Another Cass Cain costume design from me!

This one is less interesting than the one by someone else I linked to below.  I was thinking along Kirby lines as far as the costume goes, but the drawing itself is pretty shabby.  I tried to work out a few kinks in those "background" images, but I was really freezing up for some reason.  That's Cesar Romero as the Joker to the left, and to the right there's Hayley Kiyoko, a multi-talented entertainer (she sings, she dances, she acts, she does it all!) who I think looks a lot like Damion Scott's original Cass at times.  So I "cast" her as Cass and tend to model my Cass' facial features after hers.

One of my many Cass Cain costume redesigns...

This one features a helmet with a vampire bat teeth motif for the mouthpiece area.  And a katana because swords are cool.  I doubt she carries it around.  She probably picked it up after beating up someone who uses one.  No clumsy cape.  Cass doesn't need something that would just wrap around her in a fight and inhibit her movement.  No bright yellow belt with giant pouches full of junk she never uses anyway, although I imagine there's a grappling gun thing attached to the back of the more subdued belt she is wearing.  There's a self-portrait of the exhausted, disappointed artist, Cesar Romero Joker, confused Luke Skywalker and a tiny Superman hidden among the faces and figures in the background.  Actually, that's all random stuff done for inking practice.

Here's yet another impressive Cass Cain Batgirl re-design...

This one is by Zoe Maxine, who I don't know.  I just found her work doing one of my Cass Google searches, and I like it!  It works equally well with Cass' Batgirl or Black Bat identities.

The mask and bat-symbol on this one are similar to some ideas I've been knocking around.  The treatment of the ragged cape with contrast lining is brilliant, as is the subtle bat-outline design when she closes the seam across her chest.  That's definitely one I wish I'd come up with, although I'm working up something entirely minus a cape.

Another thing I like in Maxine's design is the "sans belt" thing she has going on here.  I mean, why does Cass particularly need a belt with gigantic pouches anyway?  It's a pain in the ass to get the perspective on those right, and it's not as if she uses anything more than a few batarangs and a grappling hook and line.    Over on Marvel World, Daredevil gets away with just a billy club device, so there's no reason Cass couldn't do the same.  It's fists and feet with Cass.

Fantastic work!

Somebody already did a VERY nice Cass Cain redesign!

And it's Thomas Branch coming up on the inside, taking the lead by a nose... one length... two lengths... running away with it down the home stretch!  Six lengths and the finish!  What a race!  What a win!  What a costume! The Wonder Girl is a fantastic design, too, even if that's not my favorite version of the character.  I'm a 1960s era Wonder Girl fan and I always will be.  She's cool and fun in a way not many characters-- even those claiming her superhero name-- can match. 

But this is a Cass Cain Batgirl blog, so let's talk about Branch's work on her costume.  While I'm not sure if it's Cass-Batgirl or Cass-Black Bat, it works for either.  I like the exposed eyes for visual communicative ability and giving an artist the opportunity to draw her facial expressions, even if she's not going to be chatting everyone up like your Spider-Man or Deadpool type heroes.  The capeless look for extra-martial arts freedom-of-movement magic is definitely the way to go.  She really needs to tie back that hair so it doesn't get in her eyes while she's kicking ass, though.

There are some interesting points raised by both Dean Trippe in the post and by a commenter below it in the comments thread. 

One, I agree with Trippe these costumes have a "Marvel" kinda vibe.  But I think Branch's Cass also has a GI Joe action figure look.  You know, the 1980s toy line, which featured ninja and ninja-inspired characters like that guy with the mask with the wolf and that guy in white.  That mask-wolf guy didn't talk either, for some reason.  I don't remember their names, but you know who I'm talking about, right?  Cass looks like she could be a friend or partner to either of those guys.  Maybe it's the katana strapped to her back.  None of this is remotely a negative.  Actually, I think these are all positives.

