I was given Dr Strange as my superhero. Dr Strange is a former neurosurgeon turned sorcerer supreme. As he began as a normal person, others find it easy to relate, similar to Batman and Iron Man -- realistic. He is the primary protector of the earth against magical and mystical threats, and draws his powers from mystical entities who lend to a particular effect.
The primary artist behind his comics, Steve Ditko,
based Dr Strange’s adventures on surrealism, creating a distorting and
hallucinogenic quality. The adventures take place in bizarre worlds with
twisting dimensions that resemble Salvador Dali’s paintings. His comics are
bright and colourful.
Dr Strange has quite a menacing facial expression, which is not the usual superhero look. He has exaggerated eyebrows and a very strong jawline, and these matched with his facial hair look quite wizard like. He wears a red cape, with an amulet around his neck. This matched with the blue of the rest of his costume makes him look quite majestic and royal.
For both of my characters I created a mood board, so I could see what kind of style they feature and could explain them without words. It meant I could look back at this to remind myself of their attributes without having to reread over my notes. For Dr Strange's moodboard, I used his costume colours for the background in tissue paper, and had his silhouette, to symbolize the fact that he is a loner and regularly stays and retreats in the shadows. I drew him in an action pose as I felt this was important, to show him empowered and fighting. In the background was a black and white image of a Salvador Dali painting, and I also incorperated astrological symbols to represent his mystical powers and being a protector of the cosmos.
Dr Hurt was my villain. I was daunted when
researching as he is a little known character, playing a small part within the
Batman comic books, but I feel this worked in my favour as it allowed me to
experiment and have freedom with the project, and not get inspired by other
artists interpretations.
Dr Hurt is an expert is psychiatry and hypnosis. He has been to edit murder victim details so they appear as mentally unstable suicide cases. There is little known about the identity of Dr Hurt, and also much speculation about who he really is. Much of the discussion about this enigma is that he is a supernaturally empowered ancestor of Batman, a devil, a demon, Batman’s long lost twin and finally, his father. I think this anonymity is something I want to play with in my final outcome.
Dr Hurt is an expert is psychiatry and hypnosis. He has been to edit murder victim details so they appear as mentally unstable suicide cases. There is little known about the identity of Dr Hurt, and also much speculation about who he really is. Much of the discussion about this enigma is that he is a supernaturally empowered ancestor of Batman, a devil, a demon, Batman’s long lost twin and finally, his father. I think this anonymity is something I want to play with in my final outcome.
Dr Hurt is considered immortal, though he
can be injured. His weapon of choice is a hand gun, and he is not physically
very strong. That being said, his strength lies in his wide network of
criminals, who he led in the black glove and club of villains against Batman.
In Dr Hurts moodboard, I added the words "Zur En Arrh" which is what he used as the stimulant when hypnotising Batman. I left the background black, and added his face with his prominent mask. I found a silver punctured sheet, and felt the holes actually looked similar to the bottom of bullets, which ties in with his choice of weapon. Adding an inverted image, I felt this looked quite demonic and evil. Finally, I added red to symbolise blood, and the newspaper headline "still hope for survivors." My plan was to cross "still" and write no, but I felt this would be too obvious, and he is a master of psychiatry -- leaving people with hope makes them "weak." It's something he would do, very twisted and deranged.
