Penny's SFWorkbench

I wouldn’t have done so much work on ‘89 Batman stuff except that there’s almost nothing out there, and what is tends to be, shall we say, questionable. Whether you love the movie or not, it’s a pop culture cornerstone and immensely influential, and deserves to have its designs accurately recreated.

The Batwing is no exception! This model isn’t a repro of any one Batwing from the film but a conglomeration of the full-size cockpit set and 1:4 scale hero model, with additional details taken from the 1:12 scale model to fill in the gaps (as the 1:4 model was only intended to be shot from certain angles and was consequently asymmetrical and devoid of many ventral details).

Rico’s “puzzle gun” from Judge Dredd (1995). This model was visible in a previous post, but I totally forgot to talk about it. The original prop was actually (at least) four different props edited together: A static closed model, a static unfolded model, a spring-loaded unfolding model, and a mechanized version with moving scanner light and drawer.

I started by modeling the unfolding version as it’s the most “iconic” (aka cool) version in the movie, and worked backwards to combine the details and functionality of the other versions. Open/closed is easy, all it needs is a locking mechanism, the problem is with the opening “drawer” version as the drawer itself and the badge inside both intersect with the other parts and it’s literally impossible for the object to exist as depicted. Which is annoying.

More Batman ‘89 stuff. Batman himself is a rare dive into a character instead of an object, but I guess the sculpted costume kinda diminished that a bit... the feet are just placeholders, please please please ignore those. The muscle forms need a few tweaks but they’re basically there. The belt isn’t done but, once it is, it’ll be the only part of the model I can re-use for a Batman Returns model. The gloves can be kinda re-used (the sequel suit gloves are mostly the same, sans forearm plate, but are reproductions and have a bunch of little differences) though everything else was redone from scratch and I’ll have to do the same.

The Batmobile is pretty self-explanatory; the official blueprints out there are based on pics rather than the build plans and are super warped and basically useless, but I found a decent scan of the orthographic views that were blown up to carve the polystyrene original! Most of the surface detail is missing but the basic forms were what I really needed and I’m confident in the accuracy of the body’s shape. Things like the side mechanics were found objects stuck on later so I’m leaving those till last (since they won’t affect the modeling process) and the rear trunk vents are placeholders till I’m comfortable with the curvature of the hatch.

Started picking up some old projects, including these ‘89 Batman props that ended up not being used in the film. Up top, a time bomb, and below, a tracking device with spring-loaded antenna.