Finishing the project

The model has been imported to UDK, and lighting added. I had intended to rig and animate the character model but time didn't allow for it at the end of the project. My attempts at rigging the Batman model resulted in his wrists tying into knots. I could not find any clear error in the geometry, so he remains static within the batcave diorama environment.

Also i had intended to look at using a material to create a cell shaded effect to better mimic the look of the comic book that i was trying to achieve. I looked at this tutorial, but once again time didn't allow for this to be implemented.
https://forums.epicgames.com/threads/863316-Edge-Detection-or-quot-Borderlands-quot-style-shader-in-UDK

At the end of this project, I'm glad to have finished it, and to have finished it at all is a greater success than i would have predicted in the weeks that have passed. I found the environment creation aspect of this project difficult, it is not what i enjoy modelling and what i have found most difficult is occupying the space with additional objects.
All in all, i have tried to create a moody atmosphere like i found when reading the Dark knight returns. Below is the rendered matinee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80L-HvMqhKg

Exporting to UDK

The models will be exported to UDK to have the cinematic made within the game engine. The main body of the cave is a simple egg shell, with objects placed within to occupy the space.

The cave is never clearly shown in the comic, though some of his trophies (giant joker card and 1947 lincoln penny) later feature in the sequel 'Dark Knight strikes again'. i imagined much of his equipment would have been destroyed, and anything containing potentially dangerous information removed. This created a deliberately sparse space, where the focal points of the diorama are the tank and the shrine to the deceased Robin, Jason Todd.

The batman

The base mesh already made... The conversion was simple. I wanted to capture the look of the original comic book as closely as possible, giving the textures a sort of water colour effect.

In addition to the character model, and the reason for choosing to make it Batman, i have produced several assets from the comic book. The main focal point in environment, aside from batman will be the batmobile. As previously mentioned it more closely resembles a bat tank.

building the dark knight

The art style of Frank Miller is quite naive by general comic book standards, with the strength of his writing the main focus of his books. However it is also highly stylised, and this is what i want to capture. The appearance of Batman alters throughout the comic, each foe he faces wares him down and by the end of the book he is hunched over and pained with the mounting injuries he incurs facing the likes of the 'Mutant gang' leader who is half Batman's age and has twice strength and speed in battle.

http://pixel-dan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/DarkKnightReturnsThumb.jpg

The above image is of the action figure which i will be basing my version of the character on.

In the diorama will also be the batcave and it's contents, including the Batmobile, which more closely resembles a bat- tank.

Images scanned from comic book graphic novel- Dark knight returns (Miller, 1986)

A change of direction

After my Alpha stage presentation o the character, it was made clear to me that the diorama/environment element of my model was as important as the character model itself. It is with this in mind I have chosen to repurpose the model to be a Batman, from the comic book series ‘Dark knight returns’.

In this comic series Bruce Wayne has been in retirement from the cape crusader role for ten years, and now in his early 50’s he is forced back into the fray after a new gang threaten al of Gotham city, as well as the return of old foes Two face and The Joker.

The body of Batman, similarly to Ax man is vastly bulky with a combination of the body builder’s regime the character maintains and middle aged spread. The main reason I have chosen to shift direction is for the purpose of creating a batcave lair for the character to engage with in the required cinematic. 

Above images scanned from comic book graphic novel- The Dark knight returns (Miller, 1986)