Not All Heroes Wear Capes, Some Design Them

Diving into Jose Fernandez’s creature designs and superhero costumes.

Photo: Courtesy of Ironhead Studio Instagram.

As a big superhero movie enthusiast, I like to picture the moment when an actor wears a costume for the first time. I visualize them in the dressing room looking at themselves in the mirror. Watching themselves become someone new. They walk into the set and something has deeply changed. They give a performance that they would never give without the costume, regardless the number of rehearsals they had previously done; that moment when everyone in the room realizes the power of costume design in the seventh art.

For this issue, we talked to Jose Fernandez, a.k.a the founder of Ironhead Studio, an effects firm specializing in costume and creature design. If you’re not familiar with Jose’s name, I’m sure you will recognize more than one of his creations. He began his career in the film industry as a sculptor for the monster maker, Rick Baker. This Hollywood experience opened the doors for him to work on different franchises such as Batman, Godzilla, The Avengers, Alien, Planet of the Apes, Alice in Wonderland and more. His groundbreaking suits and helmets have not only caught the attention of film stakeholders but also of the music industry, having worked with Daft Punk, Kid Cudi and many more of the greatest creatives.

Daft Punk wearing designs by Ironhead Studio.
Photo via IG: @ironhead_studio

Karen: As a costume designer, creative and founder of many prolific names in the film and entertainment industry, can you walk us through your beginnings and highlights that lead up to this point in your success?

Jose Fernandez: I was born in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. My mother was there with my grandmother and my father wasn't around so she needed help. I didn’t spend much time in Juarez because when I could travel, my mother came back to America and then we ended up in Los Angeles in various cities bouncing around. That was how I started my journey in this world. I think my earliest recollection of art was probably when I was about  five years old and like most kids playing with mud, I remember sculpting a circle with a really simple shape. I brought it to my mother and she responded with an emotional reaction which felt so great. At that moment I thought “I can make something and somebody will respond”, which got me thinking about art. In school I was always excelling in art and also wanted to do art so I just kept pushing towards that world and at some point I realized that I had to make a living from something I enjoyed.

I thought that the only chance of having a future was being an artist because I was pretty good at it and I knew I could get better. I knew that I could pursue any other career but I would be average so I just said “the hell with it, this is what I'm gonna do!”. So I just started pushing myself in that direction and it took about four or five years till somebody actually paid me to do art. I kept pushing harder and harder and put a lot of my free time aside just to get expertise, because I didn't go to school so I just learned on the way and I was surrounded by lots of talented people.

I also had a thing with clothing. I liked changing my clothes or cutting and adding things to them. I was basically a sculpture in school as I liked manipulating clothes and I even thought in becoming a fashion designer. Eventually, I got hired as a sculptor and then, after a few years, an opportunity came on the second Batman film where they needed a sculptor so I finally got to merge fashion and art in my career. I sculpted the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman costume and the bat cowls. This is when I realized I could work with both fashion and sculpture, the two things I liked the most. It took another five or six years to be well-known in the industry. Now I specialize in costume design as well as wearable things that need to be created from scratch and that's crazy! That's what I enjoy the most.

Clay concept maquette of Wonder Woman for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).

Photo via IG: @ironhead_studio

K: What can you tell us about what it takes to produce any of your creations? What’s your creative process?

JF: That's a long conversation! I think you need to sacrifice certain things to become good. You might have to choose the harder path: sacrificing, training a lot of hours for years and years whatever that field is. Music, martial arts, art, sculpture, anything! Having some ability in that field is important too. With some luck, they are aligned: your ability and your desire. In terms of costume design, which is what I do, the production team gives me a drawing or a sketch, sometimes this one is very loose and sometimes very detailed. Our job in the studio is to take that sketch as a reference and decide for a fly image into a working living thing or a human being. Sometimes they just draw fancy drawings that don't move so we have to figure out how to make them move. But once you have that, the initial concept, we take our performer and we digitally scan their bodies printed in our shop. We have lots of talented people in my studio: pattern makers, mold makers, digital sculptors and painters.

Once we take the body, we start working on it. We do a lot of research on the materials such as the different kinds of leathers, fabrics, stretch, non-stretch and get a sampling of how we are going to build the costume. Digital Modelers work with me on how to make all the armor in the computer. Eventually, this will be printed by the shop and then re-molded soft. After that, all those molds have to be painted, and then we have to bring those parts together and figure out how they are going to move, how they are going to be attached and taken apart. Thinking on how people will go to the bathroom is important as well, haha!

K: You have worked in different movie franchises, revolutionizing superhero and film costumes. What are the most important aspects to research when working on a piece that already has a previous creation and a story behind? To what extent, for you, is it wise to make new or drastic changes?

