Interview - Aaron Sims : Our exclusive interview

By Mulder, Burbank, 15 june 2017

On May 3rd 2017 we had the opportunity to sit down and interview Aaron Sims and Steffen Reichstadt at their Burbank offices where they spoke about their company and give us some teasers of their specific work on the Wonder Woman movie by Warner Bros. Entertainment and DC Comics that we are now able to share with you along with some exclusive materials to Mulderville.

Aaron Sims Creative, ASC was founded by Aaron Sims in 2005 as a design company and has grown into more of a visual effects house, heavily still in design but they do a little bit of everything and they do it all very. Some of the most recent productions that they worked on were The Incredible Hulk, Conjuring and Stranger Things. They have a team of 35 plus people in Los Angeles, and are always doing interesting projects and they feel lucky that they were able to make a career of working on some fun stuff.

The Wonder Woman character was created by the American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston and artist Harry G. Peter in December 1941. Aaron remembers the original TV series as campy but it was really fun to watch. They have worked on many comic book films and superhero films in the past and it was great for them to work on something that was challenging to make on many different levels and to have a female superhero.

Wonder Woman has a incredible and talented Director in Patty Jenkins and the property has the support of the Justice League that will come out later this year, but this movie is a stand alone origin story. Steffen said it was an interesting process because Wonder Woman is THE significant female superhero of the DC Universe, the question was how do you maintain sense of empowerment and action but at the same time keep the softer side of the character that blends itself to the story and has a really strong movie arc. Patty to her credit really nailed it and created the well rounded character that you can really empathise with and that still kicks ass. Much of the work they participated on was helping to visually tell that story with Patty.

ASC has worked with Warner Bros. Studios and all the studios on various projects. Warner Bros. specifically has been a long term client of theirs and they worked on Clash of the Titans and Aquaman along with many others film and it's been a joy.

Aaron says that they are lucky because Warner Bros. Studios is just down the street from them and it's just a jump to get out the door and go down there. And over time since they have worked on so many projects with Warner Bros. they have formed close relationships with people and created a special language that helps then collaborate with and allows them to get to point A and point B faster because you already have a basis to start these conversations with and it's nice to see a lot of familiar faces as your work through the process of the film.

They have worked with Marvel and some of the other DC projects and they were brought in to work on the look of the villains and a little bit of the world design in this movie because the Wonder Woman character had already been established from the previous Batman vs Superman movie so their job was to help execute integration of the characters into the film and brought on to help tell the origin story which is a unique format for the film.

It's going to be visually stunning and Patty wanted to approach the film as history story that is a classical piece of art that comes to life and tells its story. WIth the talented group of artists at ASC they were able to create stunning pieces of art that came to life and have a direction to them as they tell a story of the history of the character.

In an exhibit in Paris at the Museum Art Ludique there is an presentation on the Art of DC “l’aube des super-héros” where it was possible to discover art pieces from the Wonder Woman film. They were involved in the design of some of the iconic scenes of the film such as the training of Wonder Woman at the beginning of the film and worked on scenes that were not only action scenes but also some of the emotional and set up scenes of the film. They were able to help tell the story along with creating the design of her look in london during a specific time period which required close collaboration with Director Patty Jenkins and Production Designer Aline Bonetto.

Storywise it was fun to see her in London as a set timepiece study to show her in that era and see what we know of her as Wonder Woman from trailers and such, and to put her down in a different era that we were not used to seeing her in and to see more of her sensitive side. They also worked on some pretty awesome scenes from the climax of the movie.

The biggest hurdle for them was the historical imagine they needed to create and help project into the film which was a change from their normal contemporary form of painting for their films and even to find it on their team was a challenge because their work has been of a contemporary nature in past films they helped create. There is no way to fake Renaissance art and you have to sit down and spend the hours to create the correct look and it took months to create pieces of art from hand and the paintbrush stroke where most of their previous work is on the computer and photoshop. As you have watched the movie now I hope, you can see the detail in every aspect of every scene especially in London and the European war scenes as the characters move through the action.

Steffen is more of the comic book reader than Aaron and he is into Green Lantern and Marvel's’ Deadpool character is his favorite and he was really stoked at how Ryan Reynolds pulled off Deadpool and thought it was perfect.

A lot of the inspiration for the film and their work on it comes from Patty’s clear idea and vision of what she wanted for the film. Patty laid out what she wanted and ASC creative energy brought it to life in a film that has surpassed expectations of sales and has finally given DC a movie that hits all the marks of action, visuals, storyline, chemistry of the characters andy any other benchmark or goal that you can set for a movie. You can read several reviews of the film on our site,

When I interviewed Aaron and Steffen they had not been able to view any major parts of the film other than what they had worked on and said that they had to wait and watch the movie along with the rest of us! Here is the link to our full interview of Aaron Sims and Steffen Reichstadt please enjoy.

Synopsis:
Before she was Wonder Woman she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained warrior. When a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, she leaves home to fight a war to end all wars, discovering her full powers and true destiny.

Wonder Woman
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Produced by Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Zack Snyder, Richard Suckle
Screenplay by Allan Heinberg
Story by Zack Snyder
Allan Heinberg, Jason Fuchs
Based on Wonder Woman by William Moulton Marston
Casting Gal Gadot (Diana Prince / Wonder Woman), Chris Pine (Steve Trevor), Connie Nielsen (Queen Hippolyta), Robin Wright (Antiope), Lisa Loven Kongsli (Menalippe), Danny Huston, Elena Anaya et David Thewlis
Distributor : Warner Bros
Actually in all good movies theaters

Video and writter by: Novias (Joshua Jason Sanchez)
Photos : Copyright Warner Bros
Concept art photos: ASC Founder/Concept Designer, Aaron Sims

We would like to thanks Aaron Sims and Steffen Reichstadt for this great interview