costume would be.

He has a full face mask, YEAH! And COOL gauntlets with CLAWS that fire razor sharp batarangs. And he's got ARMOR That makes his shoulders stick out! YEAH!

Really, this sort of design emphasizes a lot of problems I had with designs for characters in the 90's, in that a lot of them were just a bunch of stuff thrown onto a costume without any reason given as to why they are there or how'd they work in three dimensional space. These designs really only looked "Cool" from a certain angle. They were designed to look cool as a pinup pose. But in narrative fiction, especially in a visual medium like comics, designs need to work on a functional level, not just what works as a pinup. Which means that this look ends up looking awkward at certain angles. Or from certain artist, who have a different style than the one who developed it.

Although I will say that it did lead to a more interesting design, and it did have subtle elements that I think helped with the overall story, which I will talk about next....

Description

I was in the mood for revisiting old drawings that I did, and a conversation with a poster on another forum got me in the mood for taking another stab at the Knightfall designs for Azrael's Batman, or "AzBat" as he had been called.

While this was fun to draw, I have to say- I'm not a fan of this. At least not for Batman. Mostly because, as I said in my original piece, it just doesn't look like Batman to me. It doesn't say "Batman." It says "90's," and not in a good way. It doesn't look like a natural evolution of Batman's costume. Not the next step. Or a darker version of it. It looks like a 13 year old's idea of what a "Cool" Batman costume would be.

He has a full face mask, YEAH! And COOL gauntlets with CLAWS that fire razor sharp batarangs. And he's got ARMOR That makes his shoulders stick out! YEAH!

Really, this sort of design emphasizes a lot of problems I had with designs for characters in the 90's, in that a lot of them were just a bunch of stuff thrown onto a costume without any reason given as to why they are there or how'd they work in three dimensional space. These designs really only looked "Cool" from a certain angle. They were designed to look cool as a pinup pose. But in narrative fiction, especially in a visual medium like comics, designs need to work on a functional level, not just what works as a pinup. Which means that this look ends up looking awkward at certain angles. Or from certain artist, who have a different style than the one who developed it.

Although I will say that it did lead to a more interesting design, and it did have subtle elements that I think helped with the overall story, which I will talk about next....