JF: You see… the mandates come down from the studio so the Producer Director has a lot to say on what they're trying to do on the film. So sometimes they just completely redesign and that's just great, but other times they want to stay true and just modify the minimum. The most important thing to me, is when you angle whatever the superhero figure is and then you have your performer, your actor, and what you’re trying to do is make it seem like it's part of them, an extension that they’re empowered by. So once they put this thing on, they feel stronger, they look better and  that's the idea. I think that the most common mistakes happen with proportion. If you move a line to a quarter inch, it really makes a difference. Proportion is a lot, specially with helmets. Anything disproportionate looks like a bubble head and they end up looking as if they were wearing a costume or somebody else's costume. So proportion and scale are everything. Those little subtleties make a huge difference.

Helmet from Tron: Legacy (2010).
Photo via IG: @ironhead_studio

K: When working with various clients, how do you exercise your creative freedom?

JF: The Director has most of the creative direction because it’s his film. My job is to build the best version of what they want but also, if they come in here it means that they usually want some of what I can propose.  It happens the same with music. If you have a song, you know you can have it performed by ten different people and all of them will sound in ten different ways. With design, I will interpret an idea in a certain way and if you give this same idea to other studios, their designs will be based on the same image but the results will be totally different.

K: What's the vision of Ironhead Studio and what are the influences behind your aesthetics?

JF: I’ve worked in the industry for twenty years before I opened my own space. Now I've been here almost fourteen years so it's been a while. Growing up I’ve never read a comic book, I still don’t think I actually have, I have looked at the images but I'm not into that genre even though I love some of the movies. I was more influenced by European art and the old masters. I love traditional art, that's what I was fed on. In school I was looking at Bernini, Michelangelo and Rodin. To me, they were powerful and most important, timeless. Their work was done hundreds of years ago and today they are still beautiful. I don’t like trends, I always want to create something that's gonna be timeless. That's why I believe that comics, video games and a lot of pop culture elements are trendy now but in some years they will start to become old. The difference between other studios and mine is that when I work on creatures and other things I bring my history into them. I’m always thinking in different ways, on how to strip an idea down, on what’s the strongest line and on how’s it gonna play out in five or ten years. Most of the stuff I’ve done is still pretty strong, whether it was made five or ten years ago. To me, that’s what I shoot for, I don't want to be cool now.

K: What was the most challenging project to design and why?

JF: I don't know. A lot of times it has happened to me that I’m working on a project and I think “I don’t know how we’re going to finish this”. The amount of work, the deadlines, finding solutions is exhausting, but once it's done I forget about it. When I finish a project I always say “this is my favorite one” and then I do another one and the exact same thing happens. I try to give everything to what's in front of me and then I move on to the next thing.

Photo: Courtesy of IronHead Studio website.

K: The Internet and Social Media have played an important role when it comes to sharing your work. How fundamental has the use of traditional and digital tools being when it comes to developing innovative creations?

JF: We spent the past ten years heavily on digital. The film Tron brought the digital for the first time into my studio. If you know how to use digital tools, the result can be amazing, if you don't, it’s just noise. A lot of digital tools were just trendy, new and cool. Everyone could use them and this is why it was done poorly. It looked fake. It was a challenge bringing that into my studio, learning how to use it and knowing when it was beneficial when it was not. Now it’s pretty much the use of it, every day all the time. But we still do traditional, it goes both ways. Traditional tools are powerful and I embrace them and use them as much as possible.

K: I gotta ask… which cinematic universe do you feel the most identified with? DC or Marvel?

JF: I know they have their differences but... I just like good movies! A lot of my favorite things aren’t even in those worlds which is funny. What I like is the drama. I think sometimes it becomes too bombastic and crazy but once in a while something comes out and I think “that’s refreshing”, like Guardians of the Galaxy. That was a fun ride like Kick Ass a basic and charming beautiful film. These days I like watching more drama. I love making them and being part of them but to be honest, I don’t always watch all of the films, I just do my job.

“[…] it requires sacrifice, hours and also you have to know how to align your passion with your ability.”

Photos via IG: @ironhead_studio

K: In a crisis like the one we have been facing since 2020, what do you have to say to young people that want to immerse themselves professionally into the film industry and costume design?
JF: There are no guarantees. When I was at that point where I had to re-figure out what I was going to do for a living, my only option was in the arts. I also knew that if I failed at least I had tried. To me that was important but there are also so many other variables like being in the right place and in the right time. I know a lot of talented people that didn’t make it or a lot of friends that were in my age bracket and went through the same thing as me but they didn’t become really successful.
There’s an analogy that I don’t know if it's true, but… people say that the bumblebees mechanically can’t fly because they are too heavy and too small. But bumble bees just fly anyways. That’s exactly my idea when I was in school and my teachers told me I couldn’t do something. So what I actually did was to search for people who had done it and they all have very similar stories of people telling them that they couldn't do it. And again, it requires sacrifice, hours and knowing how to align your passions with your abilities.

K: What have you been working on lately?
JF: I’ve been working with Maestro Dobel, on designing a new bottle and packaging for the brand. I just came back from Mexico City a few weeks ago, they shot a huge national campaign. They reached out to me because they were proud of my heritage and they wanted me to be part of this and they asked if I would be willing to design for them. For me this was a huge honor. On the other hand, will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas asked me to design a mask so I did and now it’s going into manufacturing.

Photo: Courtesy of Ironhead Studio.