Was Furst really just another Bo Welch/Barbara Ling?

[Furstmobile]

Blasphemy I know. It goes against everything we've been conditioned to believe by our trading cards and magazines.

A redheaded American man legally named "Fireball" claims he designed the Batmobile in 1986. Fireball just recently published a book with his Batmobile art on the cover. I kinda want to buy it, but I need to know if it has anecdotes and explanations. Not just a bunch of pictures and movie titles.
http://fireballtim.com/2013/04/02/fireball-rides-the-batmobile/

A bizarre podcast interview with Fireball that tells us nothing.
http://tuneinunlockattain.com/2011/07/01/june-20-2011-–-interview-with-fireball-tim-lawrence-–-master-key-coaching-teleseminars-42/

On this piece, why does it say "R E T U R N" at the top? And why is cropped so we can't see the whole thing? Was he just a Batman Returns production illustrator?


To be honest, there has always been a bit of doubt in the back of my mind regarding the Batmobile's "final" design.

The Brtiish crew build him to be some kind of prolific Da Vinci-like design god. People like John Evans don't acknowledge that other illustrators worked the film. According to the legend as presented by WB on the 2005 documentaries, Burton & Furst spent a weekend with an UNNAMED SCULPTOR that crafted that large black maquette of the finalized design you see everywhere on people's desks and backgrounds during interviews. I can't find anything about who that guy was or Fireball on ChicksLoveTheCar forums.

The only other artist's work that seemed to be publicly credited/shown at the time was storyboard artist Michael White and Bob Ringwood. Everything else was lumped into the Anton Furst category. Years later David Russell came forward on the internet with some unseen stuff, but it mostly only added to Furst's legend. It's all very traditional Batplane and Batmobile designs and cartoonish action scene illustrations. In Comics Scene interview with Furst, they show a Batcave, cathedral, the Batmobile concept and Batwing drawings. The Batwing looks significantly better.
http://www.1989batman.com/2014/07/vintage-magazine-article-comics-scene.html




Batman Forever storyboard artist/illustrator Robbie Consing recently commented on the Film Sketchr blog saying that Those stunning black and white drawings were done by Anton's brilliant art director and longtime collaborator Nigel Phelps (now the production designer of TROY, the TRANSFORMERS series, WORLD WAR Z)... but it's so great to see these gorgeous drawing in one place. Thank you!

Was Furst a Walt Disney/Bob Kane style charlatan?

Was he just posing in front of art for promo videos/photos?

Is Consing referring to ALL of the drawings or merely the "stunning" looking ones? To me the all of the ones that appear considerably more stunning were done for DC's Gotham redesign. (which both Consing and the maintainer of the blog fail to point out) The first issue of Destroyer was Feburary of 92.




Does his trained eye recognize the work of his peers? Or has he discussed this Phelps himself or looked through Warner's archives? On the actual 89 concepts, you can spot in subtle differences in style and technique but Phelps and Furst's stuff is nearly impossible to tell apart. (if that's the case) Though some may merely be the difference between a truly conceptual piece and something that's more of an exact plan for the eventual matte painting. But in the case of the DC redesigns, they are very different from Gotham in the movie.

Your average "Production Designer" doesn't actually do anything other than telling the people who actually have to put pencils to paper/hands into clay what to do. Then, due to the way the system is laid out, they get all the credit in promotional material. Bo Welch is a former architect, so it seems likely that he could have created things like floor plans and blueprints himself. But so far nothing like that from him has surfaced in 20 years.

Could Bo Welch be behind this?

ComicsAlliance ignoramus Chris Sims mistakenly attributed paintings by Thomas Lay to Bo Welch in a recent post.



https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-Warren-Manser/325159847541509
Somewhat off-topic, but I saw the true Clooneymobile designer, Harald Belker comment on the true Man of Steel Superman/presumably Affleck Batsuit costume designer's Facebook page, Warren Manser. (Manser was also involved with actual fabrication of the costume, Keith Christensen designed the Kryptonian armor conceptually) Belker left a bitter remark about leaving out the part about how the production/costume designer always gets all the credit on one of his interview links. Manser conceded but mentioned taking things one step at a time.

Art department underlings!

If this is true I want my name changed back to Uncle Bingo, Paul!

[d_osborn]

Interesting post!

I'm really doubting that this Fireball dude designed the Batmobile in '86. The Burton/Hamm project didn't even get a greenlight from WB until '88. The image on the cover of his book, while cool, looks more like a modern digital piece than a vintage design. I could be wrong on that, though. It's possible the corny lens flares were added in later. Even then, we all know the earlier designs looked different from what his images show, including the design dated 1/88 below. 



He also mentioned Jay Ohrberg building the final car, which we all know is false. From what I remember, Ohrberg slimmed down the car for RETURNS. I'm betting that, if anything, this Fireball guy worked on RETURNS.  Of course, it's not like there were any major design changes on the car. The Fireball images look cool, though! I would love to see more.

As for Furst and his team, he definitely didn't draw everything. The production design process is collaborative, just like cinema as a whole. He was steering the ship, so to speak. There is a lot of variance in style in art from the 89 movie. I'm not sure which, if any, was by Furst. This doesn't discredit his genius in the production design, though. The concept art wasn't ever meant to be the final representation of his work on the design.

I've said it before-- it's a damn shame there isn't some sort of "art of" book for the 89 film.

[Furstmobile]

Yeah, I thought about all those things and after looking at a lot of versions I'm pretty sure he's doing "clever watermarking" by adding those kinds of effects. David Russell (who did those Batmobiles) is another guy that's not credited in the art department who came forward with a bunch of weird stuff (almost all unused) and it just makes you wonder, man what did all those people with actual credits do? We'll probably never know for sure, and it looks like WB wants to keep it that way.

Tim Burton & Julie Hickson did some stuff prior though. It's possible some art like this could have been done in L.A.

Here's a Wayne Manor concept that WB included with their Tim Burton Collection dvd box set. Looks a lot different than all the other concepts available to us, but if I had to guess, Marty Kline maybe?


You can see a portion of this piece behind this guy. Everything on display behind him is by Marty Kline, Tim Flattery and Jacques Rey. The only two I don't know are Gotham Public Works logo and the Cobblepot poster. So basically the idea was to interview every department head in front of the art of nameless underlings?

There's still a lot of cool stuff designed for these movies that's never really been shown.


They were going to continue the "Bat-Beacon" motif from the reflectors on the house down to the Batcave tunnels when the car leaves the property.



Off-topic, but I think this Spacedock concept may be by Tom Lay. He worked on Wrath of Khan/Search for Spock but examples of his Trek illustrations are weirdly hard to come by.


Hre's a cool picture of Bo Welch standing in front of other people's art: