Hellboy Animated

For Those Who Came in Late

Some questions keep popping up that were part of the original announcement.  So here it is:

On 11/09, Comics Continuum had this to say:
"HELLBOY ANIMATION UPDATE

IDT Entertainment announced on Wednesday that it has licensed all animation rights to the Hellboy property from Revolution Studios.

IDT Entertainment, in partnership with Revolution Studios, plans to develop animated content for television and home entertainment.

Production will use IDT Entertainment's animation studios in Los Angeles. IDT Entertainment Sales will handle worldwide sales and Anchor Bay Entertainment, an IDT Entertainment company, will distribute DVD/video product.

"Hellboy is a seminal figure in the comic book world and a proven winner in the feature film arena," said Morris Berger, IDT Entertainment CEO. "This deal adds to the luster of our ever-growing library of intellectual properties with worldwide fan appeal. We believe Hellboy's animated incarnation will benefit from our international sales, marketing, and distribution network."

Key creative talent and production entities associated with the 2004 live-action feature film will be involved in the continuing animated adventuresr. Ron Perlman (Hellboy) and Selma Blair (Liz Sherman) will lead the voice cast for the animated versions.

Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and director Guillermo Del Toro are creative producers and will be intimately involved in story development and animation style.

Tad Stones, who has produced and directed full-length video features and animated television series, will be supervising director and supervising producer for IDT Entertainment. Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin of Lawrence Gordon Productions and Mike Richardson of Dark Horse Comics, who produced the live-action feature, will executive produce."

Alternate Visions

Things are really busy right now and we haven't even started color!  All the characters have been designed but now need cleaning up and special poses.  Props are almost done and the artists are now moving into special effects and props that were added at the board stage.  Most of the key backgrounds have been designed.  Now the layout artists are going through the rough storyboards. They look for tricky camera positions or new locations that the overseas studios will need.  The storyboard artists are roughing out their last sections before going back in to clean things up.  Not only are they making their drawings "prettier," they will be adjusting the boards according to my notes and co-director, Phil Weinstein.  All the board artists are doing a terrific job in general but we're trying to do all that Mignola composition stuff.  That means taking a sequence that works and making the effort to make it work in that Mignola way.  Is it worth it?  You guys will have to tell me when you see it.

But in the meantime, I've got the files I wanted last week, so here's a glimpse of might-have-beens.  I didn't scan all the submissions but I've got enough to show the range.  First up is Greg Guler who is  one of the chief character designers at Disney TV. He came up with a really nice Hellboy but it was hard for him; to Greg, Hellboy is Mike Mignola's artwork.  He worked with Mignola designs on what became Atlantis II: Milo's Return and would've loved to create something really close to Mike's.  Greg is supposed to be drawing the new Gargoyles comic based on the Disney series.

Next is Liz Sherman and a Japanese monster known as a tengu drawn by comic artist,  Mike Wieringo.  I'm not sure we could've pulled off his style in animation.  Look at that beautiful Liz!  Would've been neat to try. Check out what else he draws on his site, Ringo!

Check out the website of Craig Rousseau , he has a bunch of color Hellboys there and and Abe.  Craig's got a new comic out written by Todd Dezago called The Perhapsanauts , sort of a comical version of the BPRD but still filled with plenty of twists and adventures.  Here's a version of Roger that he did in addition to his Hellboys and a glimpse of his new gang.  His style would've adapted well to animation but, as we know now, Mike was looking for something farther away from his own stuff.

Tom Nelson is a character designer here at Film Roman. His Hellboy feels like a boxer to me.  Definitely not a guy to mess with.  It's a great drawing, really communicating a sense of solidity and weight.

Finally, Saxton Moore has posted in the comments section but if you didn't click on his link you'll see that he took the mandate, "Don't do it in Mike's style" seriously.  My producer might have stressed that a little too much. But his Hellboy-as-teen-troublemaker still could've led to a workable design just like Cheek's suspenders/noire Hellboy led to our current design.  So check out his website.  Meanwhile, it's back to work for me!    -- Tad

HELLBOY is trademarked (TM) and copyrighted (©) by Mike Mignola. All rights reserved

Thankful

Usually I work on this blog at home but every so often I squeeze in a chance to upload something from the office.  Unfortunately that means that sometimes the picture files I want to include are one place and I am at another.  Yes, I know we live in the 21st Century where everything is virtual and there are a half dozen ways I could access files from either location but I didn't so quit "tsking" and shaking  your head.  So this brings a change in the topic.

