Squaremania - lil' Batman

A couple of years ago I went to the Vinyl Toy Network (which has since been renamed Designer Con) which was a convention for some really cool art and toys.

I was getting things ready for an art gallery I was doing (summer of 2009 at Nickelodeon Animation in Burbank) and decided that one portion of my gallery would be popular characters in my style, that a series of vinyl toys could be based on.  Out of that I did a lot of characters from Marvel, DC to Freddy Krueger and IG88 (a robot bounty hunter from Star Wars).  They were all a sort of bobble headed kid versions.

For that same gallery I was exploring square animals which eventually turned into Squaremania.  And I had always wanted to do some human characters as well, but just ran out of time for the gallery...and since I had such a good response to the animals, I kept going in that direction.

Over the christmas break I did a couple of rough sketches and decided that it would be fun to do a series of Squaremania versions of my favorite superheroes.

First up is Batman:

I'm going to add a different background to better suit the character...but since I just finished painting him, I thought I'd put him up on the blog.

Batman also fit's this weeks Illustration Friday topic of "resolutions" - as we all know, when his parents were murdered he resolved to dress up and run around in tights to avenge their death.

Squaremania: Batman

Way back when I originally started drawing animals in the squaremania style - I had wanted to do some human characters as well.  I was preparing a gallery show and ran out of time...so the only things that existed, at that time, were the animals.  At the time I was working on a napoleon drawing - but it never went anywhere...

Anyway - I was looking at a toy magazine today at the bookstore and saw a bunch of DC comic heroes and decided they'd be a good fit for Squaremania - so I'm starting with Batman...and I'll see about getting to the other characters...