***This article originally appeared in the November ’22 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 324)***
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more iconic comic character than Batman. Whether in the pages of a graphic novel, animated series or live-action film, he’s a singular force. This fall, a new animated preschool series based in his world will make its debut. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, Batwheels is actually the second project in the DC Universe to target preschoolers. (The first one was the 2005 show Krypto the Superdog!).
This very young take on everything Batman focuses on several young, powered up vehicles who work along with Batman, Robin and Batgirl to defend the one and only Gotham City. They’re fighting evil and also working out their conflicts and challenges as they go.
“That was really the key challenge right from the start,” says co-executive producer Michael G. Stern, an animation veteran whose credits include preschool shows as varied as Chuggington, Doc McStuffins and Sofia the First.
“Sam Register, the head of the studio, challenged me to create something that would work wonderfully for preschoolers but also preserve the integrity — the cool — of Batman. There have been plenty of preschool superhero shows, but they’ve always used babyish versions of the heroes. I think kids, even young ones, can see through this. They see a big-headed, kiddified version of a familiar superhero and they think, that’s not the character I know. They can see right through it!”
Cool on Wheels
“With Batwheels, my idea was to keep Batman the same cool character everyone knows and loves, and to create brand new characters — Batman’s vehicles — that would be the ‘kids’ of the show and allow our young audience to see the stories through their eyes,” he explains.
The creative team also needed to capture the look and feel of Batman’s world while making it appealing to a younger audience. This design challenge put the crew to the test with some fascinating results.
“We knew from the start Batwheels was meant for a preschool audience and that it would be set at night — a pretty rare setting for this age group,” says the show’s supervising producer Simon J. Smith, who directed Bee Movie and Penguins of Madagascar. “With this in mind, we wanted to make sure potential viewers would gravitate to the screen if they saw an image of the show. We kept coming back to the word ‘fun’ as a target. It may sound cliché, but it worked well for every aspect of the show. If it didn’t feel ‘fun’ it shouldn’t be in the show.”
Smith says the team also discovered there was an intensity level they couldn’t go above with either a combination of form of the buildings or backgrounds, frequency of detail or contrast and color palette. “Working with amazing initial designs from art director Florent Auguy at Superprod in Paris, and honing the look with our art director Kilian Plunkett at Warner Bros. Animation, we gradually found our Gotham City and recipe for the show: Approach Gotham City as one big theme park. With this central idea, the lighting and designs started to come easily, because we knew everyone loves theme parks at night.”
The designers and other creatives also applied the same ideas to turning cars into characters. The crew — spread out over Warner Bros. Animation crew in Burbank, with three people in the Bay Area, one person in Dublin, Ireland and the rest at studio Superprod in Paris — had to make the Batwheels real enough to capture the imagination of their viewers.
“Creating the characters was really two challenges, because we not only had to create a superhero team of vehicles that were engaging to watch on their own, but we also had to create the same vehicles to be badass Batmobiles, Batcycles, Bat Trucks, Redbird cars and Batwings that Batman, Robin and Batgirl would use on their adventures, too,” says Smith. “We tackled the ‘badass’ part of the design first. The two words that guided our designs were that the vehicles had to feel legitimate and valid.”
The vehicle design process started by creating realistic versions of the Batwheels courtesy of acclaimed vehicle designer John Frye. “To hit the ‘fun’ target, we pulled the designs back a little into the fun zone with Florent Auguy at Superprod,” says Smith. “We added some fun concepts from Steve Fink (also a producer on the show) at Bang Zoom Design. Steve came up with the idea to put a Bat utility belt around every vehicle. This was a fantastic idea because it immediately connects you to Batman, even if he isn’t in the scene.”
Smith points out that all the human character designs were created by Florent Auguy, who also worked on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. “I loved his previous work and gave him the brief of what we wanted for the show,” he notes. “We wanted Batman to feel like Batman in any other DC universe. We weren’t going to parody him, because Batman provides the umbrella of cool under which we can have lots of fun.”
They also wanted to extend that stylistic umbrella over all the villains of the show. “When it came to The Joker and other villains on the show, we wanted to do the same thing,” says Smith.
“Keep him feeling like The Joker we love, but someone one that fits into our Batwheels universe. Michael Stern did a brilliant job writing the villains of the show. He basically reduced Gotham City to a school playground, and the villains are school kids trying to prank Gotham citizens with their antics. The Joker is a prankster who likes pranking people. Florent took that and hit the target straight away with The Joker, then applied his recipe to all the human characters in the show.”
All the main effects were also 2D animated to create a kind of familiar, cohesive feeling. With the tire smoke, flames, water and explosions all in 2D, the creatives were free to also bring in sound design to push the visuals to a new level.
In addition, the series features several well-known actors amongst the voice cast. Batman and Bam, the Batmobile, are both voiced by notables.
An Essential, Brooding Batman
“Ethan [Hawke] read the scripts and could see what we were trying to accomplish right away,” says Stern. “He understood the balance we were striking in keeping Batman who he is, but yet allowing him to work for a young audience. The dry sense of humor and the instant gravitas of Ethan’s amazing voice have worked even better than we could possibly imagine. It’s pretty well known that he was once offered the Batman role in one of the feature films, so getting a chance to play it now is probably extra fun for him.”
“We have really been fortunate to assemble such a perfect cast,” adds Stern. “Casting well-known characters is always a challenge. You need to honor the voices that have come before, but you also want to create your own unique spin on them. The actors just dove into this with such enthusiasm and creativity, they made it relatively easy. Jacob Bertrand as Bam, the Batmobile, is just such a perfect anchor for the show. His infectious spirit and sense of fun really act as a guideline to everyone, including the animators.”
“I wanted to make a show that would be exciting, visceral, and fun for the whole family,” adds Smith, “a show that would really surprise people and give fans a Batman they hadn’t met before. The execution of the show led by director Antoine Charreyron (Galactik Football) at Superprod is spot on. He and I bonded early on and his eyes lit up when I said I wanted to make a Batman animated show shot like a Fast and Furious live-action movie. I also have to give out a massive shout out to Sound Rebel’s Rob and Evan, our mixer and sound designer. They have really understood what our tone and target is and are creating exactly what we need to keep the audience wow-ing and smiling all the way.”
Smith concludes, “We tried to give Batwheels a cinematic quality in cinematography, camera work, editing, and character animation that goes beyond people’s expectations — hopefully we’ve achieved that.”
Cartoonito’s Batwheels premieres October 17 on Cartoon Network, streaming the next day on HBO Max. The special Secret Origin of the Batwheels is available on HBO Max.
