B is For Batmobile
The Batmobile is one of the most treasured of designs. There have been hundreds of concepts used in the comics, so there's no right or wrong way to design one. But, for some reason when we see it we recognize it. Here are five concept art drawings of the Batmobile in live-action film and television.
1. Batman TV Series by George Barris
In a pinch, 20th Century Fox turned to George Barris to build the Batmobile. He was given a rough sketch (by BATMAN production artist Eddie Stakes) and only 3 weeks to design and build it!
"The art director brought in an idea of what they needed: flashing lights, turbine fire blower on the back, chain slicer, etc.," said Barris. "We gave them a twentieth-century Batmobile that was different from Bob Kane's."
To save time, he realized he could use the long-idle Futura as a basis.
2. Batman (1998) by Anton Furst
In his design, Furst managed to capture the essence of a Batmobile while providing all-new design elements. The bat-mask was gone entirely from his design. In its place, the nose featured a large jet turbine intake flanked by sweeping, mandible-like front fenders.
3. Batman Forever by H.R. Giger
H.R. Giger (Alien, Species)was contacted in 1994 to design a Batmobile for Batman Forever. "His unique 'X' shaped design was to include articulated front legs/mandibles, retractable fins, and Gatling gun emplacements on each of the four pods on the sides of the vehicle. The design also combined side and forward intake ports with organic spines and a central pod connecting the four legs"
4. Batman Forever by Tim Flattery
Most controversial and complicated Bat-mobile ever. "After thinking thru it farther, he decided he wanted something more organic so it was back to the drawing board. The reference I used was everything from bats, bugs and crustaceans to Giger." - Tim Flattery
5. Batman Begins by Nathan Crowley
Nathan Crowley never did any concept designs I'm aware of. Instead, he used parts from different modeling kits to cobble together by model bashing.
"I worked on the entire film, starting with the Batmobile, because we needed lots of time to build the thing. Unlike the other movies, we decided we were going to build the car to go high speeds and maneuver. We decided we were going to build a racecar and we were going to redesign the entire car. We thought we needed to update it. I think it had been beaten up too much. In the previous films, except Tim Burton's first one, they relied too much on digital effects, for all this trickery, so we decided we weren't going to have any digital elements to the car whatsoever. Everything you see on the screen is a real car, or a miniature car."
"The rudiments of it was we also had to explain the origins of the Batmobile. One of our problems in doing Batman Begins was we wanted to explain where everything came from, so Batman can't build a super-car in secret by himself. We figured that was implausible. We couldn't convince anyone that one hiding his identity could create a car. So Chris came up with the concept of a military vehicle that was mothballed by his father's company. Which was fantastic for me, because it informed the design of it. Suddenly, this was a military vehicle, sort of an urban assault vehicle. I call it a sport tank. Also, the great thing about the Batmobile is, if you go down the road of making it an armored vehicle, a sort of high-speed sport tank, then that informs Gotham because why do you need that car unless the city's in decay? One helped the other. The root of it, through scripts and design, was to come up with a modern version of the car, with a modern look that people would identify with. And it was tricky. We showed it to Paul Levitz, who runs DC Comics, and he liked the shape; and we got it around to the fan base, and there was a big discussion for the last six months. It was such a departure from the old Batmobile. I think it works. When you first see it in camouflage, I'm still in awe of it."
"Yeah. What happened was, we were trying to find shapes that felt good, in the way I designed it with model making-I'd cut up bits of other vehicles and planes and stick them all together to try to find shapes. I'm fed up with curvy cars. I love angular cars anyway. I'm a big fan of the Maserati and all of that. Once we found those shapes it kind of took on an organic look. The fascinating thing about Stealth fighters is if you put enough angles on them, it becomes organic. It's very strange. So suddenly we found some bats in it. If you look at the back and see how the flaps are, you'll actually see the Bat symbol. If you look flat on the back of the car, with the flaps you'll see the bat-wings. I think subconsciously those shapes appeared. We wanted to maintain the jet--we figured we could not do the Batmobile without the jet. It's important. We could lose anything else, but we couldn't lose the jet. It's like the big old Land Speeder cars that always had jet engines. I liked that. The first Batmobile is reminiscent of the Land Speeders."
"I was a fan of [production designer] Anton Furst's [1989] Batmobile. I felt the Batmobile from the TV series was too similar to a car that I knew, whereas Tim Burton and Anton Furst's car was like 'Wow, that's pretty cool.' I can't say that I was a huge comic book fan. I just love design. To get a chance to design the Batmobile was brilliant, and I love cars."
What do you think of the designs? Do you have a favorite?
