Nomi Vela, Creative Director, and Crystal Gardiner, Design Manager at Warner Bros. Discovery Consumer Products sat down with us to talk more about the new line of merchandise celebrating the release of WBD’s new The Flash movie. 

The interview below has been redacted for clarity. Warning: there may be a few The Flash spoilers ahead!

Q: So, we just took a little peek in your Product Development Lab and everything looks phenomenal. I know that we've spoken to your team in the past, particularly about different lines like Space Jam and all these different properties that are so prolific and so nostalgic to consumers and fans. But I want to get to know you a little bit better. How long have you been at the company? What do you do here?

Crystal: I have been with Warner Brothers since January 2000. I came from Cartoon Network through a merger and just happened to end up working on footwear and accessories. I oversee footwear accessories across the board.

Q: When you were a Cartoon Network, what were you doing there?

Crystal: I managed the softline business, so everything from t-shirts to socks for all of the Cartoon Network properties. It was a much smaller scale than Warner Brothers.

Q: What about you Nomi? How did you get into the business?

Nomi: I got into it for my kid when she was young. I’m a creative director for all toys, and basically, I work with licensees like Mattel, Spin Master, Funko, McFarland, and I'm the liaison between them and the filmmakers to make sure the product that is on the shelf reflects the movie.

Q: That's amazing. Now I want to talk to you a little bit about something that you said, about how you got into toy making because of your daughter.

Nomi: Yes, I did. When she was four, I was a swimwear designer, and as a mom, I wanted her to look at me and be like, “gosh, mom really loves going to work”, and I wanted to be a good influence on her. And I was thinking, “what haven’t I done?” because I was with swimwear for a while. I had a list of things that I wanted to do, and toys was always there. At the time when I was going to school, there was no degree or school for toys, but now there is, and it's a career. I went and applied at Mattel and said, “I want to learn how to make toys,” so that's what I did because I wanted to do something really amazing that my daughter could look at and say “wow, this is something my mom does,” and inspire her to whatever she wants to do, that it's possible at no matter where you are in your career.

Q: That's so cool. I can't imagine being four years old where you’re at the peak of the Barbie obsession and your mom is literally making Barbies. You were probably her superhero.

Nomi: You know, it's so interesting because this whole movie came into full circle. When I was at Mattel and my daughter was growing up, she dressed up as a Supergirl one Halloween. My daughter is half Latino and half Indian, and she would wear her Supergirl costume. And so when we went back with Sasha to launch the whole Supergirl Barbie, I told Sasha, “this is amazing because my daughter dressed up a superhero and went to Mattel for Halloween,” because they used to have Halloween for kids. It just came like a full circle for me because representation is so important. With Sasha, I just loved her strength in the movie and what she represented because every little girl is going to see herself in there, just like my daughter saw herself. She’s 25 now, and an Aerospace Engineer, because she dreamed big. Supergirl’s going to make a huge influence on girls everywhere, who are going to say, “oh my god, I am that strength,” and “I look like her, I can be right there and fight the fight.” She is amazing in that movie, and as a person, she is even more amazing. It came full circle when I was there, and I told her that the designer that worked on it, I used to work with him at Mattel, Bill Greeny, and he knew my daughter, so this all kind of came full circle.

Q: That's awesome Nomi. And what better than to draw inspiration from the people you love, right? What about for you, Crystal, when you first started your career, did you ever imagine working in consumer products? 

Crystal: No, I didn't even know this was a job. I started in fashion design, like product development, in the apparel industry. I worked my butt off to get myself a nice portfolio. I did Halloween costumes, lingerie, women’s apparel, men’s apparel, medical scrubs. I just took every opportunity that was given to me to kind of just figure out where I wanted to go. A couple years later, I was reached out to via LinkedIn by Time Warner. It was a design opportunity. I didn't know what I would possibly be designing for Time Warner, but I took it, did the interview, and then ended up finding out it was for Cartoon Network. I was there for four years until the merger, and then I came here.

Q: It really has come full circle for you, Crystal. Now, I want to talk about the main character, The Flash.  Have you both seen the movie yet?

Nomi: Yes, I have. 

Crystal: Yes yes!

Q: Okay, good. We just saw it yesterday, so we can totally “spill the tea,” as the kids say.

Nomi: Yeah. It’s very exciting because all of these movies, especially The Flash, have such a great storyline. When you look at The Flash, it's a toy designer's dream come true movie; everything is in it.

Q: Absolutely, I can only imagine! And there is such a big arsenal of really, really iconic characters to pick from. There's Batman, you have Supergirl, you have the Flash himself, Aquaman, Wonder Woman. So what is the thought process that goes behind it when you have so many iconic characters in one movie? How do you make those creative decisions?

Nomi: What’s great about consumer products is that we have a team of diverse thinkers. I always compare to baking a cake, right? I'm the baker that must come put it together, but I work with our category team that's like “okay, we want this product line to be this big,” and then our sales team is like “well, we want something special.” Franchise brings the storytelling aspect to us along with our theatrical team. We come together and say for instance, “so we have two different Batmans, so how do we take segments of the storylines that we've been given?” and we focus it on that. 

Q: We know there are different actors that appear as Batman in this film. So what you're saying is you have to develop a different version of these Batmans per actor seen on screen?

Nomi: That's what we did. If you see the line, you see the Ben Affleck as Batman with his batcycle. McFarland did that, but it's also in the spin line, because that's what kids are relating to. And then the batplane if you see it, has Flash in it because Flash is the one that discovers it, you know? We actually take the story and turn it into toys. When a fan is looking at the story, when they're looking at the movie, and then they're like “oh, that's the batplane!” We put Batman in there, but we also add Flash in there because that's what the story narrates. Many of the moments in the products are reflecting the story. If you look at Funko's baby shower scene - that's one of my favorite with the babies - that’s one of the key scenes, right? We were able to develop this because it’s something the filmmakers gave us visibility to. We work very closely with the filmmakers and our theatrical team, to bring that to life.

