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

Comments

[Patrick Schoenmaker]

Man, I wish you guys the best of luck with this. Please, don't screw it up. I am already enjoying reading every single word of this blog.

[Keith Holven]

Everything sounds fantastic!! Can't wait to see more!

[David Davis]

I have complete confidence in this, it's something I've been wanting ever since I first discovered the joy that is Hellboy.

Looking forward to learning more.

[Mike Elsner]

Please, please tell me that Ron Perlman is doing the voice? He still does voice over works for other cartoons, so I don't think it's "below him."

[David Petersen]

I like the breakdowns of Mignolaisms, Tad. Truely those elements tell hellboy stories. I think your understanding of that will only make the product better

[Evan Erwin]

Wow, fantastic stuff! Love the blog and the ideas. Can't wait to see/read/hear more!

[Jérôme]

Yep that's a bit more interesting and reassuring than the previous artworks... But how separate the fore and background like Mignola does without his huge black shadows ? Well I hope you'll find a way... Perhaps thinking Sergio Leone for the shots tempo, the place of characters in frame...

[Plut]

Reading this post it hits me why I love the art of Mignola so much. You know, sometimes you just need it put in words for you.

And also it hits me how similar Mignola's comics are to japanese comics. Comics of the western world normaly doesn't play around with frames and time etc. like japanese. But Mignola does. Not necessarily the same way they do but he's tweaking the same stuff for the same effect.

I think Hellboy would fit quite well in an extraordinairy modest anime. But I think and hope that's not what you're doing. But I also hope you're not exluding that type of storytelling either.
Good luck!