When is Red... Not

What color is Hellboy?  Whoa!  Not so fast.  Do you mean Hellboy at dawn or squatting next to a campfire?  Hellboy in moonlight or Hellboy underwater?  In a subterranean temple or pine forest?

The color stylist works together with the background painter to create the illusion of specific place or a time of day.  An animated TV show is usually limited to day, night and shadow colors.  That means that no matter what the background the director pretty much has to pick one of those.

We're obviously going beyond that although we're limited by time because to really do it right you'd be picking the specific colors for every shot in the picture.  That's what theatrical feature films do.  But Tracy Jones, Kim Bitsui, James Gallegos, Wei Zhao, Gary Eggleston and Lin Zheng are all working to create the appropriate magic to create the right mood in these stories.

In the comics, the great Dave Stewart works closely with Mike Mignola to use color as not just a tool of time and place but one of story too.  Here and there we attempt the same thing.  We are not limiting our palette to that of the comic but often limit the color choices in any one scene to emphasize a story point.  The two examples below are just quick mock ups by me but they show how we might use color to underline the presence of evil, changing the tint as it makes its move.  You can also see how the colors of Hellboy change to fit into the scene.  It's not as simple as slipping a colored gel into a spotlight; every different color must be rethought to fit the painting behind it.

Playing with such color changes really underlines how a animated movie is a group effort, even more so than in live action.  A variety of artists of different temperaments working together to build a movie one frame at a time.   -- Tad

Comments

[Tad]

Sorry about the resolution problems but you get the idea.

[my2k]

I can't imagine how time consuming and difficult this would be... props to the colour stylists behind these. Every single colour, by hand. unbelieveable.

I just use photoshop :(

[Tad]

Actually, Photoshop is what both the painters and color stylists use so you're in good company.

[hb]

That is awesome. Don't really like that the rippling abs were eliminated though, there's some nice shadow play with them in the comics, and HB looks slightly odd with that samurai sword...
But that is one heck of a demon you guys recreated...once again congrats
You pulled it off...
By the way Tad..are those Hb's to scale in those environments? I pictured him being slightly smaller and not taking up so much room

[Cole]

Great work, Tad. Do we have any approximate timeline for a release date for the movies yet?

[Tad]

Scale: Hellboy is 7 feet tall so that's about what's on the storyboards.

Release date - different dates have been talked. No earlier than Fall of 2006 for the first one but there was talk of pushing it back for reasons that have nothing to do with our production.

I'll definitely post the info here as soon as it's locked and allowed.

[hb]

hm yeah..he is a big fellow.
man, I hope the release date is soon..but if pushing it back means a better end result i.e The island... I'm all for it...
Once again, I can't wait

[taterpatch]

Is the sword a hint about possible locations for the movies, or just for fun? I've never seen HB in Asia (always wanted to see him tangle with a Yeti). The comics mention a Vampire Cat of Kyoto in passing, but that's the only mention I can think of.

Thanks,

[hb]

Is there any possibility of an art of for this thing btw?
A compilation book of some sort...obviously if it happens it'll be later after the movies are finished of course...but is it feasable? I really dig the conceptual

[maija]

Seeing HB with the sword in his hand really makes me itch to see him in action. His proportions are great--imposing yet lovable, in a "big lunk" sort of way. But fearsome in a confrontation too. He has the mass for some serious butt-kicking and that whammer looks like it means business.

It might not be in the style of Mignola, but I'm confident this Hellboy will capture the Mignola spirit.

[Will]

Seeing the way Hellboy fits into the backgrounds here brought a big smile to my face. These movies are going to rock.

[Kid Mesh]

Love the updates and the artwork thus far is awesome. Keep up the great work!

[Toren Atkinson]

Hi Tad, my name is Toren Atkinson, and I am the lead singer and main lyricist for the Lovecraftian-influenced rock band, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets (http://www.thickets.net). On our album "Cthulhu Strikes Back" we recorded a song called "Ogdru Jahad." As a Hellboy fan, a Lovecraft fan, and a cartoon fan, I am obviously excited about your project! (I am also a voice actor, an illustrator, and a writer, but that's beside the point.) I would very much like to provide you with my band's 3 albums, if you would be kind enough to contact me at [email protected]. I believe that Mike, Guillermo and Scott Allie all have copies of "Ogdru Jahad" in one form or another. I'd like to get you one too! Thanks a lot for reading.

[Toren Atkinson]

Sorry,
clean link:
http://www.thickets.net/

my art:
http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~thickets/colour.htm

[riotnrrd]

taterpatch: Because I am a huge Hellboy nerd, I can assure you that he has,
indeed, been in Asia. He visited Japan and fought some floating demon
heads in "Heads," which first appeared in "Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead"
and was collected in "Hellboy Volume 4: The Right Hand of Doom".

I am so ashamed that I know this.

[taterpatch]

Thanks, riotnrrd. I'll have to check that out. I haven't gotten any further in my reading than Volume 3.

Now that someone has taken the bait...

The reason I asked about Asia is because I have this persistent vision in my head of HB having a conversation with almost-Buddha Jizo, guardian of hell-bound souls.

http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/jizo-bosatsu-japan.shtml

It's just one little scene, of HB in one of these incredibly creepy gardens that commemerate "water babies," children who died or were aborted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Zojoji_01.jpg

He's looking over the child-sized, baby-faced statues, maybe touching one of the little knitted caps, when he hears the clanking of the metal rings on Jizo's staff. Or one of the statues starts talking to him.

Turns out there's whole legions of Tibetan demons who got the faith and turned into protector spirits. That would make HB seem less unique, though, so probably not so good for marketing.

We all have our sicknesses.

[my2k]

I have a question: Are the movies going to be animated in-house, or are they going to be done in other countries, or some kind of combination of the two? I have no clue here, sorry about such a simple question but it's eating me up inside.

Also I didn't get a chance to post this on the last journal, but I am SO glad Prof. Corrigan is in on this. Besides good ol' Rodger she is my personal favorite, the normal one of the bunch, in a sense. She really serves as a nice connection to the real world for everybody.

Photoshop users, rock on!

[Tad]

Eating you up inside? All right, you need to take a deep breath and get out of the house. See a movie. Call a friend. Go down to the dump and shoot rats. You need a new perspective.

Okay, off hand I can't think of any direct to DVD movies produced in the United States that are animated in house unless they are animated with Flash. There might be some CG features but more and more they're going overseas too.

We write and record the script. Storyboard and time all the action, design all the backgrounds, characters and props. Paint and color them, adjusting color per sequence. And finally we tell them how the above is supposed to go together, shot by shot.

The overseas studio makes it all come to life, making slight adjustments as necessary. We look at the footage, ask them to correct mistakes then do all the post production here: music, sound effects, color timing and all the technical steps that put it on a DVD.

Then you buy it. Maybe a second copy in case the first one gets scratched. ;)

[Josh]

This blog rocks!