LightBox Expo Recap: “Designing the Multiverse: The Art of What If…?” with Paul Lasaine, Cynthia Halley, and Kristina Vardazaryan

What If…? wasn’t just new territory for Marvel Studios, which had never produced an animated series before, it was also new territory for much of its design team. Three members of that team assembled at LightBox Expo for a panel called “Designing the Multiverse: The Art of What If…?” A granular look at how the visual design of the series came together, it was a revealing session that went deeper into the challenges of creating the series than the hour-long episode of Marvel Studios Assembled was able to go. Featuring production designer Paul Lasaine and art directors Cynthia Halley and Kristina Vardazaryan, here’s what I learned about the challenge of bringing What If…? to Disney+. Paul Lasaine came to the project with decades of experience, starting out as a matte artist on live-action films and shifting into visual development at Dreamworks Animation. When he joined the What If…? team as production designer, he had just one week before episodes began going into production. With director Bryan Andrews and executive producer Brad Winderbaum having already decided that the show should take its style queues from J. C. Leyendecker’s turn-of-the-century style, Paul lead the team in adapting the already established characters from the MCU into that style. With Leyendecker’s work less focused on environments, often depicting subjects in front of a solid-colored background, Paul shared that the backgrounds were styled after another artist of the same era, Mead Schaeffer. One detail you may not have noticed is that the background line art isn’t black, often matching the surrounding color of whatever the line borders, which helps give it that painterly look. Art directors Cynthia Halley and Kristina Vardazaryan broke down the types of environments needed for the series into three categories. First, there are locations that are revisited from previous Marvel films, which just needed to be translated into the What If…? style, which they shared were the easiest to create, but not without their challenges. With shape language taking on more significance in the show, the planet Morag from Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, had to be approached with more abstract methods. The second category of environments were based in the MCU but without photo reference, such as an office within S.H.I.E.L.D. that’s never been seen on-screen before. The team took visual queues from other similar locations in the film series for these. Lastly, there were entirely new locations the likes of which have not been seen in the MCU yet. It sounds like there could be a lot of these in the upcoming second season.

While all of the characters in What If…? are 3D, many of the backgrounds are 2D elements, painted in PhotoShop. There were instances where 3D sets were needed, which would be built in the computer and painted over later. This was a sticking point for some of the 2D artists who didn’t like that process, with one even leaving the project over it. The art directors tried to visualize everything beforehand to set everyone up for success, but since they couldn’t see everything together until the final composite, there were a few shots that were hard to let go of as perfectionists, wishing they had more time to get the scale right. Marvel Studios uses a different design workflow than most projects, with a small group of visual development artists under the supervision of Ryan Meinerding determining the look and costumes for each film. However, the team still had to translate their designs into the What If…? style. Each episode received an average of seven weeks worth of design time from Ryan’s team, although some got as little as two weeks. With the condensed timeline, Paul shared that the expectations placed on their vendors was sometimes more than what’s typically required, sometimes passing along a reference photo of a prop or a location and hoping the team turned it around in the show’s unique style. “Our TV show broke the mold,” Cynthia shared about how vendors were sometimes put in the role of designers. Much of the conversation was centered around singing the praises of the animation vendors, including Company 3, Stellar Creative Lab, and Flying Bark. Having been used to the overlapping TV production schedule on previous shows, Cynthia shared that you typically work on no more than three episodes at a time, with one wrapping up and another coming online as you’re in the middle of another. But with a condensed production schedule on What If…?, she recounted being stretched pretty thin at one point, reviewing work coming in from six different episodes at once. That’s a challenge on any show, but particularly an anthology series with little-to-no crossover between episodes. Thankfully, differing time zones meant that not everyone was working at the same time. Working from home also made it easier to multitask, with Cynthia admitting that she would be painting while in a virtual meeting to keep up with the deadlines.

LightBox Expo is focused on emerging artists looking to get internships, mentorship, and jobs, so the Q&A was primarily focused on recommendations and advice. We did learn, however, that the workflow established on What If…? Is being applied to other upcoming Marvel Studios series, including Marvel Zombies (a spin-off of a What If…? episode) and Spider-Man: Freshman Year. While Marvel Zombies will retain the Leyendecker/Schaeffer esthetic of What If…?, the Spider-Man series will be done in a different style. If you want to learn more about the artwork behind Marvel Studios’ What If…?, Paul, Cynthia, and Kristina shared that they are involved with the creation of an upcoming “Art of What If…?” book. And for industry hopefuls reading this recap, the best piece of advice the trio gave was to include some quick sketches in your portfolio, referring to it as a dying art in the digital age, but one that can really come in handy project that moves at a frenzied pace like theirs did. Visit LightBoxExpo.com to learn more about the annual event held in Pasadena and how you can attend next year.

Halloween 2022 coverage is presented by shopDisney