Two, as the commenter asks, does Thomas Branch use fitness magazine or celebrity photos as reference, or does he trace directly from them?  Whichever it is, I don't care if he does.  As Trippe points out in his reply to the person bringing this up, Branch adds to or changes the image enough that it constitutes an original work.  I look at both those drawings and the farthest thing from my mind is tracking down original photos Branch might have based them on.  Trippe is also correct in stating there are plenty of artists who work this way-- I could list some big-name greats who occasionally (or more often) relied on photo reference (my university illustration instructors were always after us to establish our own morgue files for that kind of thing in case we got jobs drawing cars or fashions from three years ago or something), either drawing from it or tracing it outright then modifying the proportions and lines to fit their styles or used half-tone or high-contrast copies to paste up backgrounds in their work.

Some people do misuse this resource-- there's one guy who's infamous for it and I think we all know who he is without my having to name him-- but using a photo to draw from or even tracing it are not in themselves wrong.  I don't feel like going into great detail the times when it is wrong.  Think about it and get back to me with your own take. 

I will tell you upfront here my own process sometimes includes referencing some of those crazy Japanese martial arts pose books you can buy here, with fight scenes photographed from several angles.  I've "cast" celebrities as characters before, too.  One of my Cass drawings stars Japanese actor Ryoko Hirosue because I liked the pose and extreme camera angle.  Probably not appropriate for a story, but perfectly fine for one of my crap drawings-- and it does help me learn about anatomy and foreshortening for when I come up with a pose out of my own imagination (I do this a lot, too).

Use the tools you have.  That's what they exist for.  Lately, I've been playing around with Manga Studio 5 and you'd have to be crazy not to take advantage of that program's customizable and poseable male and female figures.  Do a thumbnail of the pose you want, pull one of those onto your page, stretch and bend it until it work and use the heck out of the three-point perspective ruler Manga Studio automatically generates based on your camera angle.  You can trace out a rough based on the pose, then add your own proportions and details in your own style and dress it up, but it's a handy tool to have at your disposal, especially if you're a like me-- I'm a stickler for relative heights and distances between characters and their environments and getting perspective just so, but I don't have the brains to figure all that out manually or the skill to fake it believably.  I know the theories behind it all, which is important even when you're using Manga Studio... but now I don't have to sweat the math.

Anyway, the point is, Thomas Branch has a way with costumes!  I'll flat out state for the record however he works, he's a better artist than I am, and I'm jealous as all get out of his Cass!

Cass Cain redesign marker sketch...

More Black Bat than Batgirl.  The mask isn't working, but you can't tell these things until you try them.  Back to the drawing board!

Coming up with an attractive and functional helmet/mask for Cass is a fun process...

I wish I had time to scan the sketches I'm doing, or at least snap some photos with my iPhone.  I think I've got a new-look Batgirl/Black Bat costume for Cass I'm fairly happy with, but her headgear is another matter.  I've experimented with full-head helmets, anime Batgirl-inspired regular helmets with goggles, flared cowls with an open area up top and around her nose and mouth and even a strange mask that's reminiscent of the cat/butterfly mask worn by the character Noodle from the animated band Gorillaz during their most recent phase.

The suit is a sleek, one-piece affair with a larger and more stylized bat-symbol on the chest.  The color scheme is a very dark gray that you can either read as something close to charcoal or else a matte black, with the bat outlined in yellow and completely blacked in.  The belt is yellow but thinner and features rounded pouches in the back, out of the way.  Cass was never one to use a lot of tools-- all she really needs is that grappling gun and some batarangs and she's good to go.  None of that requires giant flopping pouches, but she can add any that become necessary depending on her mission.  The boots have a kind of flapped or hinged ankle arrangement.  No cape.