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating.  And whether you are or not, it's always good to take a moment to think about the positive things in your life.  If you can do that while consuming mass quantities of delicious food, so much the better.  Save a roll for me.

I am certainly thankful for the great people at Film Roman Studios, IDT, Revolution Studios, Anchor Bay, Quattro Media, Guillermo del Toro and, most of all, Mike Mignola who all conspired in some fashion to put me in charge of my dream project.  I think I can also say with a degree of certitude that every member of the crew is happy to be on the project.  And I'm thankful to have their talents.  But there is one guy who is really thankful, super died-and-gone-to-heaven thankful.  That would be Sean "Cheeks" Galloway who was chosen by Mike Mignola to set the character design look for the show.  Sean was picked from several artists who tried their hand at Hellboy.  (You'd be looking at their work now if I had the files).

Cheeks went from having a following on the Net and doing covers for the Teen Titans Go! comic to sitting in the kitchen of Casa Mignola while Mike gushed over his portfolio.  I snapped a few pics for posterity.  Then they sat down and started sketching side by side.  We loved Cheeks fresh style but we weren't quite willing to go with the slender, suspenders-clad Hellboy he did as a sample.  I still like his first version of Liz a lot.  It opened up discussions that affected her final, and completely different, design.

Mike talked to Cheeks about the way he normally draws Hellboy and how the proportions could be exaggerated.  This led to him sketching his "favorite drawing of Hellboy ever."  It's too bad he didn't finish the head; it might have led to a whole new line of comics.  Cheeks later said he was blushing and in a state of disbelief.  He couldn't believe he was sitting next to the creator of Hellboy talking about what gun design he should carry and how to draw the Right Hand of Doom.  The proportions that Mike drew that day are largely those that Cheeks used in his design.  So if you wonder how much Mike is involved with Hellboy, wonder no more.  The answer is very, very involved.

And for that, I am thankful.    -- Tad

Production Frustration

I want more money.

More specifically, I want more time.  I started my animation career at Walt Disney Productions sharing a room with Ron Clements, Glen Keane, Randy Cartwright, Ed Gombert, Randy (Randall) Cook (do a bit of Googling on those guys and you'll see I was in some pretty sweet company).  Even then, when features cost well under 10 million, there was time to consider every detail of production, story, gags, color, composition, animation -- everything could be adjusted.  You might not agree with the artistic choices that were made but I envy the luxury of those production schedules.

Production schedules are set by a number of factors, largely out of the control of the artists working on the movie.  We look at the schedule and do the best we can under the circumstances.  We have enough time on HELLBOY ANIMATED to turn out a strong piece of work -- if we can get smart fast enough.  People think that hindsight kicks in after a project is over.  Are you kidding?  I'm questioning decisions I made last month!  Because we're setting a look that we hope will have a long life and tell many different stories, we're constantly trying to improve things by tweaks or redos here and there but have to balance that with the need to move the production forward.

To the left is an example of a finished layout that was thrown out.  Nice work by Ed Ghertner but it had too fanciful a feel for the BPRD.  And since Mike and I have talked about a story that would feature a bunch of cool James Whale-Frankenstein's lab type weird science, we didn't want to blow it in the backgrounds of Hellboy's HQ.

So that's my whining for awhile.  Yeah, I'd like more time and money and I'd also like a goose that craps gold.  (Do you know how much a goose craps in a day?  A lot.  Take gold crap over gold eggs if given the choice.  A goose can stop laying eggs but if stops crapping -- wait.  Have I digressed?)  Anyway, we're a putting a lot of work into getting this thing right.

Okay, a few odds and ends from comments, emails and postings on other boards.

