Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 16)

Well, last night I watched “Vertigo” for the first time ever. Hmmm….

One of the things that bugged me about all the action/adventure shows I’ve worked on over the years is that the timing of the action sequences almost never worked. “Vertigo” is a prime example; everything takes a little too long, lacks snap. I recall seeing season 1 of The Simpsons around the same time we were working on season 1 of Batman. I was totally envious of The Simpsons’ timing; why couldn’t WE get that kind of snap, agility, freshness, fast/fast and slow/slow? What were THEY doing right that the series I worked on never seemed to be able to do?

Also, it disappoints me that, in the version of “Vertigo” that aired, Talia’s dialogue (“How did you DO that?”) play out entirety on her close-up, instead of cutting on “How..” as I indicated in my storyboard. I mean, why? Was there some sort of rule that one can’t cut on dialogue? How lame is that?

Speaking of Alfred Hitchcock, on page 35 we establish the location of this episode’s final action set piece, the clock tower. Not surprisingly, there will be many references to “Vertigo” coming at you in the next few days.

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3. 

Today I am posting pages 31 through 35 of  “Off Balance”, Act 3. 

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 15)

The films of Alfred Hitchcock were one of my primary influences. When I bought my first VCR in 1985, the first movie I watched on it was “Foreign Correspondent”. I loved to study the editing in Hitchcock movies, where and when (and what) he cut on. I bought my first laser disc player in 1990, and that really upped my film theory scholar game. The freeze frame was much better that VCRs, and the toggle knob allowed me to frame forward/frame reverse with the agility of a dancer, back and forth twixt the last frames and first frames to my hearts content.

The consequences of that corse of study are on display in this sequence. Like my master, I’m “editing in the camera” (a technique Hitchcock employed to thwart the meddling of his occasional producer, David O. Selznick, i.e. Hitchcock would deliberately shoot no over-footage, leaving nothing for David O to play with). I draw you attention to the cutting from scenes C30 through C36, especially C34 and C35 which cuts on the middle of Talia’s line, “How (cut) did you do that?”

One of the things I loved most working on this TV series is that we were allowed, even encouraged, to thusly indulge our inner cineastes.

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3. 

Today I am posting pages 26 through 30 of  “Off Balance”, Act 3. 

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 14)

One of the hallmarks of Manga and Anime is the speed-line BG. After my discovery thereof, I used it frequently. Only late did I realize that this is a dangerous device in that it frequently doesn’t turn out well in the finished animation. I’m not sure what the problem is/was; it doesn’t seem like it would be difficult to execute well, but there you are. I saw this first hand when I participated in the final edit of the raw footage when directing on “Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys”: as often as not the “speed-line-bg scenes had to be edited out. I will have to screen this episode in the near future to see if (for instance) scene C29 has the effect I envisioned when storyboarding.

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3. 

Today I am posting pages 21 through 25 of  “Off Balance”, Act 3. 

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 13)

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that this sequence was a challenge because Batman’s strategy for overcoming the vertigo effect was to close his eyes and use his other senses while saving that fact for a surprise reveal at the end of the sequence (while not being obvious about it). One of my solutions was to stage everything, as much as possible, from Talia’s POV, i.e. slightly from behind keeping  Batman in a rear 3/4 angle.

Another strategy was to keep Talia on Batman’s right, using her body to block our view (again, in a way that’s not too obvious) of Batman’s face. This is demonstrated in scene C23. However, I ran into difficulty with scene C24 and C25; in order to get a close-up Talia reaction shot I had to flop scene directions from left-to-right to right-to-left. I toyed with reverting to the predominant screen direction in C25, but decided to keep the momentary flop going.

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3. 

Today I am posting pages 16 through 20 of  “Off Balance”, Act 3.

Luis Dominguez Green Force Five

These pages were won in auction on August 21, from Heritage Auction. The hammer price for all three pages was $48. The auction record credits the as attributed to Miguel Repetto, but it looks like the work of Luis Dominguez to me. The pages appear to be part of a pitch for a daily newspaper adventure strip. Given the lack of the twin World Trade Center towers in Strip #5, panel #2, I would judge these to be late 60’s or early 70’s. (Also, the clothing and car styles.) I bought them because they were cheap, and I like the clarity, simplicity, and freshness and spontaneity of the drawing. 

