The secrets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s design, as told at C2E2

From Iron Man all the way to Black Panther, what goes into the making of the costuming and visual design of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

When you think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its specific characters, its easy to visualize the distinctive looks we’ve seen for the big heroes from film to film, like Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow and so on. Ryan Meinerding is one of the key reasons we have all these costumes to admire. He’s the Head of Visual Development at Marvel Studios, and he appeared at C2E2 to talk all things MCU design.

Here’s a rundown of what he does: key frame illustrations, which shows a version of shots from the movies, as well as the obvious design for villains and heroes alike. He’s also worked on video games and other films, showing art for projects that didn’t move forward like a Paradise Lost adaptation.

However, Meinerding has basically been with the MCU since its inception. He summed up the principles thus: “One of the great things about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that the visual design is really tied into the characters. [..] The visuals for the characters actually mean something to the story.” It shows in all of the art he presented to the panel audience.

Following showing his work in school, Meinerding shared work for the very first Iron Man movie. He even produced the drawings for Tony’s first Iron Man suit. Meinerding called it a “very stressful project” as he was on set producing them while Robert Downey Jr. rehearsed scenes.

But that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t do any work prior to Downey being cast as Tony Stark. Instead, Meinerding said, “I try to keep it to more generic faces” prior to people getting their roles; he even showed a photo of himself with a model of the Mark 1 suit from 2006. It showed in his early Iron Man images; he even revealed an “early, early take on Black Widow” for Iron Man 2, pre-Scarlett Johansson.

Speaking of those concepts, though, there’s a reason Thor doesn’t get his helmet, and it’s pretty basic.

“We just never got to a helmet design until Ragnarok that felt good on Chris […] We were tryin’.” There was even art from Thor that did show him with the helmet on.

Thor concept art shown by Ryan Meinerding at C2E2 panel. Image taken by C. Wassenaar.

But he did a ton of work on Captain America: The First Avenger, both for Hydra and Red Skull as well as Cap and the Howlin’ Commandos. Not everything turned out perfectly, though.

“Nobody liked it [because] it looked like his school photo,” he said of a Red Skull early concept piece. (It did look like a class photo, from the pose and everything.) “They had me do really long lead development on Captain America,” he added, showing some key frames from that early time as well as film production.

For a big movie like The Avengers, that’s when Meinerding revealed he’d gotten a bigger team for himself. His focus at first was on Captain America. He did show some early designs for Hawkeye and Hulk, which had him learning “new 3D software” to help make Hulk look good.

“I really wanted to turn him into a monster,” he told the panel audience, even talking about how Hulk’s hair works (as well as the Chitauri). However, he also showed some poster designs he’d done for the film, explaining he did Cap, Iron Man and Black Widow’s posters for the movie.

“I really wanted to try and get Cap’s helmet right,” he said of Captain America: The Winter Soldier design. “I was always pitching to get his ears exposed. […] It took a lot of variations,” he added. It turns out that making sure people’s faces are visible (at least a bit) is “always in the mix.” He’s at least a little responsible for the still meme-worthy black around the Winter Soldier’s eyes, by the way.

As the panel ran into its final minutes, he skipped all the way ahead to Black Panther.  There was a brief stop at Captain America: Civil War, where he said that he had designed Black Panther for that movie as well, focusing on weaving techniques for T’Challa’s suit. Meinerding had mostly worked on art design for the movie rather than actual character design, but he did have some art pieces to show us.

While the Avengers: Infinity War art was sparse, he did show art for Thanos. Meinerding also noted he’d designed Thor, Cap, Spider-Man, the Black Order and Thanos himself. So while we might not know much about it, we do know that we’ll have some great design to feast our eyes on later this month when Infinity War comes to theaters.

A few more tidbits:

• He said that the keyboard in Iron Man was his design based on Robert Downey Jr.’s desire for a “cool keyboard.”
• He wanted to “use [a piece of Iron Man 3 art showing Tony dragging his armor through the snow] as my Christmas card that year.”
• He did the murals for the Smithsonian exhibit Cap visits in Winter Soldier.
• A shot of a World War II flashback was cut from The Winter Soldier.
• We saw some pants design for Bruce Banner in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
• He didn’t really say much about Avengers: Infinity War, alas.
• For Dormammu of Doctor Strange, Meinerding tried to get into the “11-dimensional being” idea. He even showed an early concept for the doctor himself where his “stylish New York coat” could become his actual costume.
• He tried hard to get some engravings on the Black Panther suit in Civil War.
• He did “probably about 110 designs” for Spider-Man’s debut, and he also pitched the idea for Spider-Man’s eyes to move as well. The audience applauded that one.
• There were brief appearances by Daredevil, The Wasp and Howard the Duck, too.
• He showed a painting of the Grandmaster and the Collector playing a game.

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