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2013 Movie News Archives

July 2, 2013: Exclusive Interview with "Man of Steel" Costume Designer Michael Wilkinson

The Superman Homepage conducted an exclusive interview with "Man of Steel"�Costume Designer�Michael Wilkinson to discuss his work on the movie, and the design process behind creating the costumes for the film.

Q: Zack Snyder has said that he looked through literally hundreds of Superman costume designs, can you tell us how many designs you yourself came up with for this movie?

A: There were indeed hundreds of iterations of the design, each with slightly different detailing - Jim worked with the illustrator Warren Manser, who filled up an entire external drive with endless files of Superman details and concepts! There was a determination to get it right, to design a Superman for the 21st century - so no idea was left unexplored.

Q: What was the process like in trying to come up with the design for the Superman costume? Did you look through comic books, previous films and TV shows for inspiration or reference?

A: All of us working on the project did our homework very thoroughly and looked at all the variations of the Man of Steel's universe that had been presented in the last 75 years. I can't speak for Jim, but for the costumes that I designed my main influences were the Richard Donner movie, the Frank Miller graphic novels, and the beautiful illustrations of Alex Ross. However, for all the characters, we started from scratch, from the ground up, as it were, in order to stay fresh and to create costumes that suited the world that Zack and the writers had set up in our film.

Read our entire interview with Michael Wilkinson right here at the Superman Homepage.