The Unique Style Of The "Hellboy Animated" Movies
TwitchGuru: How did your collaboration with Mike Mignola work?
Tad: A lot of it was common knowledge between the two of us of pulp literature and old movies. We'd go back and forth saying, "Have you seen this horror film?" or "I loved what they did in 'Bride of Frankenstein'". It starts with brainstorming, and that seems to very quickly narrow itself down. Then I'll go back and write it up as a treatment, and he'll give notes on that. In the second movie we did that, too. Kevin Hopps, the writer, had the benefit of a little more time than Matt Wayne had on the first movie, and he was able to take that treatment and pitch it back to us on index cards. Kevin would tell us how he'd flesh out certain aspects of the story, and what's great about Mike [Mignola] is he'll look at any one moment and come up with really cools ways of doing that moment. It gives the movies a special Mignola feel. How he portrays a spooky moment or a comedic moment has his own weird flare.
TwitchGuru: There's a voice there.
Tad: Yeah, and that was my goal in doing the movies. I wanted to, not impose my voice on Hellboy, but do what I could to capture Mike's voice on film. I think with each film we're getting better and better at that.
Hellboy battles a frog monster.
TwitchGuru: What framed your decision to change the look of Hellboy and his world from the comics?
Tad: It cracks me up. In various reviews we'll get people saying, "Why didn't they capture Mike's look?", and at the same time we'll get reviews saying, "They captured Mignola's style perfectly for animation." It was actually part of the deal, which I assume exists for licensing reasons. If you draw them like the comic book it's really hard to tell what's a piece of animated merchandise and what's the comic merchandise. I assume that's where it comes from, I've never seen the contract. It was part of the deal, but what was more important to me was that Mike wanted it that way. He has a hard time watching people try to ape his style because he sees where they didn't capture it and that makes him self-conscious. Then he also sees where they did capture his style based on his older work, and it drives him crazy. He's so hard on himself it's amazing. He actually picked Sean "Cheeks" Galloway to be our concept designer. Sean thinks in terms of shapes; large against small, detailed versus blank. That's what Sean brought to it.
TwitchGuru: Was there ever any talk of doing the movies with CGI?
Tad: I've obviously been thinking of Hellboy for a good a dozen years now. They asked me about that before I was hired in one of the early meetings, and without hesitation I said 2D. Remember we were thinking of this as a series, and people just think about characters in 3D. The problem with doing "Hellboy" in CGI is you never go back to the same place twice. So on Monday's episode you'll be in Siam, on Tuesday's you'll be in the Arctic, and on Wednesday you'll be in an English castle. CGI can't make that many environments on a budget. So it wasn't about how to make the characters move, although I still have a problem, not with the "Hellboy" animation I've seen, but doing female characters. A feature film is one thing, but if you're trying to do it on a TV budget it requires a certain kind of simplification of movement and acting that I didn't want to be limited by. More than that, though, it was about the world Hellboy moves in.
Liz, Abe, and Hellboy
TwitchGuru: You've got Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, John Hurt, and Doug Jones from the live-action movie reprising their roles in the animated movies. Was it difficult to get them involved?
Tad: Not at all. Remember they were all pumped to do the second film which kept getting put off. They love the idea of getting back into these characters and Ron does a lot of voice over already so it was not a problem there at all. Selma was really fun to work with because she wanted to do so well but she hates using her own voice. She would actually start putting on cartoon voices behind the microphone, and they were very funny. Unfortunately Liz Sherman can't sound like Goofy, and she does a good Goofy. She really learned that she had to pump her voice more and more to get the same underplayed reaction that she does in live-action. She has to caricature it for animation acting. She got better and better as she went along. I think she's better in "Blood and Iron". In the DVD extras she's very frank about her challenge doing that, and I have no problem with her. To me, she is Liz Sherman and I think she does a great job.
Liz goes all 80's Drew Barrymore on a water monster.
