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The Comic - Rick Burchett
Since issue number one of The Batman Adventures, Rick
Burchett's been on board the animated Batman comic wagon since
the beginning. Below is an interview, highlighting his
experiences on Batman Adventures.
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How did you approach the character designs going into the
series?
My only mandate going into the series was that Batman should
reflect the design of the Justice League animated version. We
were fairly nebulous about the overall design of the rest of the
cast other than they should appear older somehow. I think this
shows up most noticably in Alfred and, to a lesser degree,
Robin. It would have been fun to go in and redesign some of the
characters but I don't think that's what the fans want. I think
we served the issue best by giving them recognizable characters
with minor tweaks to raise some questions about what's been
going on (Alfred's cane?).
Were there any specific designs you wanted to completely
redesign?
As I said, it would've been great fun to add my own visual stamp
to these characters but I honestly feel that would have been a
distraction to what we were trying to do.
What was the biggest challenge in doing this series and
making sure that it not only took place in establuished
continuity, but progressed it?
There was a challenge to aging some of the characters. In our
continuity we had to indicate that some time had passed but not
as lot.. I think Alfred was the most noticable: the hair was
white, the cane, more lines to the face. But you have to been
careful when dealing with this art style. You can't just go in
there and add lines to everyone's face to indicate age. You do
that and you betray the basic design laws that have been
established. The biggest challenge, and the most fun for me, was
Robin. He had to appear older but still be young. I approached
the problem by following basic laws of psysiognomy. The head
became smaller, as did the eyes. The nose elongated a bit. The
ears a little smaller. The only problem with all this was that
the Teen Titians was hitting the air about the same time and
their Robin was way different from what I was doing. I just
hoped it wouldn't be too big a bump for the readers.
Looking through the issues, it's easy to see the various
influences of the various "animated eras" of Batman. How did you
work on incorporating them?
I followed what had gone before, but kinda mixing and matching..
By this time there had been three different designs for Batman
and his world. What I did became a homogenous version of those
three worlds.. As we were furthest away from the original look
of B:TAS that design probably has the least influence.
With only 17 pages for a main story and 5 fora back-up tale,
how did you juggle that every month?
I laid the book out pretty much as I had the previous books.
Trying to tell the story as clearly and dramatically as I could.
At one point I did start using standard page grids for the
layouts, mostly as an experiment. I'd never tried to tell
stories using those restrictions and thought I give it a whirl.
It then becomes an exercise of what goes into the panels rather
than the shape an size of the panels. I doubt anyone noticed but
me. I have to say I loved doing the 5-pagers. What a great
challenge and what great stories Ty and Dan wrote. Short pieces
like that are not easy to do and our guys were more than up to
the task. Ty refers to them as "visual haikus".
Are there any characters that you had to re-create from
scratch, ie: unmasked Scarecrow? Can you take us through the
process?
Y'know, I wish I had some behind the scenes sketches to show
you, but alas, there are none. Since I didn't do any of the
covers I don't have any cover sketches. When I design individual
characters for a particular story I usually grab whatever scrap
of paper is handy and doodle on that. Then when the issue is
finished those doodles get pitched. As far as my thumbnails of
page layouts, I guanantee those are indecipherable to anyone but
me and Navajo code-talkers. Sorry.
Are there any current or future porjects you'd like to inform
the readers about? Perhaps a new distination where fans can get
their fill of Burchett?
As far as future plans go I only have one project to report:
Since last fall I've been doing an online Batman comic strip for
AOL's kid's page. It's been on line since October and it'll run
through this coming October. It runs five days a week and is in
a newspaper strip format. Mark Schulz is the writer and we've
been having a ball with it.. Check it out if you have a chance.
Beyond that, who knows...
I do want to take a minute and thank all the fans of Batman
Adventures in all it's various incarnations. I've been a part of
these books since Day One and the fans have been as loyal and
supportive a group as you could possibly want. Their criticisms
have always been thoughtful and positive and they've been as
much a part of the process as the creators. Thanks, folks. |
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