Skip to main content

Bat Storm Coming to GoAnimate

Readers of my other blog will know that I'm a huge Batman fan. Specifically Batman on film as I don't read Batman comics at all. I've blogged about Batman many times. More about that in a moment.

When I recently saw the movie Hancock it struck a chord with something I had been thinking about when I watched the movie, The Dark Knight. That is the cost of the property damage many of these superhero characters cause in their quest to rid the world of evil scum.

Hancock creates a massive amount of unnecessary property damage that becomes a major cause of concern for the city he lives in. The cost of cleaning up after the heroes misadventures is a real issue.

If you look at the opening scenes of The Dark Knight where Batman sends in the Batmobile to 'terrorize' the criminals, the car crashes through a wall and fires missiles into what looks to be a toll booth office of the multi story car park they are in. What is that costing the rate payers of Gotham?

Enter my new superhero character Bat Storm. See the first preview below.

Bat Storm Preview by etourist on GoAnimate


When GoAnimate introduced superhero outfits into their character creator, because I'm a huge Batman fan, I set out to see if I could create a character that was as close to a Batman look-a-like as I could get. Seems easy enough but none of their superhero cowls have bat ears so I had to improvise (I'm not telling how I achieved the ears).

You also can't change the logo insignia of two lightening bolts on the superhero suits so when I was thinking up a name I related it back to that insignia so it would make sense - hence 'Bat Storm'.

My concept for Bat Storm the series is looking at the idea that being a superhero is actually pretty expensive. Especially if you're not a heir to an old money billionaire fortune like Bruce Wayne is. Bat Storm is low rent and working class. In fact he's a single Dad struggling to make ends meet and can't afford to run a car.

His daughter, Bat Flash is seventeen and works in the family business of crime fighting and children's party appearances (crime fighting doesn't actually pay a lot when you're a vigilante).

Bat Storm is just like Batman and has no real superpowers. In fact he's not even that great at solving crimes with his public school education and B minus grade point average. However he's determined to make crime fighting pay... at least a little more than being a criminal seems to pay!

Unlike the current Batman on film, played by Christian Bale, real superheroes do exist in Bat Storm's world. In particular, Super Charge and Charge Girl (Superman and Super Girl look-a-likes respectively). Bat Storm and Bat Flash see them as 'the competition' and don't tolerate it when they muscle in on Bat's turf.

As can be seen in this preview animation below with Bat Flash and Charge Girl:

Bat Storm Preview 2 by etourist on GoAnimate


By now you should have realised Bat Storm is a comedy series. My intention is to do a run of six episodes each 24 minutes long (each episode will be broken up further into 8 minute parts for GoAnimate). The challenge for me is to transition from short, 3-5 minute scripts to TV length sitcom scripts.

I'm hoping to have the first episode out by June/July of 2010 but it's a lot of work for one person so we'll have to see how it goes. If you're looking forward to it, let me know in the comments. It might just spur me on to get the series done sooner.

In the meantime here's a sequence featuring Super Charge from an unreleased, third preview animation (you may need to click on it to see a larger version):

Topics:

Comments

Post a Comment

This blog is monitored by a real human. Generic or unrelated spam comments with links to sites of dubious relativity may be DELETED.

I welcome, read, and respond to genuine comments relating to each post. If your comment isn't that save me some time by not posting it.

Popular posts from this blog

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 1)

Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D  which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D
1 comment
Continue Reading »

Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 Fast by Creating Fun, 2D, Animated Christmas Holiday Messages - Free Course by The Lazy Animator

H ave you ever wanted to send your friends and family fun, 2D animated, holiday messages, or just create 2D animated characters that you can make move and talk without learning difficult to master animation skills or spending hours drawing frame by frame? Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 is a professional quality, 2D animation studio software that is also very easy to produce impressive results with, even if you've never animated before, or can't draw. Don't Have Cartoon Animator 5 Download a free, 30 day trial . Easy Beginner Course I've created a completely free beginners course that teaches you my fast, easy way to rig and animate your first 2D custom character in Cartoon Animator 5 without complicated templates or any drawing skills at all. My online video course includes everything you need, including eight AI generated character sprite graphics, and four AI generated Human voice samples, so you can start learning right away. Eight AI generated character image
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Glif (Alpha) - Make Your Own Tiny AI Powered Niche Image Generator Apps

