Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween to all the ghosts and goblins out there!

As is my tradition, I strive to do decent jack-o-lantern carvings and each year attempt a theme of sorts. Usually it isn't solely comics. I usually only have one comic lantern each year, what I call 'my pumpkin'.

But this year is the 25th anniversary of Batman the Animated Series and I thought what theme could be better. With a couple of nephews who are all into Batman these days, I decided I'd get carving. I hope these turned out okay.


I wanted to do something a bit art deco for the 'main' pumpkin, something sort of daring and risky. I felt that end image of the opening when the lightning bolt lights up Batman is so iconic that it would be the ultimate homage.

This was tough for a couple of reasons. For one, I drew the stencil on backwards from the show opening, a rookie mistake. But then trying to decide what would be carved, uncarved, and through was a challenge. I needed to add details so people would know this was Batman.

I am on the fence about this one, not sure if I am happy with it or not.

Here it is uncarved.

The Joker jack-o-lantern was a much more straightforward design with easier decisions to make.

I contemplated just scraping the rind off the hair but in the end decided it was fine to keep up essentially uncarved.

The mouth was the hardest part as carving out those teeth without breaking the demarcations meant a steady hand and careful knife work.

Here it uncarved.





And then to complete the triad, I carved a Harley Quinn jack-o-lantern. And I did my personal favorite version of her, the classic Harley.

This was basically a straightforward carving but I am very very pleased with it. While the Batman one I felt was ambitious because of the image I was trying to pull off, this one was ambitious because it would be easy to screw up.

This one is my favorite of the year!



Here is Harley uncarved, with color to remind me which side of her costume was which color.

Anyways, enjoy the candy and hope you get more treats than tricks!
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7 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 31, 2017 at 9:03 AM

    These are great designs!

    "With a couple of nephews who are all into Batman these days,"

    Sigh. OF COURSE they are. Not that there's something wrong with that, but I'm tired of DC pushing Batman at other characters' expense, the "Batgod" meme and the legions of fanboys perpetuating it.

    I think the Batman image looks real good. And I like the Harley image. I like Harley's classic looks and I haven't any of her Post-Flashpoint designs.

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  2. Martin GrayOctober 31, 2017 at 9:35 AM

    You, sir, are far too hard on yourself, these are brilliant. Lightning Batman is actually my favourite.

    And did I hear a certain someone rather liked them too?

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  3. AnjOctober 31, 2017 at 10:50 AM

    I tweeted out the Harley Quinn one and Paul Dini saw it and retweeted.

    My life is a little more complete.

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  4. Martin GrayOctober 31, 2017 at 10:58 AM

    Thanks - don't hide your light under a pumpkin!

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  5. AnonymousOctober 31, 2017 at 12:27 PM

    Yeah I'm sick of DC's BatGhod Meme as well, but the Gotham Crew is pretty much tailor made for Halloween what kin yuh do? Superman and Supergirl are all about Christmas - Hannukah et al...or they should be...the red capes alone are a dead easy sell.
    :)

    Oh right the pumpkins...very nice!
    Happy Halloween

    :)

    JF

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  6. AnonymousOctober 31, 2017 at 2:02 PM

    I love them. Did you the SBBFS Supergirl one on your Twitter too? That's a show that ended far too soon.

    "We are not calling ourselves the shabuphs!" :)

    Happy Halloween and thank you for the work you put into the Supergirl community.

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  7. AnjOctober 31, 2017 at 3:06 PM

    Thanks for comments!

    I did the SBFFs one I tweeted a few years ago. It is posted somewhere/somewhen on this site!

    ReplyDelete