The vessel appears near the start of the movie when Thor, the god of thunder, is picked up by the comical and endearing Guardians. The scene opens with Peter "Star-Lord" Quill and the rest of his ragtag team singing along to "Rubberband Man" by the Spinners. All of the crew members are slumped in chairs with a slew of screens around them. These exotic control panels are the tip of Territory's contributions, which spanned tables, door air locks and a spherical escape pod.

The company's mission was to reinvent the UI -- and by extension, the larger look and feel -- of the Guardians' moving home. It was a small piece of the movie but an important one to quickly convey how the group had been living since the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. All the screens have a blue, purple and green color palette, with the occasional dash of red and white to highlight important controls and information. They're clearly alien, designed by or for a race that didn't originate on Earth.

Charles Wood, the production designer on Infinity War, asked the team to avoid modern interface conventions and, in particular, any form of symmetry. That's because the set itself was largely symmetrical; the Guardians sit in three rows of two and later gather around a single table at the center of the ship. Instead, Wood wanted everything to have a high level of abstraction and therefore seem otherworldly. That meant developing controls and visualizing data in a way that wouldn't look familiar or be easily understood by the viewer.

The screens needed to provide some context, though, for the crew members and their roles aboard the ship. That meant making them readable -- not literally but visually -- at a glance. The six chairs, known collectively as the bridge, were all given distinct roles: pilot, co-pilot, a pair of engineers and gunners. The pilot and co-pilot have multiple screens for navigation, full of two- and three-dimensional maps. The gunners have screens for ammunition and aiming while the engineers have schematics and other graphics related to the ship's structural integrity. As the viewer, you can deduce what each screen is for but not necessarily how to control it.

Territory also worked on screens for the vessel's galley. The set required a number of screens on either side of the room, three landscape displays in the table used to examine Thor, and all the door air lock controls. Finally, the team designed the control panels for the escape pod at the rear of the ship as well as a heads-up display that was added later in VFX. The colors supported the cooler tones and neutral lighting that directors Anthony and Joe Russo wanted in the scene. These decisions helped to ground the Guardians' appearance and elevate Thor as an awe-inspiring god.

Territory has worked with Marvel before. In spring 2013, the Russo brothers were shooting Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- their first comic book movie, and one of the best to be produced as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Territory wasn't on the project until the second unit started shooting a mid-credits scene in London. It was a prelude to Avengers: Age of Ultron that showed Baron von Strucker walking through a Hydra facility that is secretly analyzing Loki's Chitauri Scepter. "What we have is worth more than any of them ever knew," he snarled.

At the last minute, Marvel realized that it needed some on-set graphics. The comic book juggernaut required screens that showed the weapon being analyzed on a cluster of nearby computers. Territory leaped at the chance, developing images with two virtual rings circling the scepter and its Infinity Stone. The concept was loosely based on photometry and 360-degree photography techniques that were being developed at the time. "We just did that because we thought it was a cool thing to do," Marti Romances, creative director of Territory Studio, said. Marvel liked it so much that it created two physical rings for the scepter on set.

"That's one of the things that I'll remember all my life," Romances added. "Usually we're inspired by or reference the props that we see from the concept artist and the art directors while we're working with the art department. But in that case, we weren't working with the art department. We went there just to take care of that set, and it happened the other way around. The art department was inspired by our graphic."

Clearly, Territory made an impression. The company was then hired to work on Guardians of the Galaxy, which turned a barely known group of superheroes into one of Marvel's most beloved properties. For this movie, Territory worked on the Milano, Quill's old but capable spaceship. It needed to reflect the hero and the '80s-inspired tone of the movie, which permeates the soundtrack, jokes and endless movie references. Territory, therefore, made the ship "a bit rough and ready" with plenty of video game and old aeronautical references. Everything was also dipped in red, orange and black to reflect the older era.

The company also shaped the prison where the Guardians are briefly held, Ronin's Dark Aster ship, and the multicultural Exitar space port, among other sets. Romances was 25 at the time and became friendly with Alan Payne, one of the film's art directors. He introduced Territory to Wood, the production designer for Guardians and, to date, five other Marvel movies including Thor: The Dark World and Doctor Strange. "He is a busy man," Romances said. "He has lots of quick ideas that just fly by. You have to catch them before anyone else forgets about them."

Territory assisted Wood on Avengers: Age of Ultron, which premiered nine months after Guardians. The screens spanned multiple sets, including Tony Stark's and Bruce Banner's personal laboratories, Baron von Strucker's fortress -- a nice continuation of the company's work on Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- and Doctor Cho's medical facility. Each locale required a different aesthetic that felt both futuristic and reflective of the individual character. Banner's computer, for instance, was colored teal -- an obvious nod to his monstrous alter ego -- and littered with references to advanced cellular and plant biology. Von Strucker, meanwhile, had a military-inspired UI based on his career in Hydra.

During this period Territory was based solely in London. Two years ago, Romances moved to the US to start a companion studio on the West Coast. The company chose San Francisco rather than Los Angeles because staff wanted to be closer to Silicon Valley, where real technological innovation was taking place. Territory isn't a software developer -- it's not making apps like Microsoft or Google -- but its designs need to feel possible and believable. It uses the Bay Area, therefore, as a pool of evolving source material for its near-future tech.

"We like to say that we bridge Hollywood with Silicon Valley," Romances said, "because it's important for us that when we're designing almost impossible things, and very futuristic things, for films that we are familiar with what's happening in real life. If we have a good understanding of how technology is evolving right now, it helps us connect the dots and be a bit more accurate when we are speculating on what could happen in a few years' time."

The new office also meant Territory could set up a 24-hour pipeline. Paired with the London office, the two teams could work in tandem, developing screens through the day and then uploading them to a server so their compatriots could refine them further during the night. The company used this relay-race development process for some last-minute VFX work on The Fate of the Furious. "It was a good experiment," Romances said. "And I think it worked very well."