The Batmobile is one of the most treasured of designs. There have been hundreds of concepts used in the comics, so there's no right or wrong way to design one. But, for some reason when we see it we recognize it. Here are five concept art drawings of the Batmobile in live-action film and television.
1. Batman TV Series by George Barris
In a pinch, 20th Century Fox turned to George Barris to build the Batmobile. He was given a rough sketch (by BATMAN production artist Eddie Stakes) and only 3 weeks to design and build it!
"The art director brought in an idea of what they needed: flashing lights, turbine fire blower on the back, chain slicer, etc.," said Barris. "We gave them a twentieth-century Batmobile that was different from Bob Kane's."
To save time, he realized he could use the long-idle Futura as a basis.
2. Batman (1998) by Anton Furst
In his design, Furst managed to capture the essence of a Batmobile while providing all-new design elements. The bat-mask was gone entirely from his design. In its place, the nose featured a large jet turbine intake flanked by sweeping, mandible-like front fenders.
3. Batman Forever by H.R. Giger
H.R. Giger (Alien, Species)was contacted in 1994 to design a Batmobile for Batman Forever. "His unique 'X' shaped design was to include articulated front legs/mandibles, retractable fins, and Gatling gun emplacements on each of the four pods on the sides of the vehicle. The design also combined side and forward intake ports with organic spines and a central pod connecting the four legs"
4. Batman Forever by Tim Flattery
Most controversial and complicated Bat-mobile ever. "After thinking thru it farther, he decided he wanted something more organic so it was back to the drawing board. The reference I used was everything from bats, bugs and crustaceans to Giger." - Tim Flattery
Nathan Crowley never did any concept designs I'm aware of. Instead, he used parts from different modeling kits to cobble together by model bashing.
"I worked on the entire film, starting with the Batmobile, because we needed lots of time to build the thing. Unlike the other movies, we decided we were going to build the car to go high speeds and maneuver. We decided we were going to build a racecar and we were going to redesign the entire car. We thought we needed to update it. I think it had been beaten up too much. In the previous films, except Tim Burton's first one, they relied too much on digital effects, for all this trickery, so we decided we weren't going to have any digital elements to the car whatsoever. Everything you see on the screen is a real car, or a miniature car."
"The rudiments of it was we also had to explain the origins of the Batmobile. One of our problems in doing Batman Begins was we wanted to explain where everything came from, so Batman can't build a super-car in secret by himself. We figured that was implausible. We couldn't convince anyone that one hiding his identity could create a car. So Chris came up with the concept of a military vehicle that was mothballed by his father's company. Which was fantastic for me, because it informed the design of it. Suddenly, this was a military vehicle, sort of an urban assault vehicle. I call it a sport tank. Also, the great thing about the Batmobile is, if you go down the road of making it an armored vehicle, a sort of high-speed sport tank, then that informs Gotham because why do you need that car unless the city's in decay? One helped the other. The root of it, through scripts and design, was to come up with a modern version of the car, with a modern look that people would identify with. And it was tricky. We showed it to Paul Levitz, who runs DC Comics, and he liked the shape; and we got it around to the fan base, and there was a big discussion for the last six months. It was such a departure from the old Batmobile. I think it works. When you first see it in camouflage, I'm still in awe of it."
"Yeah. What happened was, we were trying to find shapes that felt good, in the way I designed it with model making-I'd cut up bits of other vehicles and planes and stick them all together to try to find shapes. I'm fed up with curvy cars. I love angular cars anyway. I'm a big fan of the Maserati and all of that. Once we found those shapes it kind of took on an organic look. The fascinating thing about Stealth fighters is if you put enough angles on them, it becomes organic. It's very strange. So suddenly we found some bats in it. If you look at the back and see how the flaps are, you'll actually see the Bat symbol. If you look flat on the back of the car, with the flaps you'll see the bat-wings. I think subconsciously those shapes appeared. We wanted to maintain the jet--we figured we could not do the Batmobile without the jet. It's important. We could lose anything else, but we couldn't lose the jet. It's like the big old Land Speeder cars that always had jet engines. I liked that. The first Batmobile is reminiscent of the Land Speeders."
"I was a fan of [production designer] Anton Furst's [1989] Batmobile. I felt the Batmobile from the TV series was too similar to a car that I knew, whereas Tim Burton and Anton Furst's car was like 'Wow, that's pretty cool.' I can't say that I was a huge comic book fan. I just love design. To get a chance to design the Batmobile was brilliant, and I love cars."
What do you think of the designs? Do you have a favorite?
This post is part of the month long "A-Z Challenge." For the next 27 days, we'll be choosing a letter from the alphabet and crafting a post around it. To read more of the posts in the series click here here. To find out more about the challenge go here.
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