Unseen Batman Gotham Adventures Artwork…Two-Face edition

Time for another installment of “How Many Cover Sketches Can be Rejected?” before we land on the right one?  Today’s contestant is Gotham Adventures #2, perhaps one of my favorite covers for a bunch of reasons.

Let’s start with the first round:

Rejected. Probably a little too complicated for an Adventures book.

For the time I was on the various Batman books, I tried to make sure all the #2 issues (including #12 and #22) were Two-Face stories.  Not just because of the obvious connection to the #2, but it allowed me to write a Two-Face story at least once a year.  Considering he’s one of the best characters in fiction, I’m no fool, and I wanted at him as much as I could.  Gotham Adventures #2 was about Harvey Dent meeting his father on the set of a live TV show, to steal his prize money and destroy his father’s life.

Rejected. Probably because it didn't give us Two-Face

That’s why there’s lotto machines in the background and money on the ground.  I was very interested in making sure BATGIRL was on the cover, since she was a new regular addition to the series at this point, I wanted to feature her as much as I could.

Rejected. Probably too passive an image.

  I usually give the editor three sketches as a rule, but all three of my first group were passed up and I was asked to do another sketch to get to the right one.  So back to the drawing board, I came up with a few more, focusing on the black and white element to the animated Two-Face design.

Going back to the big fight scene, this time with Two-Face more featured. Now we're talking....rejected.

In the same batch was the following image, which I strongly pushed to be the cover…but was leery, because it didn’t have Batman on it.  (Something I usually included in my group of sketches, as the editors often allowed it).

Despite my pushing for this one....rejected.

But I was on the right track, and this final sketch was the one that we all liked.  It still didn’t feature Batman, but it was striking enough to get that thumbs up.

Maybe it's because there's so obvious a "thumbs up" on the image itself.

Normally, I get a little testy if I have to do more than three sketches, but in this case, our fearless editor (Darren Vincenzo at this time) pushed me for the right reasons…as the final turned out GREAT.

And look, not a colour to be seen!

I LOVED that they let me play with the logo.  I loved that I was allowed to run a cover in black and white on a “kids book” which is usually VERY colourful on the cover.   And I love that it feels balanced between the black and the white, without being symmetrical.  A winner all around.

The best part was that the cover was so simple in its linework, that I penciled and inked it at print size…the size of the original sketch, in fact.  The original art for this was ten inches by seven inches…MUCH smaller than the average cover would be drawn.  Because if its tiny size, it’s one of the few Gotham Adventures covers I still own, as I can’t really sell something that’s so small to a collector.

I don’t recall why, but it’s one of the few covers I didn’t sign.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now:  Your Gotham Adventures #2 bonus moment:

When the cover ran in Previews and online, someone from the art department had added the yellow of his eye, believing that I meant for that “spot of colour” to give it extra oomph.  Fortunately, I happened to spot this before it went to print,  it went out without the yellow.

———————————————————————————————

Tune in later this week, I’m itching to start showing off the goodies that are coming up in the all-new Holmes Incorporated Comic that I edit for The Toronto Cartoonist Workshop.  You can check out the early, early previews HERE.

Ty Templeton Ink!

I was talking to someone recently about inking a project for them, and to rummage up some sample inked pages, I did a Google search for the above words “Ty Templeton ink”.  It seemed so much quicker than digging through my own files.  The internet is my friend.

I got what I expected, a bunch of pages from my various inking jobs over the years that people had in their collections and have scanned and put online.  All fine.

But I didn’t expect to find this:

WOAH!

That’s my cover to Gotham Adventures #1…or a version of it…burned into someone’s arm with needles and pain and the oh boy, sweet glavin! The arm belongs to Craig Kandiko, and this and the other images I’m going to show you are taken from his MySpace site which you can find here.

Craig is a Batman fan.  A serious Batman fan, and he’s focused the meat and flesh of his fandom on the Gotham Adventures comic title as all of his tattoos are from covers of that series.    This is an ongoing project for Craig, as he’s added to the Batman Animated gallery on his legs and other arms as the years have gone by.  I’ll let you go to his site to see all his tattoos, some based on Bruce Timm, and some by Bob Smith –  but since this is MY blog, I’m showing you the two other tats he has with my artwork on his largest organ!

The Mr. Freeze is from Gotham Adventures #5. The Two Face is from a story I wrote, but it's drawn by Rick Burchett.

Gotham Adventures #5. Brrrrr.

This Penguin pose is from a set of T-Shirts I did with the villains as the subjects.

My Penguin is hiding there on his leg.

This isn’t the first time someone has tattooed my artwork onto their body.  I’ve been sent a couple of images of a Riddler tattoo that a girl put on her lower hip a few years ago, and another one that features a JOKER I drew that ended up on someone’s shoulder….and a friend of mine has a design between her shoulder blades that I designed for her.  These are all small, singular tattoos that take up just a bit of someone’s body, and I’m flattered to see someone wanted my drawing or my character on them for life.  Craig is clearly the biggest Batman Adventures fan on Earth from this level of dedication.

So Craig, I salute you, and feature you on my blog.  I’ll just say this, I often erase and redraw my figures while I’m working on them.  Next time, I’ll realize the importance to your very skin that I get every line right!

Ty the Guy

To share post:

–

Batman Happy Meals, redux

To those who’ve asked…

At the time of the promotion for which Ty drew art, for reasons we’ve never known, McDonald’s Canada (or maybe just Ontario…or heck, maybe Toronto, we never knew) were not using boxes for Happy Meals.  As I said, I don’t know why–but the food was packaged in plain ol’ boring bags.  (Yes, Happy Meals come in bags these days–but in the olden days, they were boxed…then bagged, back to boxed, now back to bags.) Okay, the bags had some promotional art on them–but I think that too came later.  I don’t remember the Batman ones clearly to tell the truth…but they didn’t have Ty’s art on them or he would have fanatically collected them (Batman and McDonald’s…if only Coca Cola and The Beatles had been involved, and you would have had all of his loves from the time period!).

The toys were not based on Ty’s designs and he didn’t get any of them at the time…he’s “inherited” a few since (as in, Kellam left them behind when he moved).  But, we only ever had a couple–the Robin car, the Penguin car…and I have memories of constantly tidying away the Batman figure. And there was a Batmobile which would split into two (so you could shoot the front half at somebody.  In our house, that was usually a younger sibling, and that would not end well), and eventually, Kellam’s wouldn’t go back together.

And, is it just me, or was the Robin scooter kinda lame-assed?  It didn’t do anything! Although, all the Two-Face car did was “transform”–you could turn over the front and back half of the car.  I remember we had more of those cars than any others…but most of them, the twistable parts ended up so loose they would just spin around.

(On a search of Ty’s studio, I also found the Two-Face car; but I’ve never seen the Joker’s or Catwoman’s.  Don’t know if Batgirl had a vehicle?)

Keiren

Batman Happy Meal Box Art Part 3

Responding to constant nagging from the wife (ignoring me wasn’t working), Ty scanned me the rest of the pages for the McDonald’s Happy Meal Box art he did years and years ago. (I’ve actually finally seen a photo of the boxes; hoping to post those soon.)

It’s fun to see some of the old art…especially stuff featuring Catwoman.  Ty used our cats for inspiration: if you spot a Siamese kitty, that was Batman (seriously.  And Ty will swear ’til he’s a very old man that it wasn’t because of Batman, but a cricket-playing friend whose nickname was that).  Near her should be a tiny white kitty, and that was Epiphany Proudheart a/k/a Piffy.

Keiren