“Strip #5”: His facility is such that he doesn’t have to plot out the perspective vanishing points but can free-hand it. I like the way the artist started in with ink on strip #3. I like the way it feels that he isn’t working it, that it has as much blood sweat and tears as an above average storyboard panel (in its pencil stage). 

“Strip #6”: Again, I find his combination of relatively tight pencilling in the figures and rougher in the figures interesting. Apparently this is as tight as he needed to go before starting in to ink, judging from…

“Strip #7”: The woman’s face in panel #1 is all I need to identify these pages as the work of Dominguez. I’m impressed that he’s figuring out the lighting as he inks; even in this partial state we get a real feel for the interior light of a room during daytime. He keeps ink off of the faces, for the most part, just giving us a hint of shadow on the nose and side of the face.

“Strip #8”: Panel 1; the figures don’t quite match the perspective of the room, though this could be fixed by dropping the foreground doorknob to Arabella’s waist and showing us more of the background desk’s top surface. I would also put the man in panel center closer to the camera plane so that he’s spacially halfway between  Arabella and Linda.

Luis Dominguez FourColor 1255 pg 28

This is my most recent acquisition of original artwork, won on December 16 in auction at Heritage Auction. The hammer price was $100. The artist is Luis Dominguez, the page is #28 from Four Color Comics # 1255, “The Wonders of Aladdin”, published by Dell  Comics in 1961. Apparently it is an adaptation of a movie by that name.

To quote Lambiek.net, Luis was born in 1923, in Argentina.

“Luis Angel Dominguez is an Argentine artist, who has worked a lot for American horror and mystery comic books in the 1960s and 1970s. He has made comics in his native country since the 1940s. He has cooperated with the writer Hector German Oesterheld on 'Scout River' in 1956. He also worked on comics like Patoruzito and Pancho Lopez. He did his first US works in the early 1960s, contributing to 'The Wonders of Aladdin' (Dell) and 'The World Around Us' (Gilberton).

Between 1963 and 1970 has was affiliated with the Union Studio in Latin America. He did back-up features for Charlton and drew for many of the company's 1960s war and western titles, such as 'Cheyenne Kid', 'Fightin' Marines', 'Billy the Kid' and 'Outlaws of the West'. From 1967 through the late 1970s, he did a lot of work for Gold Key titles like 'Ripley's Believe it or Not', 'Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery', 'Grimm's Ghost Stories', 'The Twilight Zone' and 'UFO Flying Saucers'. Then in the 1970s, he also began working for DC, illustrating for 'House of Mystery', 'House of Secrets', 'The Witching Hour' and 'Jonah Hex'. He additionally contributed to the horror publications of Skywald and Warren.

I appreciate him for his inking ability, which has excellent variety of strokes and textures, is pleasingly detailed while retaining an impression of speed and freshness. In panel #1, I like the way he uses “eye-read” to lead the eye from the upper-left caption to the baby in the lover right corner. My one quibble is that the shadow of the hanging woman isn’t higher in the frame (so that one’s eye would go to it first after reading the first word balloon.

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 12)

I mentioned in an earlier blog-post that Mark Wallace, a fellow Bat-board artist, had difficulty drawing his section of this episode (how does one depict vertigo in an animated cartoon. I had problems as well, one of which was how do I depict two characters moving through a disorienting hallucinatory environment and have it be visually coherent (assuming that’s one’s goal)? My directory, Kevin Altieri, was quite helpful with his suggestion to keep the characters moving in the same direction no matter what is happening in each individual scene. Since the previous board artist, Mike Goguen, had established them moving left to right, that was already set. Luckily (or maybe on purpose) Talia’s hair is parted to cover her left eye, leaving her right visible for expressive purposes during this sequence)

Another difficulty was, the script has Batman overcome the vertigo effect by keeping his eyes closed and using his other senses. But this has to be kept as a surprise for the end of the sequence. How the Hell do I do THAT? The script by Len Wein was no help at all; like many writers Len thought primarily in terms of words not images and apparently didn’t realize that this would be a problem. 

My solution was actually quite elegant and completely in keeping with the Hitchcock pastiche nature of the episode as a whole: stage everything from page 16 (scene C20 onward) from Talia’s POV, which would allow me to shoot Batman from slightly behind, keeping his closed eyes out of view without being obvious about it. Scene C19 is therefore pivotal, literally: Baman turns away from camera to the 3/4 rear angle he will be shot from for the rest of the sequence.

(This is Hitchcockian in that his movies are almost always meditations on P.O.V. and audience identification. In this case the “audience” briefly becomes Talia herself.)