The publicity release lagged the start of production by over two months so we're completely staffed.  For those few positions that haven't started yet, we have artists who are awaiting their start date.  Storyboarding is approaching the halfway mark on the picture but are only roughing things out for now.  They'll return to these sections after Phil Weinstein and I have given notes to clean up their work and add details.  Character design is almost completed.  Background design and layout are almost finished with their key designs.  They will then go into some of the storyboards to catch things the sb artists added or plan out camera moves and compositions for tricky scenes.  Same with the props guys.  It's scary how fast it's going.  So for all of you asking about work,  thanks for your interest - really, not just saying that - but we've got a full house.

Some have noticed that I'm fairly nebulous about how many projects we're doing and just what they are, or when you'll be able to see them.  Several have commented on how early links disappeared after Hellboy Animated first hit the net.  Here's something I posted at the CBR Hellboy Forum.:

One of the reasons "Men in Black" rush around trying to plug Internet leaks is that there can be any number of deals ranging from talent, merchandising, broadcast, distribution, etc. going on that can be delayed or broken off because incorrect information, or even information that IS correct, or information that might someday be correct is spread throughout the Internet.

So, as frustrating as it is and even as illogical as it seems, there's information that can't be clarified. So if I don't answer questions posted on the board or emailed to me, it's because I can't. Even "just between you and me."

Finally, Mike Mignola will be a special guest at Wondercon so if you can make it to the Bay area in February, register now.  I'm sure he'll be as candid as always.
       -- Tad

Where's the Mignola?

So if the character style isn't Mike's and the background style doesn't feature lines and inky blacks, where does the Mignola come in?  Most importantly, it's the stories.  Mike cowrote the stories so you'll get the real goods.  Read all the Hellboy TPBs and you'll see several facets to his adventures. 

There's monster bashing action, Lovecraft/Ashton Smith type ancient races (Ogdru Jahad), Celtic folklore (the Faerie guys), Eastern European folklore (Baba Yaga, vampires), spirit lore (talking skulls and ghosts) and weird science (floating heads in jars and cyber apes).  Guillermo del Toro hit the first two in the first movie.  Last year at Comicon, Mike hinted that HB2 would be in the Celtic vein.  Our movies deal in the folklore area with smatterings of spirit stuff.  It'll be awhile before I can say more but it's pretty darn cool.

But there's more to putting Mignola on screen than subject matter.  Normally a director imposes his own style on the material.  What I want to do is translate Mike's style  into film.  That means his insert panels, his staging, compostitions, whatever we can pull out of the comics.  Hellboy is a quirky comic; it's the quirkiness that makes it unique.  So by going back to the source we hope to capture the same magic.

Now if we had the schedule of a Disney feature, I know that we could control every frame.  But unless you'd like to contribute twenty five million or so to the cause, most of this we have to pick up on the fly.  To that end I've made pages like the attached to guide the storyboard artists.  The first movie is being directed by me and Phil Weinstein.  Phil is doing a great job at fitting the Mignola compositions into the TV frame.

Will all this make for a great movie?  Geez, I hope so!
--Tad

What Will It Look Like?

This image of Hellboy is probably no surprise to you.  In fact, there's a good chance it's what started you on the trail to this blog in the first place.  Mike Mignola wanted Hellboy to have a different style than what he does in the comics.  He choose Sean "Cheeks" Galloway from a number of strong contenders.  There were artists auditioning from animation, comics and random Internet galleries.  Cheeks was a standout; everyone liked his artwork.  But was it Hellboy?

Mike said it was.  We're trying to make the character look as much like Cheeks' style as we can.  It's not easy.  Cheeks has always worked intuitively and never for a moving image.  So we have a couple of artists working to analyze his style and create model sheets so that storyboard artists and animators will know how to draw him in any position or action.  But there's one thing about Sean's piece of art that is nothing like our movie, the background.

We need backgrounds that will suck the viewer into Hellboy's world.  The audience should see the slime on a crypt wall glisten and the gold in a goblin's trove shine.  Fog must be wispy and transparent, and blood shiny and wet.  Although we could create graphic symbols for all those things that would fit into that background style behind Hellboy, I worry that they would be appreciated for their graphic beauty instead of communicating atmosphere and mood.  Here are some backgrounds we're experimenting with.

