Hellboy - From Sketch To Screen

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro revels in freakish spectacle, the more elaborate the better. Comic book artist Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, likes to keep it simple. In pursuit of a fiendishly perfect Hellboy universe, they filled reams of sketchbooks with variations on Mignola's sinister bestiary.


Now, their intense collaboration on the upcoming movie sequel to 2004's Hellboy is bound for all eternity — in hardcover. Hellboy II: The Art of the Movie (Dark Horse Books) offers a sneak peek at the menagerie of mutants primed to swarm the world-weary demonoid, portrayed again by the heavy-browed Ron Perlman. "Del Toro created such an interesting world in Pan's Labyrinth," Mignola says, "that we wanted to do more this time." New creeps include albino elf-warrior Prince Nuada, his tusk-toothed henchman Wink, mummy-tootling street musicians, and a flock of leafy-winged "tooth fairies" with a taste for blood.

The Art of the Movie witnesses the evolution from Mignola's initial ink sketches to the film's densely detailed 3-D computer renderings. As if having a mechanical hand weren't enough, Wink picked up an armor belt and porcupine quills en route to his final form. "Del Toro and [3-D artist] Francisco Ruiz Velasco would talk about my drawings in Spanish," Mignola recalls, "but I knew damned well what they were saying: Add 600 gears, make sure smoke comes out of it, and get it to spin around so the guy's head comes off.' What you see in the book is how a simple thing gets turned into something much more."

Via wired.com