The Walking Dead Fan Art: Zombie Batman

AMC’S The Walking Dead has inspired scores of fan artists of all types publishing their art across the internet and even selling their work. I’d like to highlight some of these artists in future articles here at Undead Walking. Undead Walking’s Nir Regev highlighted three in his Fanart Roundup. Click here to check out that article.

Today I’d like to highlight the work of Kirk Manley, aka @batmankm on Twitter, which is where I discovered his work. Kirk is a professional comic book artist. He illustrates his own comic book called Z-Girl and the Four Tigers with @jmarsick, which he says is a story about a female zombie warrior that leads a special ops team against monsters. He says he’s a huge fan of the show The Walking Dead and the comics. Kirk even has a podcast called Biters and was commissioned for the Official New York/New Jersey Walker Stalker Con posters for 2014.

Related Story: Walking Dead Tribute Art

Recently, Kirk has created a series of tribute posters for The Walking Dead. These posters are what drew me to his work. Let’s look at his art more closely. Consider the poster that focuses on Abraham. I love the use of color. The browns and rust colors are reminiscent of the mud and dirt in the woods as well as the red in Abraham’s hair and freckles and skin. I like the use of the rust and gold to represent the fire and blood to blend with the grey and olive of the military hat and pants. The little bit of pink on his daughter’s hair band and dress blends but still stands out. There are the stoic faces of Abraham and Rosita against the emotion in a walker and in the children.

Something that can be seen in all of the tribute posters that I find wonderful, something you find in El Greco paintings, is the shape of a triangle. If you look at the poster as a whole there is more width at the bottom and a definite point at the top. What that does for the viewer is keep your eyes moving constantly, which is a very smart thing for a painting with a lot going on. You never feel overwhelmed by the amount of smaller pictures within the picture because your eyes don’t stop. They continue to move and rest on each smaller place.

The triangle isn’t as prominent in Four Walls and a Roof, but it achieves the same effect from other vertical tools–the machete, the points in the stained glass windows, the vertical panes, the vertical stacking of heads. The colors in this poster are more red and pea soup green to evoke more pain and sickness from the slaughter in the church. Your eyes still rest on each sad face and each face is a reverse triangle with eyes and chin.

What do you think of Kirk’s work? How does it make you feel? Do you like the use of color and shapes?

*Please click on pictures to see full size if for some reason your phone or tablet is showing only a portion of the posters.

Find more of Kirk’s work at these links:

Other fan art

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