The first helmet I came up with for her really clashed with the suit's sleekness.  It made her look clumsy and top-heavy.  So I decided that wasn't the way to go, unless I wanted to bulk up her boots or add some visible padding at her elbows or knees, but then we're cutting down on her mobility, which was the basis for the entire design.  Another issue was I wanted her to have a little mouth opening and a simple rectangular one is too Iron Man and expressionless, but when I went for an inverted delta or crescent, the design looked too Star Wars stormtrooper for my taste.  Eventually I took a design cue from the fangs real bats have, with some triangular openings suggesting a vampire bat in the abstract.

After that I played around with the flared mask, which looked menacing but a little too alien.  I 've always admired Jamie Hewlett's Gorillaz designs, but just as I wanted to avoid duplicating Annie Wu's work on Batman Beyond, I also wanted to do something more me.  So I modified that into an open-topped cowl but I haven't worked out the way it wraps around Cass's neck and the back of her head, or a functional hairstyle to go with it.

This probably sounds like a lot of work for a fan drawing project, especially one for a character who doesn't officially exist.  But I do this during big group meetings here-- they're all in Japanese and I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm hearing anyway-- and it keeps me entertained.  Rethinking character costumes is fun stuff.  I've got a couple of ideas for both Superman and Wonder Woman, too!

This weekend I'll post some of my efforts here and we can all have a good laugh.

I'm redesigning Cass... again!

Back when Cass first found herself undergoing a heel-turn (as they say in professional wrestling and podiatry, I believe), I took it upon myself to invent my own version of Cass who was quiet and deadly and all those things we liked about her in the first place.  Only I put her in a retro-style outfit with a very short cape which would be more visually symbolic, I suppose.  Both the graphic novel Watchmen and the Pixar film The Incredibles show the drawbacks of having a cape, and with Batgirl's hyper-active fighting style, I just figured a cape would be more of a hindrance to her than its supposed intimidation/distraction/confusing factor (or whatever reason the Bat-family relies on capes) could offset.

I also gave her a mouth-less mask with no stitching because 1) it offers more anonymity, 2) she doesn't particularly feel the need to blab about with either friends or foes and 3) even if she should decide to make a speech, a mouth-less mask never stopped Spider-Man so why should it stop her?  And then I promptly discarded the mask in almost every drawing because I like drawing her facial expressions and Cass wasn't concerned with protecting her civilian identity anyway.

Her Batgirl uniform is pretty dramatic, in all black with those big stitches around the mouth (you'd think Batman would have bought her a new mask at some point with a detachable mouth-covering using Velcro or something less obvious, though) and a simple contour line bat-symbol.  Whether it's some kind of stretchable "ballistics cloth," leather or PVC is up to artistic interpretation, but however we have it, it looks might cool.  The cape, though, I felt was a bit much.  Looks cool, but-- once again-- impractical.

Working out the curve and perspective on those comically exaggerated belt pouches drives me up the wall, though!  And other than a batarang or that grappling gun, has Cass ever really pulled a lot of equipment from out of them for use?  I mean, maybe she has fingerprint or DNA swabbing kits in one of them, but I can't think of any stories where Cass scoured a location for those kinds of clues.  She usually just goes for the obvious stuff like a note for Spoiler to read to her, then grabs a punk and beats the necessary info out of him.  But I digress.  It's still a great costume.

But I also like Cass' Black Bat outfit.  Mostly, I like the pointy domino mask which reveals most of her face.  It helps reader identification and even though artists like Damion Scott would give the faceless mask some wild expressions that more or less accomplished the same thing, I like seeing an actual see a face there, or most of one, so we can see how artists draw Cass' "acting."  That's an important part of storytelling.  The elements I'm not so keen on are the long, loose hair, the scarf-like wrap-around cape (ask Isadora Duncan why that's a worse choice than even a traditional superhero cape) and the occasional addition of pointy claws.  I've never really understood the white, bandage-looking arm wraps, either, but that's just me.  Pull back her hair so it's out of her face and eyes, ditch the scarf and the arm wraps and you'd have something super-slick.

