Batman 1989 Batwing Concept Art and Storyboards By David Russell

In one of the climactic battle scenes for the movie Batman (1989) the Joker faces off against Batman in his plane, the Batwing. David Russell (Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Red Tails) worked on the film helping to design and doing storyboards.

He has some great quotes in an interview with The Movie Blog, but there's one point he makes about working with Tim Burton.

In the early stages Burton was trying to connect the classic Batman with the Dark Knight. It did seem that he wasn’t very familiar with the character. Burton is not a particularly adept storyteller, but his visual signature is truly amazing. From the outset, Tim wanted Batman to be a very dark film. I started out designing in pencil, then black, but Tim kept wanting an even darker style, of imagery, so at the very end of my assignment, I switched to white pencil and black paper.

The scene as it was filmed is below.

See more of David Russell's portfolio at http://www.dynamicimagesdr.com.

What do you think of the illustrations? Do you remember the Batwing?

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Write by: Arek - Monday, June 18, 2012