Fans of genre film have probably seen Joel Harlow’s work, even if they didn’t realize it at the time. The longtime makeup designer and MorphologyFX founder got his start on horror films in the 1980s, including two of the Toxic Avenger films, and went on to multiple Oscar nominations (for The Lone Ranger and Star Trek Beyond) and one win (for 2009’s Star Trek). He’s worked with Johnny Depp on films from the Pirates of the Caribbean series to Alice In Wonderland to Tusk, and on superhero movies from 2000’s X-Men to Green Lantern to Logan. His work includes designing prosthetics and props — as he explained to The Verge in a 2017 interview about his extensive work on Logan, Morphology FX is an all-in-one effects shop that operates onsite at movie shoots.

That certainly helped with his recent job on the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Black Panther, where he needed to be on the set to monitor the extensive makeup work involved in creating the fictional African land of Wakanda. Tattoos, ritual makeup, and body modification are common in Wakanda, and director Ryan Coogler wanted these looks to be inspired by specific African tribes. I recently talked to Harlow about how he managed the movie’s biggest challenges, including the multi-hour process of getting those full-body scars on Michael B. Jordan’s character before a shoot, and the multi-hour process of getting them off again afterward.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What were your initial conversations with Ryan Coogler like? What was his overall vision for how the characters should look?

He wanted to keep it as grounded in African tradition as possible. When we were designing the five tribes in the film, that’s something we very much heeded: to not just design makeup that looks interesting or fun or cool in its own right, but to have these looks grounded in the traditions of the people we were representing. Ryan had a vast wealth of research when I came onto the film, in book form and photo form. He shared that with me, and we went through and designated the themes for each tribe, for what they would look like when they were made up in the highest, most formal versions of themselves.

How did you approach modernizing these looks for a futuristic society while respecting the past?

Since Wakanda is the most technologically advanced country in the world, their advancements and their ties to their ancestry would both progress together along a logical path. So we’d reference actual African tribes, and consider their facial-painting technique, and ask, “What would that look like in a more basic form? How would we logically extrapolate that using modern tools and modern techniques, and then hyper-modern techniques? How would you apply the same ritual facial painting with modern tools?” That’s the line of thought we followed, especially for the stepdown, where [we designed tattoos and makeup looks for] the average citizens of Wakanda walking around in casual places, like the market.

Because they have technological advancements that we don’t have in 2018, maybe there’s a technique of applying makeup that’s outside our realm of comprehension. So we crisped up the lines and heightened the symmetry, cleaning up the looks. I wouldn’t call our techniques hyper-modern, but they certainly haven’t been done a lot. Like iridescent tattoo application. Or there was a very complicated head tattoo on Danai Gurira, who plays Okoye. That tattoo was designed by Ken Diaz, and it was extremely difficult to apply, extremely challenging.

How did you approach it technically?

It basically starts as a contoured stencil. We took a live cast of her head and created this stencil that allowed us to airbrush the outline of the tattoo pattern. And inside that tattoo pattern are multiple tattoo transfer pieces that fit together in a geometric pattern that make up the bulk of the colored part of the tattoo. The idea behind the design is to say she’s the highest-ranked Dora Milaje, the special forces of Wakanda. Ryan wanted to designate that with a very distinctive tattoo pattern, and what you see in the film is what we came up with after multiple designs and a lot of trial and error. Ken’s idea was that it was a fighter pilot helmet look. We had versions for other, lower-ranking Dora Milaje, with fewer details in the linework, and broader strokes. It’s their ranking system. But the overall look was that of a fighter pilot helmet, aggressive and commanding, and a little militaristic.

Michael B. Jordan’s full-body scarification seems particularly challenging, especially since he needs to be able to fight in water without the prosthetics coming off. How did you approach that?

It was extremely challenging. We started that process back in my studio in Los Angeles, where we had a life cast, a body cast of Michael B. Jordan. We blocked the scarification marks out in red pencil. And then we broke that down into what ultimately wound up being 78 to 80 different silicone molds, all containing about 100 hash marks each. We put clear Saran Wrap over the top of that and redrew the hash marks in areas small enough that we could transfer them to a flat board. We’d sculpt the raised scars and mold them in a clear silicone, then cast them in a product called Mel Gel, which is basically a thickened glue. And because our silicone was clear, it allowed us to see through it as we were laying the molds, which were very thin, over the top of Michael’s body.

