Welcome back to Marvel Live.
We're back.
I'm Langston.
I'm Angélique.
And we are here with the Ryan Meinerding.
Wow.
That's very nice of you to say "the."
I mean, look, you are the--
I feel like when you are the head of Visual Development
at Marvel Studios, there should be
a "the" in front of your name.
- Well, that's very kind. - Yes.
I appreciate that.
How's the convention been?
Welcome to the Marvel Live Stream Lounge.
What's it been like being back at the Marvel booth?
I mean, it's amazing.
I've missed it so much.
Every year would roll around, and we'd get to come here,
and I didn't realize how--
I mean, I did realize how fortunate I was.
But the fact that it's been gone for a number of years-- and I
missed it tremendously.
So it's amazing to be back. LANGSTON BELTON: Ah, amazing.
ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: I love it. And--
LANGSTON BELTON: Yeah.
ANGÉLIQUE ROCHÉ: --you've done so many incredible things
throughout your entire career, but what
I love to ask is how did you get your start at Marvel?
And talk to us about why you have
such a passion for this work.
Oh, right on. Yeah.
I mean, I have a passion for it because I
grew up with this stuff.
I mean, watching Saturday morning cartoons,
watching "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends."
I love the stuff.
Some of the stuff I had back then, I still have.
I stole it from my parents' basement.
I have a Spider-Man beach towel that I would fight my brother
for when we went to the pool.
And all of the licensing art that John Romita Sr. drew,
it was on all of the products that I had, which was-- that
was like my entrance into the characters.
Cartoons came next, then comics, then the video games,
and onward, right?
My path at Marvel, I actually had worked with Jon Favreau
previously on a project that he sort of decided
to go do "Iron Man" instead of.
And I got the chance to-- essentially,
he asked if I would come work with him on "Iron Man"
along with a few other really talented artists
that I had worked with too.
So Jon brought me in, got to work on some cool key frames.
He said, like, figure out what could
Tony be doing in the garage when he's building a suit?
And I was doing, like, key frames to help
to find that sequence and working on Tony
and escaping the cave.
And so I don't know.
I mean, I got to work really closely with Jon.
I got to know a lot of the producers at Marvel.
And essentially, they-- I guess they enjoyed working with me
and asked me to stick around and do some really early stabs
at Captain America and Thor before those projects were
getting going.
So I don't know.
It's been around 16 years and a lot of projects.
And I've considered myself to be one of the most
fortunate people on Earth.
Yeah, and we're fortunate to have you working with Marvel
because you have-- we have you to thank and the Marvel fans
have you to thank for helping to bring
our-- these characters to life.
So I want to talk about that process.
What is it like taking a character from a page
and going, OK, I have to make this
into a real, three-dimensional person
that's going to wear this suit, that's going to be on an actor?
Like, what goes into, like, really going from zero
to that finished product?
You know, it's different with every character
because each movie we try to obviously look
at through the lens of what's going to make
this character really work.
In the case of "Iron Man," I mean, a lot of that was we
knew we had to design something that felt like a higher
level of precision than what people were used to with just,
like, normal suits of armor, so the idea
of designing it with, like, an eye towards almost car design.
So some of the amazing artists who worked on
that, like Phil Saunders and Adi Granov,
we were always just trying to make it
look as precise and amazing as possible.
And we would do drawings, show them to Kevin and Jon
in the early days.
And they would say, we like this.
We don't like this.
We want to change that.
And we would fix it in the illustrations and designs.
And then we would build it in 3D.
And the idea of taking that drawing,
bringing it in 3D in the computer,
and fitting it over Robert and seeing how he looked in it--
and essentially, then a place like Stan Winston Studios'
or Legacy Effects would 3D print that and actually put it on him
and test it out.
In the case of all the other characters that
are more costume-based or, like, one like Thanos or the Hulk,
it's a similar process, where we're still doing drawings
and paintings to show stuff early, get people's read on it,
understand what versions they like from the comics.
Some of these characters have 80 years of history, you know?
Like, the idea of looking at that stuff and saying,
this is the version we find amazing,
it's a really easy shorthand that gets us started.
And then we just draw it and paint it as realistically
as possible, try to inject as many ideas as we can,
and take the notes and do the work.
And hopefully they say that's amazing at the end of the day.
Nice.
Well, you know, you mentioned this
has been 16 years and a lot of projects
and a lot of characters.
And I hate to say is there a favorite,
but is there, like, a project or a moment
or experience that you feel you're most proud of
or you just think, like, man, that's cool, we pulled it off?
I-- there's two easy ones for me to answer,
and I can't pick between them.
Probably between "Captain America" and "Spider-Man."
But having worked on Cap, like, in the early, early days
and then seeing him transition from his first movie
into "The Avengers" and then all of the subsequent designs,
I'm really proud of the idea of being able to chart
that journey over all of those movies
because it's a strange thing.
I think a lot of people think of superhero costumes
as existing as, like, only an icon.
And one of the most fun parts of my job
is thinking about how that costume is
going to tell a story for that film
and working with the filmmakers to understand what
story they are going to tell.
And I don't know, that journey, I
think it's about 10 costumes of going
from where he was in World War II up
until the end of "Endgame."
That's something I'm super proud of.
And then the idea of trying to take Spider-Man and bring him
into the MCU and what that was going to look like working
with Sony and Amy Pascal and Jon Watts and Kevin
to figure out the notion of what Spider-Man was going to be
in our universe and be inspired by Tony Stark and a more
technology-based Spider-Man at the beginning
and where he ended up at "No Way Home" was, again, one of those
journeys that I'm just super proud and happy to have
been a part of.
Nice.
We actually had, I think, almost all of the Cap suits either
last-- the last Comic-Con--
Oh, right on. Yeah, yeah.
And that is-- because that's hands down
my favorite realization of page to screen,
seeing Captain America.
Like, I was like, that's the coolest look in the world.
Now, you talk about all these different variations.
Is there any character that the initial design,
it didn't change much until the finished product,
that you were like, I think we got it?
Oddly enough, there's only one or two, but one of them
is the Captain America stealth suit.
I did one design for that as it appeared in "Winter Soldier."
And that was the one that--
it was it. So--
That's it.
It was-- like, it's a cool-- it's a really beautiful design
from the comics that honestly, compared to other Captain
America designs, is not as challenging
to accomplish because it's dark, and he's got
the stripes up top.
But, yeah, like, that compared to the Sam Wilson
Captain America, which has a lot going on,
was super challenging.
But that's another thing.
Like, just the idea of transitioning
Captain America over to Sam was another huge thing
that was super fun-- - I love it.
--and great to be a part of.
Well, thank you so much.
I know you've got so many other things to do
here at San Diego Comic-Con.
It has been a pleasure having you here on Marvel Live.
All right, thank you.
Thank you for having me.