The blast took longer than the character did.
I knew immediately that Cyclops needed the optic blast.
What I didn’t know was exactly what that blast should look like. Rather than treating it as a perfectly straight laser beam, I spent an unreasonable amount of time giving it some character — erupting outward, changing shape and feeling more like an enormous force being barely contained.
Everything else was about honoring that classic ’90s Cyclops design I remember from childhood.