'Bat Creature' Art for 'Batman v Superman' Is Pure Nightmare Fuel

Zack Snyder seemed obsessed with darkness and nightmares in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and a newly revealed concept art shows how much scarier the director wanted his film to be. Patrick Tatopoulos, a production designer whose credits include Underworld, Spawn, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was the designer on Dawn of Justice and this year’s Justice League and posted an early concept design of the terrifying Bat Creature on his Instagram page.

Working alongside Thomas Floutz and Steve Wang, a VFX expert who was also the showrunner of the short-lived TV series Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, Tatopoulos revealed his “Bat Creature,” which appeared early in Dawn of Justice in a terrifying nightmare of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck). The creature itself resembled the Man-Bat from the comics who was a zoologist turned supervillain when an experiment to cure his deafness went awry.

Tatopoulos’s design is a little less exaggerated in its animalistic qualities, possibly even more “human” (just barely) than the creature that appeared for a pants-shitting few seconds in Batman v Superman. But this version is no less unnerving because it looks more human than an oversized rodent; he looks just a little more alive. I don’t care if you’re Batman; shit’s terrifying as hell.

Check out Tatopolous’s picture on his seriously killer Instagram below.