The winner of The Dark Knight Rises t-shirt contest is Spykee. Spykeee is a young artist from the Philippines and he has been on Design by Humans since 2008. He was picked by Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas (wife and producer) as the first place winner for his “Hello, Mr. Wayne” t-shirt. He has created some lovely concept based artwork on the site. I am quite impressed by his work and Spykeee has won at least nine times for his other designs. Since Spykeee has won The Dark Knight Rises, I think he will become more recognized for his artwork especially since Nolan and Thomas picked his artwork to be the best among thousands of designs. Design by Humans held an interview with Spykeee on his winning design of The Dark Knight and Bane:
Q: YOUR DESIGN IS VERY DETAILED AND IN AREAS BECOMES ABSTRACTED, WAS THAT AN INTENTIONAL FEEL YOU WERE GOING FOR?
A: The feel that I was after for this was something to represent the Batman trilogy movies. The movies that Christopher Nolan made were very dark and gritty, so I wanted to apply that feel to the illustration. Growing up I was a real big fan of the comics and I really liked it when they portrayed Batman to be a more dark and intense character
Spykeee is very into Nolan’s work especially the dark intensity of Batman. Many fans have a dream of seeing Batman in a
darker element. Nolan’s work has shown Batman as a character with such intensity and I think that Spykeee tried to capture that in his design. He shows more grittiness and Spykeee does claim that he was influenced by past comic books such as Frank Miller’s work, which in my belief shows Batman in such grittiness. Even today, Miller’s work transcends and is more recognized as the true dark grittiness of Batman in a realistic way. Spykeee talks about how it was easy for him to get a concept of his design. His design is basically, Batman versus Bane using dark grayish pastel colors. It is almost a portrait of the epic battle between Batman and Bane. The background shows the bat signal with bats circling all around as witnesses of the battle. It is a very monumental design and the reasons for Nolan and Thomas to pick is unknown, but I would guess that this design was picked because of the epic illustration battle between Batman and Bane.
Spykeee has a bright future ahead of him. He won $3,500 (US dollars) plus twelve free t-shirts. There are some of Spykeee’s work below this post so check his stuff out.
Comment below or on DKN Facebook on why do you think Nolan and Thomas picked this design? Are you in favor of this design? Which design do you think should have won? What are your thoughts on the design?
Source- Design By Humans and Spykeee (artist’s page)
-Kristina