In page 14, Batmans’s arm and shoulder are probably off model for the TV series. It would be interesting to see how the layout department re-drew it. I’m somewhat puzzled that I wasn’t directed to re-draw it myself. 

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3. 

Today I am posting pages 11 through 15 of  “Off Balance”, Act 3

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 11)

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3. 

Today I am posting pages 6 through 10 of  “Off Balance”, Act 3.

As a storyboard artist-in-training, one of my challenges was how to stage fast action sequences. I was advised to view Japanese animation, which was just starting to make its way to America. Many of my peers were into it big-time, and were happy to lend/give me 3rd and 4th generation copies of untranslated movies, some of them taped off Japanese TV, complete with un-expurgated commercials.

One of my favorites, and most influential,  was “The Professional: Gogol 13” by Osamu Dezaki (1983). Among its many virtues, Dezaki’s technique of splitting up the action into short scenes of characters sliding through frame on top of a high-speed animated speed-line b.g. was revelatory. It was a simple, easy way to do slow motion and high speed simultaneously. Perhaps this wasn’t HIS technique; for all i know it was already an anime cliche. It was new to me, and became an important part of my storytelling arsenal.

By the  time I started working on Batman: The Animated Series (1991), I was starting to move out of my anime obsession. But the stylized abstraction in which I had self-immersed for the past 6 years was quite useful in staging this sequence depicting debilitating disorientation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1SYyfCRHo4

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 10)

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3. 

Today, I will begin posting (5 pages per day) Act 3 of “Off Balance”.

I stated in an earlier post that I copied the pages from my originals before handing them in. Upon reflection, I realize that this in not the case, that the copy I poses was provided to me by the studio, Warner Animation, after the entire storyboard was complete (as evidenced by the inclusion of the contributions of Kevin Altieri, Mark Wallace and Mike Goguen, which would not have been the case if I’d made the copy myself) but before the director, Kevin Altieri, made any changes or the board went through timing (as there are no changes to our work and the board is untimed). 

My original concept for pages One through Four (panel 1) is that they be one long extended pan, but, for ease of production, broke them into 4 scenes (C1 through C4) joined by match cuts (or near match-cuts as in scenes C3 and C4). The board is untimed, but I can’t imaging the whole pan(s) took more that 3 seconds of screen time.

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 9)

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3.

I feel sort of guilty for not posting the intervening parts of Act 1 and Act 2 that was boarded by Mark Wallace, Kevin Altieri and Mike Goguen. I’m especially tempted to show the parts of Mark’s board that depict the effects of the Vertigo’s Eye Piece, which starts in my section on page 79. Mark’s strategy was to actually have the background warp and transform surrealistically; mine was to drop the background out altogether and have the characters float in disembodied space. Watch it on-line to see for yourself.

Oh hell. Here are 3 pages from Mark Wallace's section of Act One. His approach is less cinematic, more illustrational than mine. I recall he struggled with the sequence and complained to me about his difficulty. I advised him to think of it as an acid trip, but I don't think he understood what I meant. The hallmark of an acid trip isn't so much the visual pyrotechnics but the way it feels; everything is non-linear, disjointed, passivity inducing. At least that's been my experience.

Warner Brothers Batman Animated TV Series, Episode /"Off Balance" (Day 8)

I am doing a serialized post of my storyboard for the Batman: The Animated Series, episode 406 550, entitled “Off Balance”. I did this storyboard, I believe, in 1991, and it was aired on November 23, 1992 as the 44th  episode. I boarded much of Act 1, part of Act 2 and most of Act 3.

Today and tomorrow, I’ll be posting my section of Act 2, specifically the last 8 pages. To set it up, I’m posting the last 2 pages of Mike Goguen’s section, which depict Batman and Talia arriving at the location where my next bit occurs. So if you “like” pages 73 and 74, you’re “liking” the work of Mike, and what’s not to like? He’s quite good and has gone on to direct me in various TV series, among which are “Men In Black”, and “Jackie Chan” (I think), 

We storyboard artists are often assigned by location or set piece. Unfortunately I was, once again, working ahead of the background designer, so I had to design the Vertigo’s laboratory myself. I think the movie “Frankenstein” (directed by James Whale) was my main reference source, specifically the Film Classic Library book which had frame by frame reproductions from the film’s footage. I probably also had Bernie Wrightson’s “Frankenstein” illustrations on my art table.