During the development and design phases of massive movies like the ones set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or like Star Wars, you’ll see plenty of variant pieces of artwork for stuff that was tweaked or altered throughout the production either towards what the director wants or the studio.

Jerad Marantz is one of the many Marvel Studios artists that help bring Marvel Comics characters and creatures to the big screen, and we’ve been fascinated by his recent work for the studio. We wanted to highlight his stunning artwork (via Instagram and ArtStation) from Avengers: Infinity War and a recent piece of artwork he shared from Captain Marvel.

SKRULLS

It looks like Jerad’s Skrull designs for Captain Marvel were the exact pieces of artwork Kevin Feige had showed-off at San Diego Comic-Con and they steered clear from the red eyes and sullen face, I would assume because they didn’t want to scare kids and make them a little more kid-friendly for a younger audience. Also, they didn’t seem to go with the skintight purple outfit/skullcap.

OUTRIDERS

The ravenous and mindless horde of the Outriders were one of the highlights of Avengers: Infinity War as the cannon fodder aliens were better than designed than the slightly generic Chitauri (in my opinion) from the original Avengers. It’s interesting to see that these Outrider variants really do enforce that talk that they looked too similar to Spider-Man villain Venom, the face looks very much like a symbiote in the final piece including the slime dripping from the teeth.

THE BLACK ORDER

Like with the Skrulls it seems like the studio wanted softer looks for The Black Order, but I would have preferred this version of Corvus Glaive as he’s a little more dramatic and scary.

RED SKULL

Jerad also tackled various mutated versions of the cosmic Red Skull and while they’re certainly interesting looking, I think Marvel going with what they did likely had more to do with making sure general audiences recognized the character from Captain America: The First Avenger and weren’t confused by the reveal. I’m kind of hoping they end up reusing some of these designs for the Deviants in The Eternals movie.

I’m already excited to see what Jerad comes up with for The Eternals movie as that movie would likely take costume/weaponry cues from the Black Order and with monstrous looking Deviants such as allies Kro and Karkas would give him plenty of creature design work.

Check out Jerad’s Instagram account where he regularly posts his artwork for various projects.

SOURCE: JERAD MARANTZ