The New 52 costumes works much better in live action

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I never cared for the Jim Lee redesign. Didn't hate it, but so few people were able to draw well, I chalked it up to poor design work. Kyle Rayner's '90s costume is in the same boat.

Then I saw this and I understand the design much better. It was meant to be used in live action and multimedia. Seeing it move, the overall chunkiness of the lines aren't a problem anymore.

[DragonPiece]

that shot a 0:32 does look pretty good..

[Frontier]

A lot of movie designs go for more amored or intricate designs like what Lee went with for a lot of the new 52 redesigns, but ultimately I think something like the Reborn costume (sheds a lone tear) was still a far better design that could seamlessly work in both the comics and other media.

[Sacred Knight]

Looks really good here indeed. I'd still change a few things to my ideal (either no collar at all or a muted one like Fabok, red shield buckle replaced by yellow oval, v back in the boots, and the end serif back on the S) but it definitely works.

[Heavunion]

Yeah, that's something I've come to dislike in current comics

I think a lot of designs now are too busy and not very colorful. I think Plastic Man is a good exemple of a pure comic book costume, it may look dumb but it's a simple and effective design along with great colors, you don't much details and everything you need to see is there. When I look at a redesign for movies like Wonder Woman, I find that too busy. It's hard to really remember it because there are too many details and nothing realy stand out

[HeroVladimir93]

I don't really like Superman's New 52 suit. While I wasn't really upset about the removal of the red trunks (it's just a minor detail on the suit, let's all calm down), I disliked the armored look, the excessive seamlines and the high collar, which made the suit look weird and needlessly complicated on-page. It says something about this design when DC moved away from it and used the classic suit as the baseline for future designs. To be fair, the New 52's overly detailed design works for movies and video games, just not in comic books.

[Lokimaru]

I never cared for the Jim Lee redesign. Didn't hate it, but so few people were able to draw well, I chalked it up to poor design work. Kyle Rayner's '90s costume is in the same boat.

Then I saw this and I understand the design much better. It was meant to be used in live action and multimedia. Seeing it move, the overall chunkiness of the lines aren't a problem anymore.

New52 suit was meant for multi media hense why It's still being used on food products and lunch pals to this day.

[manofsteel1979]

New52 suit was meant for multi media hense why It's still being used on food products and lunch pals to this day.

True, but keep in mind it was a few years until those designs permeated the licenced products out there.it always sort of lags behind.in the 1990s Long haired Superman really didn't appear on any licenced stuff until just before they switched back to the short hair. I don't think you'll see the New 52 designs sticking around on things much longer. You still may see some out there but its quickly reverting back to the classic looks.

[Ascended]

It's still a bad design. The movement here helps hide the flaws that a static image doesn't, but from the foundation up, the New52 armor wasn't a good design.

Look at the seams and lines on the legs compared to the chest; totally different aesthetic. The legs have a lot of curves while the chest is all sharp lines and geometric angles. The boots had design elements not found anywhere else on the suit (which it does seem the cgi animator here ignored). The belt also had some elements not seen anywhere else too. It's not a costume, it's a patchwork quilt.

It does look better in live-action and animation than print, and it was definitely designed with larger media in mind (what isn't, these days?). But it's still a bad design.

The Reborn suit was infinitely better.

[Lokimaru]

It's still a bad design. The movement here helps hide the flaws that a static image doesn't, but from the foundation up, the New52 armor wasn't a good design.

Look at the seams and lines on the legs compared to the chest; totally different aesthetic. The legs have a lot of curves while the chest is all sharp lines and geometric angles. The boots had design elements not found anywhere else on the suit (which it does seem the cgi animator here ignored). The belt also had some elements not seen anywhere else too. It's not a costume, it's a patchwork quilt.

It does look better in live-action and animation than print, and it was definitely designed with larger media in mind (what isn't, these days?). But it's still a bad design.

The Reborn suit was infinitely better.

Jim Lee was going for a uniform look for the Justice League. Just look at the original image, all the characters had a similar collers and lines look even Wonder Woman with the choker although the Animated War suit was a better look.

[ironman2978]

Honestly while I did enjoy New 52 Superman look at a time, and do feel like it works better in live action and animated series and only a few artist really make it work, I do think other Superman outfits during the era took what Jim Lee intended to do with the initial look, and did it better (Earth 2 New 52, MOS/BvS, Smallville season 11 and Reborn if it had the cuffs are perfect examples of this). It's problem was trying to look unified instead of standing out and looking unique. And this is coming from a person who loves the idea of Superman outfit being Kryptonian or armor like in nature and feels like the red trunks isn't exactly necessary in making his overall uniform looking good. That being said I hated the sentiment, that Superman didn't look like Superman with the New 52 outfit and if you took off the symbol you couldn't tell who it was. It still had a large amounts of the classic elements and tried it's best to retool it for a moden elements.

As for movie looks, I think the details and intricate elements are what make me fan of the superhero costumes in live action. Even if nothing stands out the first go around, you can always go back and look at details and thought the costume designer put into the look. Plus it usually looks better in motion than some of the classic designs do/would.

[adrikito]

I saw the video and you are right about this.. Is awesome.

[Adekis]

I basically agree with that. I think there's a kind of design philosophy for super-hero costumes that busier is better for live action - not entirely sure why - but for whatever reason they started doing that in the comics, too, and yeah, it doesn't work as well. I really like the New 52 costume, but it was too busy, and it was hard to draw, and yeah, the lining and piping wasn't even always consistent from artist to artist! I'd much rather have kept the Reborn suit forever, or even the short lived suit from the Earth 2 series.

For live action I could see the Lee suit working better - but ultimately think I prefer the Snyder ones.

[Ascended]

Jim Lee was going for a uniform look for the Justice League. Just look at the original image, all the characters had a similar collers and lines look even Wonder Woman with the choker although the Animated War suit was a better look.

I know what he was going for, but it's still a weak design.

I'm indifferent to the idea of the League having "matching" costumes. I can take it or leave it, conceptually. But Lee's Superman design just wasn't very good.

I'm not knocking the man either, he seems like a great guy and I enjoy his work. This was just a miss, that's all.

[SanityOrMadness]

Thing about that video is that in no way is that presented as "armour". The lines are done as indents on a flexible base - maybe vinyl, given how shiny it is, or whatever they make skintight screen costumes like MOS Superman/Raimi Spider-Man/DCEU Batman/etc out of. It's armour only in the same way that Power Rangers costumes are treated as "armour" when they have little explosive charges go off to give the idea stuff is bouncing off the spandex. They could claim the 80s movie Superman & Supergirl costumes were "armour" just as easily and on much the same basis.