New 'Black Panther' Concept Art Showcases the World of Wakanda

The big-screen debut of Black Panther is still a few weeks away, but fans can get a sneak peek of the world of Wakanda in a few new pieces of concept art.

The concept art, which you can check out in our gallery below, showcases the designs of several prominent Black Panther locations.

'Black Panther' Concept Art Gallery

The first shows the design of Shuri's (Letitia Wright) lab, which will have a hand in producing plenty of Wakanda's technologically advanced weapons.

"As far as the technologically advanced side, in our mind and in our incarnation, Shuri is the head of the Wakandan design group." Black Panther producer Nate Moore explained during a set visit last year. "So she is, in our mind, the smartest person in the world. Smarter than Tony Stark, but she is a 16 year old girl, which we thought was really interesting. Again, black faces in positions of power, or positions of technological know how, that's a rarity. So it's something that a big part of the film."

Other pieces of concept art show Steptown, a neighborhood in Wakanda, as well as the palace throne room.

For some fans, the film's aesthetic almost feels ripped right from the pages of the Black Panther comic books - something that the film's creative team was certainly aiming for.

"I think there were definitely some inspiration points, especially design wise that we got from both Chris and Ta-Nehisi's run," Moore said. "Brian Stelfreeze is an amazing artist, and some of his version of Wakanda, and even Wakandan technology is stuff we borrowed pretty liberally from."

But the film also had to strike a balance between comic book aesthetics and real-world influences, something that production designer Hannah Beachler brought to the project.

"A lot of their ideas that are outside of publishing we found interesting, because again, one thing we really wanted to explore was real Africa, and real African inspiration, and grounding it in stuff that was terrestrial," Moore said. "Sometimes comics are beautiful but feel so far removed from what we know as real that they become too heightened. One thing that Hannah, I think, did really well was exploring actual African culture, and actual African design, and infusing it with this cool new future tech to make it something completely new, which we think is really interesting."

Black Panther opens in theaters on February 16th.

Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include; Avengers: Infinity War on May 4th, Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6th, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.