I  first heard about Glif through a YouTube video that mentioned you could get access to Flux Pro (the latest 'game changer AI' generative image model) through the site for free. While I had a vague notion from the video of what Glif was, I wasn't expecting it to be so easy to get started with, and so good with my very first results. Glif is an easy to use, low-code platform for creating tiny AI-powered generators called Glifs. While that may not sound inspiring, what Glifs allow you to do is create a tiny app that niches down to a specific type of AI generation that the user modifies with their own inputs. The best way to really understand is with an example.  My First Glif I've recently been using VivaGo's AI platform  (free and unlimited at the time of writing) to consistently generate full body characters in a front facing T-Pose that I can rig as front facing characters in Cartoon Animator. Unfortunately it can be a bit hit or miss maintaining the T-Pose part
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List - Animation and Video Life

Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/se
9 comments
Continue Reading »

Krita AI Diffusion - Generative Image AI For Krita is Seriously Useful, Powerful and Free (If You Can Install it Locally)

Generative AI sequence of a woman in a business suit. From sketch to refined image using Krita AI Diffusion - by TET G enerative image AI, where you describe an image with a text prompt to an Artificial Intelligence model and it produces a new image based on your prompt, is gaining a strong hold as a tool for many artists. Krita AI Diffusion brings generative AI image tools right into your favourite free and opensource, graphics editor, Krita. Not only that, if you have a computer with decent specs (and at least 10GB of hard drive space), Krita AI Diffusion is completely free. What If I Don't Have a Powerful Computer? If you're in my situation, with a computer that was around before anyone in the mainstream had even heard of generative AI, you can still access Krita AI Diffusion for free, using a cloud based AI server, Interstice  and 300 tokens, to get you started. Once your initial tokens run out, purchase 5000 more for 10€ (approx US$11.00). Tokens never expire. I would
1 comment
Continue Reading »

Wonder Unit Storyboarder - Free Storyboarding Software for People Who Can (or Can't) Draw

Wonder Unit Storyboarder.  As an independent and solo animator I'm always tempted to try and skip storyboarding my animated shorts because they're usually only single scene sketch comedy type jokes. As a result I have many unfinished projects that kind of petered out due to having no clear finishing line. Storyboarding your productions, no matter how small, gives you a step by step guide of every shot that needs to be completed (no planning shots as you animate). It also allows you to create an animatic that gives you a rough preview of the finished production. In short, you shouldn't skip storyboards as they, generally, increase the chance of the project being completed. Disclaimer - I'm Not a Fan of Storyboarder Upfront, Wonder Unit's Storyboarder  is not my preferred storyboarding software. However it's completely free, has a number of very compelling featu
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »

Using Avatar Maker with Cartoon Animator - Free Vector Cartoon Avatar Creator with Four Art Styles

I'm always on the lookout for cartoon avatar makers of any kind, whether it be ones that 'cartoonify' your photo, or ones that let you build a cartoon likeness from a library of individual features.  Free Avatar Maker  falls into the latter category and can be used for making head and shoulder cartoon avatars. While it doesn't have an extensive library of character features (you may struggle to get a good likeness), uniquely it will make your avatar in four different art styles concurrently, allowing you to save the one you like most, or even all four.  I wasn't overly impressed how my TET avatar looked in the first two styles, but style three is quite possibly the coolest looking version of my avatar I've ever seen in a third party avatar creator. It's a very contemporary style. Style four, line art, is also not too bad. Avatar Maker's User Interface. Switch between the four different art styles shown across the top at any time. I particularly like the
Post a Comment
Continue Reading »