Then we could peel off the molds, just leaving the scars on his body, which of course we’d have to blend off with makeup. Very complicated, very time-consuming. That was a lot of work, and then it’s a lot of maintenance, throughout the day. Not just for the fight scenes, but anytime he’s wearing wardrobe, it’s rubbing against the pieces, so that’s causing wear and tear. So I was on it 100 percent when he was filming in that makeup. There were different versions of that — sometimes he’s not wearing the back pieces, because he’s in a robe or whatever, and we didn’t need to see them. But anytime you saw them, they required a lot of maintenance.

We had a few different versions of that going. It took us a while to find a technique that would allow us to apply this makeup as quickly and efficiently as possible while making it look as good as possible. We went through a couple of different versions of that, just as we did with Okoye’s head tattoo. At one point, it was a silicone stencil. At another, it was a Vacuform stencil. It kept evolving over the course of shooting, because you’re always striving to make things better, and faster, and more production-friendly.

And he’s a big, tall, muscular guy, so there’s a lot of surface area to keep covered with those scars. And then at the end of the day, we have to take it back off. Because the prosthetics are basically made out of glue, it would require a couple hours in the sauna at the end of the day, with a few guys and a lot of oil remover, to take them back off.

Between the hours to get them on and the hours to get them off, it seems like it’d be hard to find time for shooting a film.

But he was great about it. I mean, he did have to come in extremely early, as did myself and three other guys. But he was fantastic. It’s not any fun, certainly, to have four people pushing these molds into you — because that’s how they stick to the skin. You have to apply pressure to them, and peel them off. You can’t just lay them on the skin. You push them on the skin, and then there’s a lot of poking and prodding for two or three hours in the morning.

With Logan, part of your job was creating separate props like severed heads. Was that part of your work here?

Oh, there was a lot. We also created the three wooden masks in the film: the tribal version of the Black Panther mask, made out of wood. M’Baku, one of the tribal leaders, wears a wooden gorilla mask. And then Killmonger, Michael B. Jordan’s character, takes a mask from a museum and wears it when he liberates Klaue. Each one of those masks had to be lightweight and durable. The vision had to be correct, because you have people fighting in these masks, so they have to be able to see. You don’t want to sacrifice the look of the mask for vision, but it’s a fine line to walk, because you don’t want anybody to get hurt wearing them.

We also made Klaue’s arm. He has this sort of blaster cannon that comes out of his arm, this prosthetic mannequin arm. We built that, which was challenging because you don’t want it to wrinkle funny. It’s a silicone sleeve, basically. So it had to be just the right thickness. We cast Andy Serkis’ arm and made a mold, then sanded the sleeve down to the appropriate thickness, so that when he moved, it moved with him and didn’t buckle or look obviously phony. It’s supposed to not look like a real arm. It’s a rudimentary mannequin arm, but you don’t want it to wrinkle weird.

There are some other obvious makeup challenges in the film, like the giant lip plates on the River Tribe representatives. Were those primarily done with makeup or digital effects?

For that, we borrowed from the Mursi tribe, and tried to reproduce their ritual aesthetic as closely as possible with prosthetics, which was not easy, because you’ve got these giant plates that our performers are having to wear from sunup to sundown. You want the lip plate to be light, but it also has to look like it’s got the proper amount of tension on it, as if it was heavy. We had to clip the plates into the actors’ teeth, so it would support the weight of the piece. We did that with magnets — each plate had a lower dental piece that had a little magnet on it. We’d put the piece in and apply makeup around it, so it would look like a lip was stretching around it, and then we’d blend that into the skin. Those were difficult in the build as well as the application because it had to look good from all angles. If there was any bend in it, it wouldn’t look like the lip tension was holding it in. There were a lot of trials and errors in getting those correct.

But everything was a challenge on this film. The biggest challenge, and the biggest note to ourselves, was just to respect the traditions and cultures of the people we were borrowing from for the aesthetic of the film. I think everybody in every department was on the same page with that.