Filipino American artist Anthony Francisco grew up reading comics and watching superheroes. Who would have thought that someday, he will be working for the studio behind these characters?
In his interview with “Stronger Together: The GMA Pinoy TV Podcast” Season 3, Anthony shared the highlights of his nine years working for Marvel Studios.
“It was a dream come to true drawing Marvel characters. Drawing is a way to get my ideas out. I started collecting when I was in high school. That’s when I started my collection not only X-Men, [but also] I collected some Batman, Sandman which was my favorite. When I was younger, I loved watching Voltes V, Daimos, those were amazing.”
Did you know that Anthony conceptualized one of the biggest fight scenes in “Avengers: Infinity War”?
“When Thanos brought down the moon, that was my idea. I came up with that. When my supervisor [said], ‘So, we wanted to do a battle between Dr. Strange and Thanos. Something epic that we’ve never seen before.’ That was the description. I think that’s one time I felt pressured but it went away as soon as I started drawing.”
Anthony also designed the costumes of the Dora Milaje, the furious female warriors of Wakanda. He is also behind one of the fight scenes in “Ant Man.” One of Anthony’s latest projects with Marvel was “Groot.”
It was not an easy journey for Anthony on personifying the ideas he had in mind. One of the hardest challenges he encountered was how to design the character of Ego (Kurt Russel) in the “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.”
“He took like 8 months to work on. He was an interesting problem to solve. Is he a planet? Is he a human? So, we tried different takes, different styles, also different feelings. Is it retro, is it futuristic? But that’s exciting because we get to really experiment.”
Does Anthony still feel pressure in the work he does?
“I rarely feel pressure because I’m always excited. I’m in a situation where I’m getting paid to have fun drawing. I’m very proud of designing. By this time, I’ve been doing this for 15 years already so I’m like I’m used to the pressure already.”
Now, Anthony is the Creative Director of Dolphin Entertainment. Although this is a big risk for him, he feels empowered with his decision to leave Marvel.
“When you want change, it’s going to be tough. It was hard for me to leave Marvel, because I could be there forever. But I realized something: It’s just me wanting to tell stories, my culture, my background. And I had to talk about it.”
And for those artists who thrive for the love of what they do, Anthony’s advice would be “to not hold back your creativity. Do not be afraid with pushing your art and experimenting and not just being content with keeping things just average. Push the boundaries.”
Listen to Anthony Francisco’s full interview on “Stronger Together: The GMA Pinoy TV Podcast” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and the GMA Pinoy TV Facebook page.