Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1525032
AGAINST THE GRAIN Batman: Caped Crusader has a dedicated VFX team for effects like fog, smoke, and certain types of lighting. "Those are things that we can do fairly easily with computer techniques, which we didn't have access to back in the day," says Timm. "[But] we tried to find that sweet spot between something that looks real and still looks like [it] was hand drawn or hand painted." Like Abril, VFX and Animation Artist Brianne VanTuyle says that no matter what the effect, she made sure "to put a lot of noise or grain on [it]." This usually meant an airbrushed look "because the old animated series backgrounds would have been airbrushed, [and] even in an old noir film—they're going to be these airbrushed painted backgrounds, as well." Along with trying to figure out the best tools to get a certain texture, VanTuyle notes the strategic use of timing. "For an effect like smoke, 24 frames per second is going to create a smoother, more 'digital' look. Once you start putting things on 12 frames a second, it starts to feel more hand drawn," she says. In addition, VFX and Animation Artist Tony Andrade created a lot of hand-drawn smoke effects for Caped Crusader. Then they chose the best digital tool to recreate those effects. "We would try to get it to look as close as we could … for sort of the glamour shots," says VanTuyle. According to Timm, as the series developed: "We kept saying, it's more BTAS than BTAS. It's BTAS plus." And while VanTuyle calls Caped Crusader "a love letter to the animated series," it is much more than that. Timm knows there will always be comparisons, but in the end Caped Crusader is its own beast, breaking new ground for the next generation of fans-to-be. Shadow Worlds Timm says that Tucker is "one of the biggest noir fans you're ever going to find." It was their shared commitment to the genre that anchored the look of Batman: Caped Crusader and shaped how the artists approached it. Like the rest of the team, VanTuyle steeped herself in noir, from studying books on noir to films like The Night of the Hunter. "It had a lot of those creepy shadow moments," she says—the types of moments that were used prodigiously in Caped Crusader. So is storyboarding noir different from storyboarding other styles? "Absolutely," Peterson says. He also dove deep into noir, analyzing old shows like Dick Tracy and classic movies like Citizen Kane. "I did a lot of looking at what do they do with composition, what do they do with lighting, what do they do with camera angles." In the first episode, there is a scene where Batman comes to a back room at the police station at night to do some detective work. "There's a woman in front of a filing cabinet, [and] I used a very traditional noir motif of the light coming from the doorway," he says. "I love that sort of mood—a dark room and just the light from the glass of the door, illuminating things and letting us see [Batman], and see someone who does not see him." Not only was it a lot of fun, Peterson says it's an example of the many sequences in the series that are explicitly, unapologetically noir. opposite page: Light through Venetian blinds is a classic noir technique; this page (top): One person in light with another hidden in shadow also plays on classic noir tropes; (bottom) Keeping Batman at a distance from the audience helps maintain his aloof personality. FALL 2024 25