How Marvel Designed Black Panther and Spider-Man"s Suits in Captain America: Civil War

How Captain America: Civil War Should Have Ended

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These two superhero costumes were designed by committee. By Terri Schwartz

When Captain America: Civil War introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it didn"t just offer new big screen depictions of T"Challa and Peter Parker -- it also gave audience-goers their first look at the MCU"s take on Black Panther and Spider-Man"s superhero suits. The first looks at Black Panther"s sleek vibranium costume and Spider-Man"s Tony Stark-gifted suit were highly anticipated, which is why it was a big group effort to make sure they were designed right.

Civil War costume designer Judianna Makovsky wasn"t tasked with designing these two high profile outfits alone; in fact, Marvel came to her with some fully formed ideas of what the studio wanted the designs to look like. Not only did they have to work within the third Captain America movie, but they also needed to work for Spider-Man and Black Panther"s upcoming standalone films.

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"When you work with Marvel and there are all these other movies, you kind of have to collaborate with all these other films, or you know if it"s coming up and you don"t want to make too much of a statement for the next film so that they can do their own thing -- particularly, Black Panther," explained Makovsky to IGN. "So those kinds of costumes I work very closely with Marvel"s visual development team."

This was Makovsky"s second time developing costumes for a Marvel film after working on 2014"s Captain America: The Winter Soldier; looking forward, she"s also designing for Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 and the next two Avengers movies. Since she isn"t privy to much of Marvel"s big picture plans, she defers to the studio in these situations to guide her design choices so they fit into the larger tapestry being woven.

"Marvel knows what they want, and they know what the next films are, and I don"t," she said. "They kind of decide, with visual development and with me, which direction they"re going to go, which image from the comic is the one that they want to continue on. ...Sometimes they sketch it, sometimes I sketch it. It"s a very amorphous project."

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Some design choices were simple: for instance, everyone at Marvel knew they wanted to go for a classic Spider-Man look in Civil War, and Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding came to Makovsky with a clear idea of how to produce that. Others were more challenging, and involved countless prototypes and trial and error.

The particular challenge with Civil War -- like with The Winter Soldier before it -- was that directors Joe and Anthony Russo want their films grounded in realism, and so the costumes need to be as well. While more "comic book-y" films offer Makovsky more freedom, it"s a bigger challenge to have them more reality-based.

A big helping hand in the design process is Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige. "The one thing I have to say about Marvel: they know what they want, and that is why these movies are so successful," Makovsky said. "Kevin Feige has a vision, and he really understands these comic books. He gets it. You can"t argue with that when there is a true vision there."

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For situations like designing for Spider-Man and Black Panther, Makovsky not only turned to Feige and the Russos, but also the designers on the two upcoming standalone movies, 2017"s Spider-Man: Homecoming and 2018"s Black Panther.

"The directors for each different film, they have a true vision of how to translate that to their film, and also what kind of costumes they want. What is the palette? What is the tone?" said Makovsky. "These characters go from my movie to somebody else"s movie, or their character comes in my movie. Absolutely you collaborate with these other designers and the other films. It"s a very unusual concept. Other films -- when you"re not working for Marvel, it doesn"t work that way."

Spider-Man: Homecoming hits theaters on July 7, 2017, while Black Panther is due out on February 16, 2018. Marvel"s Captain America: Civil War arrives on Digital HD, Digital 3D and Disney Movies Anywhere on September 2nd, and on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and on-demand on September 13th.

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.

Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/09/02/how-marvel-designed-black-panther-and-spider-mans-suits-in-captain-america-civil-war