Q: Got it. What about for you, Crystal?

Crystal: For our segment, we start development about a year and a half ahead of time, especially for footwear and accessories. We were really inspired by model sheets that we were able to have, the style guides that were created, and any storytelling that was given from the franchise team. We take that and run with it. I took those elements that I knew were going to be in the film before I was even able to see the film, and kept that in back of mind when developing product because there's such cool storytelling in this film.

Q: What is a model sheet?

Crystal: A model sheets is a document that will show the costumes of the characters. Like the front, the back, the sides, just sort of a very rough idea of what the costumes will look like in the film.

Q: Okay. And that's your inspiration before even watching it? That's a big task. So how do you decipher what should get developed versus what shouldn't?

Crystal: Faith. *laughs* I was very, very inspired by the storytelling of that past versus the present Flash, and specifically I loved the storytelling of seeing how the Flash created his first suit from an old Batman costume, which I thought was awesome because we could play into Batman and the Flash and kind of be able to pull those two iconic characters together in a really cool storytelling way. 

Q: It's so interesting to me how obviously you draw your own takeaways based on the information that you're provided, but then you also must connect that with a worldwide fan base, which to me seems like a monumental task. How do you decide that people in Japan are going to want shoes versus people in Europe maybe are going to want capes, or what is that thought process?

Crystal: We work closely with our category partners that decide which external partners we will partner with When I'm working on a collaboration, I like it to be truly a collaboration. I work very closely with the external team that we're working with to make sure that we're both telling a story that I can be proud of from a Warner Bros. point of view, and they can be proud of from a product point of view for their separate fan base. So again, it’s a lot of faith, a lot of like guessing, the fans are very vocal. It’s a lot of learning too from previous experiences. I'll read social media posts, see what fans are saying, just so we’re aware.

Q: What would you both say is the most difficult part of the process?

Nomi: I think we just want to make sure we're capturing the likeness of the movie, the characters, the outfits, and the details the filmmakers are putting it into their characters. We want to make sure we are capturing that.

Q: Is there any area in the line that you would say is just a little bit more labor intensive, or the process just takes longer to develop than others? Like, are toys more difficult to develop than say apparel? Or would you say it's across the board the same process?

Nomi: I think, because it's 3D they just have different processes. For apparel, their challenges are different, because they must wait for the creative art. We must wait for the 3D digital files. The digital files that are used in the film are the same files we use to make product.

Q: Oh, that’s really cool, I didn’t know that! So when someone gets a, say, Ben Affleck Batman toy, it’s literally an imprint of Ben himself…

Nomi: Yes! That's something that folks don't know is that we get our files scanned, the actors are scanned. Ezra Miller and Keaton, they're actually scanned. And then we get those files on there, and we build all those action figures. McFarland and Spin Master, they use that to develop their toys. We got the scan of Keaton, and then we use it to make the figure. Each step, like the sculpt and paint steps get sent to Keaton for approval, and it goes to filmmakers for approval. It's pretty intense in that way. And we have a great process that we make sure that everyone feels great about it before we put it on the market.

Q: Let's talk a little bit more about the product itself. We know that there's a ton of different items from t-shirts and toys and collectors’ items, even bedding. I saw the little bed you guys have in here. Is there any particular item that is your favorite, or maybe a particular area? 

Nomi: Why are you doing this to me? They’re all my babies. 

Q: You can pick a couple. I know moms always say they don't have a favorite, but they secretly always do.

Nomi: One of them I have to go back to, because it is a movie where you’re doing Batman and the batmobile and the batcycle, and you have Flash. I think the one that stands out is the Supergirl aspect to it. I thought Mattel coming in with Barbie and doing that Supergirl was pretty cool, I would say that was the highlight of all the products that we have put on there. 

Crystal: The item I'm most proud of is our collaboration we did with Puma and Bait. We took inspiration from the first Flash suit. So on the shoe there's going to be a lot of hand painted elements. It's a black base with sort of this red painted over. There's a really cool Batman logo on the tongue, but then on top of it, there’s a hand-painted flash. There's elements that represent the caution tape that's used on the suit, and it was really a lot of fun to work on to make a sort of hand-painted look for the shoe.

Q: Are you a sneaker head?

Crystal: I'm not a sneaker head.

Q: Oh my gosh. That's kind of shocking.

Crystal: I know. I'm a opposer, I'm a fraud. I wear Converse or Doc Martins every day.

Q: I love that.

Crystal: Total fraud. Don't tell anyone. I mean, yes, I live for sneakers. *laughs*

Q: This is such a great collection and a lot of people are really excited about the film internally, fans are really excited. What do you hope that fans take away? You know, just purchasing this merchandise. Like what experience do you want them to have?

Crystal: I want them to take away that the Flash represents heart and family and determination and hard work. And I want them to be able to really own that superhero.

Nomi: I want the girl that’s going to hold a Supergirl in her hands to be inspired by Supergirl, and feel that she could be anything, you know? Batman of course already influences so many of us. You know, the dad that’s going to hold Michael Keaton and say “hey, this is my Batman”, and the son that’s going to hold Ben Affleck and say “this is my Batman”, or he’s going to hold Flash and think “this is my hero”, because we look toward our superheroes. "When little kids wear a costume it's like becoming the best version of themselves. It just evokes that emotion of, I can do it because my superhero did it." We connect with our superheroes because it kind of like makes us feel like we can fight something bigger than us.