Arggggh! Today is going to drag by...

Okay so as most of you know today is the DVD release of the Dark Knight here in the U.S. and the first thing I did on the way to work was stop and pick up my copy. Now the waiting game begins. So while I wait I'll go all Batman Beyond on ya with yet another find from the Magic Grocery Store. Which I'm calling out Target and Toys R Us right now, get on the ball this grocery store is kicking your ass!



So an exit scan of the toy aisle at the local food mart, known as H.E.B. around these parts produced this little gem from the DCUC wave 4. I can't believe that they are churning these things out that fast, seemed like yesterday I was finding wave 2, oh yeah I was. Anyway Batman Beyond is one of my favorites and I knew if I saw this h it was coming home right away. So as I passed down the aisle there he was hanging on the front of the pegs just waiting for me.



Now don't get me wrong on this next statement, I like this figure, and think it's great, but I have mixed feelings about seeing ole Terry here done up in the DCUC style, I think that Batman Beyond really works better in the Timm Universe style, more so than the regular Justice League. The original Batman Beyond Cartoon was really meant for the simplified, more stylized line art.



One thing that works really well is the paint job, yes you can screw up a figure as simple as this. The high gloss on the costume is sweet. And it looks just as good in person as the photos. The one thing I would have liked to seen is maybe some detachable red wings like the show. But this is still all good with me.



He also came with a sweet, fairly show accurate bat-a-rang that doesn't have a peg sticking out the back of it or an extremely large launcher / bazooka type device, so I guess there's that!



Now I just have to wait till 2009 rolls around to get my Timm-Verse style figure from Matty Collector! Hurry up baby new year and hurry up five o'clock I gots me some Dark Knight to be watching!

Batman Beyond Style Guides!

A friend, we'll call him William to protect his identity, has just handed me a set of Batman Beyond Style Guides. These are the guides that companies use to help design and manufacture things like Batman toys, in this case Batman Beyond!

These are, to date, my favorite style guides I have ever used. They are beautifully bound little books that have the CD trays for the artwork built right in. Each has a hard gloss cover, and gloss pages that have the artwork included on the CDs jumping out at you in four color process.

I remember using these to help sculpt the Batman Beyond Head mentioned in an earlier post, and also to set up graphics for various products. I never thought I would see these again and am glad William thought enough to bring these to me, knowing I'm a Batman Fanatic and having sat through many a lunch where I talked about these very same style guides. I hope to go through these in a little more detail in the future, but for now enjoy these pictures. Oh and William lunch is on be buddy!

Batman Collection

I know, I know, I've left all two of my readers days without a post. So I thought I would show off some of the Batman Collection here at Studio Howell. Maybe this will be a feature in the future? Who knows. Anyway this little teaser picture does contain an item I made. It's left over from when I was serving time at a little amusement toy company called Play By Play Toys and Novelties. We had about 98% of all the licenses out there that there was to obtain at the time, one of those being anything Batman. I was the Art Director over the Product Development division of the Art Department and I talked our Plush Department Manager to let a couple of the other artists and myself have a little competition sculpting the head for the vinyl head of the new Batman at the time, Batman Beyond. Thing is we had less than a week to do our sculpts and send them of to DC Comics. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention not one of us had ever sculpted professionally before?

Wether we were pros or not I worked two full nights on this bad boy and sent it to DC Comics on deadline. I actually received positive feedback on the sculpt with minor revisions as did one of the other artists, it then came down to time and I had to let the other guy finish as I was needed on a Superman or Looney Tunes project. I did have my sculpt returned and was allowed to keep it and knowing DC liked it really is something.

enjoy