Now that Robert Downey Jr's hugely popular character Tony Stark aka Iron Man has bowed out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe thanks to his noble sacrifice, fans will be wondering if any character will be introduced to take his place, as it were. Well, one fan, graphic artist and God of War Art Director Rafael Grassetti, is hoping that it will be the Marvel character Ironheart and has even taken the liberty of designing the character should they ever be introduced in live-action.

"Ironheart - Can't wait for the character to hit the big screen! This is the sketch we started during the live stream. Done with #zbrush and #photoshop Been really busy for the past few days but we'll do another one this week! Thanks."

The design pays homage to the Marvel Comics version of the character whilst also being somewhat reminiscent of some of the official concept artwork of Iron Man's various suits. There is also a flavor of Pepper Pott's Rescue suit which debuted in last year's Avengers: Endgame.

If the artwork strikes you as particularly impressive, that is because Grasetti previously worked on PS4's stellar God of War video game and also dropped the live-action design of Nova which has been used across the Internet as anticipation for Richard Rider's MCU debut grows.

Grassetti is not alone in his thinking, as many fans have been wanting Ironheart to make her live-action debut, and while plenty of rumors have swirled around about the characters heading to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the most recent being that the character would be receiving her own Disney+ series, there is currently no word as to whether this will be happening any time soon. With Phase 4 having been clearly laid out by Disney and Marvel Studios, the Ironheart character is being kept on the shelf for the time being.

Along with rumors of Ironheart bursting onto the big, or small, screen, there are also continuing rumors that Downey Jr's Tony Stark will return to the MCU despite Iron Man being dead. One of the ways that have been theorized is that Stark will be resurrected either by fancy hologram messages or by an artificial intelligence similar to Jarvis. After all, if anyone is going to back up their brain, it is going to be Mr. Stark.

Ironheart made her first appearance in 2015 and was created by writers Brian Michael Bendis, and artist Mike Deodato, and later redesigned by Eve Ewing and Kevin Libranda. Under the iron mask is Riri Williams, a 15-year-old engineering student and the daughter of the late Riri Williams Sr. Following her father's death, Riri lives with her mother Ronnie, and her paternal aunt Sharon in Chicago.

A certified super-genius, she attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on scholarship. Working alone, Riri designs a suit of armor similar to the Iron Man armor using material stolen from campus. Riri decides to continue the legacy of Iron Man after Tony Stark falls into a coma. With the guidance of an A.I. duplicate of Stark, Riri creates a new, much better suit of armor and takes up the alias of Ironheart. This comes to us from Rafael Grassetti.