If you read BPRD from Dark Horse Comics (and you should) you know the organization moved from its cozy headquarters in Connecticut to an abandoned military installation in the Rockies.  That's where our BPRD lives.  It's a huge installation built for "Area 51" type research.  Most of the computers and equipment are too big to move so our guys just plug in their PCs and Macs and work around them.

But there's no denying the graphic elements of Mike's world.  So here's our rule so far.  Wherever the action happens is fully detailed.  Anything beyond that plane gets simplified to two or three tones.  Beyond that it's simplified to two or even just a silhouette.  You can see the technique better in the painting of the alley way.  It has to be touched up.  The original background had more color which you can glimpse through the steps of the stairs on the left but it gives you an idea.   It also shows how we may differentiate the planes with color.  The action of this scene will be in the purple/violet alley.  The areas in green may as well be in a different world.  Mike was as excited about this style as he was when he first saw Cheeks' color Hellboy.  We're still refining things as production builds up steam but I think we'll end up with a unique look.    -- Tad

What the Hellboy?

Wow, the news is out, everyone's excited and you've linked here to find out the latest about Hellboy's transition into animation.

Well, tough.  First you're going to learn about me. :)

I'm the guy who gets to play in Mignola's brain!  Sure it's dark and a little squishy but there's some really creepy stuff in there that I can't wait to toss against your TV screen.  My name is Tad Stones and I've been wanting to do this for a long time.

I first pitched Hellboy as an animated prime time show about ten years ago while I was still at Disney.  (Hey, they claimed they wanted fresh ideas!)  I even produced a little video reel on Adobe Premiere, complete with an animated Touchstone logo.  No interest, of course.  I was given several logical reasons why it wouldn't really fit on prime time television, most of which can be summed up in the sentence, "It's not The Simpsons."  Ironically, I now work at Film Roman Studios where the entire first floor is taken up by artists working on The Simpsons.

So I continued to produce fantasy and science fiction shows for Disney, most based on feature films.  Some of them let me explore some spooky material, albeit in a humorous way.  I also kept pitching various incarnations of "an animated X-Files."  The show was at its peak of popularity; proving there was interest in the material.  Why not try animating something similar?  Of course, what I was really doing was trying to create a show that would let me toy with the same subject matter that Mike Mignola was generating in Hellboy.

Years later I got really close.  Disney Features was working on ATLANTIS and using Mike Mignola as a story and art consultant.  As usual, there was talk of a series and I made sure I was their "Go-to-Guy."
We started work before the movie was released and that's when I met Mike Mignola.  Just as features had, we used him as a series consultant and had him design monsters and what not for us.  Cool beans!

But as we worked on the show, it became obvious the executives wanted it safer, calmer and much more kid-friendly than the movie.  My favorite exec quote: "Why do we need antagonists?"  Finally, after the feature film disappointed at the box office, our production was shut down, fittingly, on Friday the 13th.  Three episodes were linked into a feature length DVD which begins to show what the series might have been (make sure you watch the deleted, extra creepy, scene in the "extras" section.) but the DVD suffered from some of those same, "friendly" notes.

I kept in touch with Mike and when I finally left the Mouse House I felt I needed to write something for pure enjoyment.  And so I pitched Mike some premises and he generously gave me notes on two, half hour, Hellboy scripts!  It was very generous of Mike to take the time since I wasn't connected to any studio.  But I wanted to have something different to shop around as a writing sample.  Meanwhile Mike went to work on the Hellboy feature with Guillermo del Toro.

I was often on the Hellboy comic forums and when the Hellsite opened to promote the movie, I was one of the first on those boards.  Guillermo liked to include the fans in what was going on and I was one of the small group that he invited to a press screening and a dinner with Mike and Ron Perlman.  Guillermo and I talked animation at various book and DVD signings and he certainly knew my background.   

Fast forward to now, with me comfortably nestled in Mike's fog shrouded lobes, working at a studio that is as excited as I am that we're bringing Hellboy to animation.  I've never worked at a place that gives such support and encouragement to the creators.  And I was hired to bring Hellboy to animation, not a friendlier, blanded out, kid's version of the character but the guy who stalks the pages of the comic.  It seems the stars are aligned and the appropriate rituals have been performed and so the party can begin.

What's it going to be like?  How much is Mignola involved?  What's my favorite color?

That's for another time.        -- Tad