Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542693
by Concept Artist Till Nowak, we settled on a monolithic cylindrical form—not aerodynamic, not ornamental, simply a moon-sized cosmic drill. A space shark, with a gaping maw at one end filled with rows of concentric rings of teeth that grind and shear in counter-rotation. The ship doesn't descend onto a planet, it bores through it, consuming crust and core with a horrifying appetite and speed. The design of the interior of the World Ship needed to tell the story of what the Earth's fate could be. The audience needed to see that this ship was nothing more than a giant digestive system designed to eat planets and break down the constituent matter into pure energy. With the tag team effort by artists Till Nowak and Thomas du Crest, we arrived at the properly unsettling imagery: cavernous chambers where chunks of planets and the living creatures that occupied them poured from waterfalls into giant grinders, rivers of pulverized matter drawn through filters and eventually into blazing furnaces that converted entire worlds into a luminous, plasma-like energy that fed Galactus. The scale and violence of the interior were designed to overwhelm, to make Reed's carefully controlled world feel suddenly small. Designing The Fantastic Four: First Steps offered a canvas of extraordinary scale—an opportunity to invent an entire world from the ground up, from its urban planning to its architecture, from its vehicles to its spacecraft and even the farthest reaches of space. Yet, for all the spectacle, First Steps is ultimately a story about family, and the world we designed had to reflect Reed's most profound truth: his inventions, his breakthroughs, his visions of progress all matter less than the growing family he loves. ADG Kasra Farahani, Production Designer Nick Gottschalk, Super vising Art Director Alex Baily, Liam Georgensen, Oliver Goodier, Laura Miller, Tom Whitehead, Art Directors Stephanie Clerkin, Milly Hanson, Oliver Herrick, Guy Isher wood, Jaime Salazar (LA), Alma Toth, Rebecca White, Assistant Art Directors Denise Ball (Sr), Greig Cockburn (Sr), Charlotte Anthony, Emma Bedwell, Rachel Buist, James Cura, Tessa Flanagan, Kitty Fraser, Matt Geldard, Harr y Gibson, Matthew Hurr y, Jaime Llavona, Albert McCausland, Andrew Merrison, Nico Monterosso, Gareth Palethorpe, Silvia Stroppa, Andy Young, Viki Atkinson (Jr), Kate Beard (Jr), Finnan Bennett (Jr), Will Camm (Jr), Eunice Naddamba (Jr), Libby Richardson (Jr), Draughtspersons Ryan Seper, Luis Hoyos, Set Designers Josh Viers, Till Nowak, Joe Hiura, Pablo Domínguez, Thomas du Crest, Patrick Dunn-Baker, Seth Engstrom, George Hull, Tex Kadonaga, Benjamin Last, Ed Natividad, Joe Studzinski, Colie Wertz, Concept Artists Charis Theobald, Eleanor Lamb, Maisie Robinson, Dominique Sanglier, Jason Sweers, Evie Allum (Ass't), Graphic Designers Jille Azis, Set Decorator C D