How a Rabbit Helped Hellboy

What you see above is a partial color script for our second movie.  The first movie didn't get one of these because we didn't have the time.  The purpose is to get an overall look at the movie and how color matches story.  The above is missing about a third of the movie and we're still changing it but even so you can see certain color schemes repeating.  That's not because we ran out of colors, it's because we're emphasizing running themes, characters or connecting certain locations to certain characters.  So the above is just an early work in progress (and I purposely degraded the image).

Many people tell Mike Mignola that they like his black and white art more than after it's colored.  He understands the compliment intended but says they're missing a large part of his story.  He works very closely with Dave Stewart to make sure certain panels have specific colors.  Even the color of a character's eyes may suggest a relationship with another character.This is very obvious in his story, THE ISLAND.  A scholar is skewered by spears and his blood is the same color as the monster that attacks Hellboy. (If you can't find it in your comic shop, it'll be collected later this year. Don't worry.)   
We're trying to do the same thing in the movies but, as always, our enemy is time.  I'd like a week just to go through the movie, even breaking down sequences into micro-sequences, and discuss it all with the color stylists and background painters.  As it is, some color was discussed with Mike while we wrote the outline.  I was thinking about it while editing the scripts.  I jot down notes when going through storyboards then get really serious as the background painters start.  Thank goodness they are so talented and can make sense of my babbling.

I think we'll have sequences that work great but the overall use of color may be a little jumbled.  (I hope you appreciate that I try to make this blog realistic and not just a puff piece.  I don't want you going out there and saying, "Stones says the color is going to suck." )  It may be jumbled because there's several factors that can determine the color you use:

Time of day (easy).  Mood/emotion (should I make an early morning sequence, blue, pink, or grey?  Which seems happy, which seems sad?)  Location ( If green is the color of a bad guy, should his house be green?  What color is it on a "happy" morning as opposed to a "scary" morning?)  Character related (If the green bad guy is defeating the hero, should the background turn a little green?  What if it's morning?  Is it a happy morning because the bad guy is winning or a sad morning because the hero is losing?)

The specifics don't matter but ideally your "color vocabulary" should be consistent throughout the movie.  There's always a certain consistency because every decision is filtered through the director's taste.  But it's a little tricky when I'm intentionally working at the edge of my comfort zone.  Luckily I've had a chance to push color recently.

Okay, here's the rabbit part.  Next week, The Adventures of Brer Rabbit comes out on DVD.  It's the project I produced just before starting Hellboy.  Buy it, rent it, watch with a friend, I don't care - I don't get royalties or residuals but there is a sequence that I art directed myself.  It's a villain song, Brer Fox and Brer Wolf to be exact.  I didn't write the song or lyrics but I came up with the gags, action and storyboarded it myself.  But I wanted it to have a special look, something like "Pink Elephants on Parade" from Dumbo.  So I ended up painting the color keys myself and even did the color choices on the characters -- so if you hate that sequence, it is definitely my fault.  Anyway, this isn't a plug, I'm making a point.  There's no special color relationship to the story but I was very specific with what colors went with which.  There's a nightmarish feel to certain color combinations and it came out really cool.  (It doesn't look like anything else in the picture but what the hey.)  But playing with such extreme colors gave me the confidence to push things more on the Hellboy movies.

Of course, the fact that Mike and Dave had been doing it for years didn't hurt. ;) 

See you later.  --Tad

Comments

[Kirk]

Interesting stuff, Tad. This is something I would likely never notice on a conscious level but would aid in the emotional feel of the scenes.

[taterpatch]

I want to thank you for posting all this process stuff. It's a real education. Will you be doing any of the DVD commentary tracks?

[Tad]

The DVD extras haven't been nailed down but the talk has been to have Mike and I do a commentary track. The other extras may actually focus on the comics.

[hb]

darnit why is it so small?
Well the colour thing is one reason is the colour thing, the other must be to torture me.
Even so I can make out small details.
One of the most eye catching is
the sixth panel in the first row...those wolves could not get any more Mike Mignola and now I'm positive his 'world' will be expressed in some form or another within the animation
Bravo.

[hb]

oh man. sry bout the typo. s'early

[Steam]

Well, the colors look very cool and moody to me... nicely done. I'm just really glad you guys are the one's working on this... just caring so much about the colorschemes will help, even if you can't spend months/weeks/days on them like you might want to.

Also, it's a treat to see the little teeny-tiny panels... you've got some very cool poses and composition in there...

I couldn't be more excited.

Thank you for the (needed) update! (I know I needed it!)

[Rick Cortes.]

The more I see behind-the-scenes material, the more I want to see a book on the production of this show (let along the show itself!). Any plans for that in the future?