Tuesday, January 31, 2012

See Super-Sexy Bat-Girl Costume That Was Never in 'Batman and Robin'

The Bat-Girl costume in Batman and Robin was pretty lame. Clunky and chunky, but had a certain charm. If they'd gone with Miles Teves' designs it could have rivaled Catwoman from Batman Returns. Teves has an amazing set of credits having worked on Indiana Jones 4, Iron Man, Men in Black and many more.

The guy is pretty out-spoken, so I'll just leave him to describe his illustrations using quotes from his website.


This is a glossy rendering that owes a debt to early good-girl illustrators like [Alberto] Varga.

I knew as I drew this that it could never work on Alicia Silverstone. Though she was sweet and adorable, she was also not 9 feet tall, and had rather more realistic proportions.

Bob Ringwood, the costume designer, always asked me to draw my figures to be about 9 heads tall like they do in the fashion world. He didn't seem to mind that what would work as a concept on someone with those impossible proportions, would not work on a [person]with real-world human measurements. However, it did make for more heroic and 'sexy' drawings that could sell a design to a fussy director or nervous studio head.

I regret that my idea of the cut-out Bat symbol window on the chest, showing a little skin and cleavage, didn't survive into the final suit. I thought it was kind of clever, and added just the right amount of wholesome flirtiness to the character.

I called this one 'BatGirl-Rear End' as a spoof on the absurdly overrated 'Batman: Dead End' short that made such a stink on the Internet a few years ago. Though it was drawn in 1996. This one always stops people when they are thumbing through my portfolio. Nothing like a tight girl's rear end in glossy black PVC to stop a viewer cold. Even if she is 9 feet tall. 

An alternate Batgirl design that is truer to what made it to the screen.

This is a strange blue version I was asked to do. I think they used this as the final design, only fortunately they made it black.

I had nothing to do with the suits that had the chrome additions to them. That was pure queerness incarnate.

Here's what the final costume looked like.

You gotta see his designs for other characters in Batman and Robin including a spiky version of the Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy costumes at his site http://www.milesteves.com/gallery/v/ILLUSTRATION/batman+and+robin/

What do you think? Should they have added some Bat-Girl sexiness to the film?