And it was with that thought-- and the impending return of Stephanie Brown to the New 52 DC universe, which means a costume change for her-- I set to work coming up with a plausible Batgirl costume for a New 52 Cass.  Minus the cowl stitching, the cape and the big pouches, the original Cass Batgirl costume would look an awful lot like a female version of the Batman Beyond suit.  That's fine but too easy.  Doesn't require much thought or creativity.  Annie Wu's recent futuristic Batgirl design is perfect for that character, and I love the bat-symbol shoulder pad effect, but I don't want to copy her.

My idea is Cass as a razor-sharp fighter who is willing to trade a certain level of protection for mobility.  After all, she "reads" her opponents' moves and goes into pre-emptive defensive postures and moves before they can even attack.  So I thought she's going to need a sleek yet amply-protected look that ditches the cape but replaces the cowl with a stylized but very light helmet that covers her entire head.  Yeah, kind of a fanciful notion, but no more so than the idea Superman needs a high collar and gladiator boots.  The ears are larger and more accurate to a real bat, there are menacing lensed eyes and there's a small mouth opening so she can breath.  Plus, she can take it off and kick it to the side when she's in the mood not to hide her face.  I really don't think she cares about that kind of thing.

I've modified the fins on the gloves for use as offensive weapons and defensively as shown in the recent Christian Bale Batman flicks.  The suit will have visible seams so you can see it's made of some kind of imaginary flexible protective material-- not PVC, not leather, not movie-style armor.  Her boots are martial arts inspired-- I think heavy treads look cool but take away her climbing ability and some of her "feel" for whatever terrain she's fighting on, but old school superhero type thin boots are kind of silly for this "realistic" style Cass.

This consists so far of exactly two sketches, both executed on the fly at work.  The rest has been largely a thought exercise.  And I haven't figured out the damned belt yet!  When I do, I'll start drawing some colored sketches and put a few of them here even if they look like crap.  That's what I do!

My choice for best blog post title about Stephanie Brown's return...

It has to be this one by J. Caleb Mozzocco.  That he illustrated it with some sweet Dean Trippe artwork only adds to its appeal.  Mozzocco makes some solid points about Stephanie's potential costume, too.  All the costumes, really.  I also wish DC had gone to Darwyn Cooke to re-design everyone-- except Katana; that one is a visual home run-- and I also think Mozzocco's right on with the idea to have Trippe handle the costumes for the younger heroes.  In fact, it would be pretty cool if they at least used some variation on Trippe's Spoiler design for New 52 Steph.  The skirt isn't a necessity, although the black breaks up the purple monochromatic monotony.  Maybe they would do something else.  Or just keep the skirt.

What do you think the chances of that are?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  High collar, pouches, lots of grooves and lines and general awkwardness await, I'm afraid.  On the other hand, even if the costume looks as lousy as most of the others, it's still Stephanie Brown wearing it, which is a damn sight better than no Steph and no costume at all.

Cass lives in the Previews catalog!

Well, in chess piece form.  Yes, it's the fantastic little Cassandra Cain as Black Bat chess pawn we've talked about before.  You know, in the imaginary conversation between this blog writer and you, the blog reader.  Bleeding Cool adds another voice to the pro-Cass din and clamor that even now grows from... oh... twenty people to almost thirty.  What I like about the Bleeding Cool article is how they point out what a great costume she has as Black Bat.

I'd suggest a couple of changes-- ditch the claw-fingers and pull that hair back into a more practical bun to keep it out of her eyes (she's a fighter, for crying out loud and would be very pragmatic about such things)-- but I have to agree.  Wonderful costume design.  Simple and dramatic.  You can hardly go wrong with basic black and the white hand wraps are a nice contrasting visual element it would be fun to draw as blurs when Cass unloads on some poor thug or villain or super-miscreant.  I like to draw Batgirl Cass mask-less, so a costume with an actual face is a plus as far as I'm concerned.