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June 22, 2013: "Man of Steel" Concept Artist Peter Rubin on Designing Krypton

Concept Artist Peter Rubin spoke with ComicBookTherapy.com about the process of creating the look and feel of the planet Krypton for the movie "Man of Steel". Here's part of the interview...

In working on set design, I'm going to guess you worked with Alex McDowell. What was the creative process like to reach the "neo-medieval" feel of Krypton? How did you all approach that living, organic feeling for an ancient yet dying society?

Alex's vision involved a world where for centuries, the manipulation of DNA had been perfected and expanded to the point that anything could be built, any structure or technology, simply by "commanding" it to grow, in a manner of speaking. To achieve the bio-mechanical look he wanted, we weren't to look at other artistic attempts at the same thing - no H. R. Giger allowed, for instance. Instead, we turned back to nature. The art department was full of biological specimens, dried grasses, roots, fungi, bark, and lots and lots of bones. Books of micro-photography. Then the second big source was the nineteenth century Art Nouveau movement, the design philosophy that looked to nature to guide the artist's hand... we tried to avoid straight lines if we could, and just do flowing, natural forms.

This second source was the key, the way in for me. A shout out to Chris Strother, our art department researcher. I owe her a huge creative debt. It became my mission to make Art Nouveau part of my muscle memory, part of my permanent repertoire. I managed it pretty well - well enough that when Alex needed someone to design a couple of key pieces, the "S" glyph and the baby Kal's rocket ship, he turned to me to do it. I wound up contributing a number of things like that, but as a fan, those two things together were a very, very big deal.

So we tackled it as an Art Nouveau assignment, knowing that every structure and machine was not just organic looking, but actually organic - once living. Maybe some of it still alive, like the aquatic robots that guard the genesis chamber. And maybe some of the animals you see, like H'Raka, Jor-El's Warkite, are, in part, machine. Maybe. The distinctions become a bit blurred when you think about it. What is a robot when it's made from organic materials? Fascinating ideas, true science fictional ideas.

Then add into the mix, the fact that Kryptonian society had, in this interpretation, stagnated for centuries, growing accustomed to destructive energy sources, wedded to old ways, and developing a hide-bound approach to life dictated by their micro-organically manipulative approach to everything, including a strict caste system with warrior, science and ruling genotypes that could never break out of those molds.

Practically speaking, that meant making sure every piece was properly aged. The sculptors and painters in the shop at the studio were responsible for coming up with a lot of that, using chemical reactions and heat to distress surfaces and make them look ancient. Even the "baby pod" (the nickname we gave to Kal's star craft) we imagined as a piece of old, re-purposed technology.

Read the entire interview at the Comic Book Therapy website, which includes a whole gallery of concept design images.