The rundown of how the artists navigated the challenges of animating Hell Boy was fantastic!! It also reminds me of how much I want to learn and develop in terms of my own craft—the kind of examination and articulation in concrete terms as you did here was so valuable. I remain a bit confused about why Mignola stipulated that the film differ stylistically from his original work—especially since it looks like he was able to work closely with the team anyway...
Thank you so much -- we're so glad the breakdown was useful!
As for Mignola's demand that the film use a different style, we're a bit confused about it as well. Stones offered the clearest explanation in a comment on one of his old production blog posts:
"The decision to not use Mike's style was part of the deal. Without the change, there probably would be no Hellboy animation. Mike likes to have other variations of Hellboy and he was really excited about [Sean Galloway's] style. The challenge now is to build a world that communicates a Mignola-type story. And we definitely have a couple of those."
We didn't dive too deeply into the "why" on this point in the article -- which might have been a mistake on our part! But Mignola does tend to follow the MO of inviting different takes on Hellboy in the comics, and the del Toro films are their own original spin on the series that isn't much like the comics at all. So, it's believable that he just wanted the Hellboy Animated team to try something new. Sorry we didn't explore this in the piece!
Oh interesting about the production blog, thank you! At the end of the day, artists don't owe us explanations, so I'm happy to remain confused on this. Zero need for an apology (I bet that exploring something like the reasons behind that stipulation could make for an entire issue on its own as well).
Really fun article as always. Thanks for sharing the The Spirit of Genius I wasn't aware of this documentary despite being very fond of Fyodor Khitruk's work sometimes information on Eastern European and Russian animation can be sparse if you don't know where to look and often its not translated into English. Thanks again.
Much appreciated! And it's great to hear that The Spirit of Genius is up your alley -- it's definitely one of the tightest, most complete rundowns of an Eastern European animator we've seen in English.
The rundown of how the artists navigated the challenges of animating Hell Boy was fantastic!! It also reminds me of how much I want to learn and develop in terms of my own craft—the kind of examination and articulation in concrete terms as you did here was so valuable. I remain a bit confused about why Mignola stipulated that the film differ stylistically from his original work—especially since it looks like he was able to work closely with the team anyway...
Thank you so much -- we're so glad the breakdown was useful!
As for Mignola's demand that the film use a different style, we're a bit confused about it as well. Stones offered the clearest explanation in a comment on one of his old production blog posts:
"The decision to not use Mike's style was part of the deal. Without the change, there probably would be no Hellboy animation. Mike likes to have other variations of Hellboy and he was really excited about [Sean Galloway's] style. The challenge now is to build a world that communicates a Mignola-type story. And we definitely have a couple of those."
http://hellboyanimated.typepad.com/hellboy_animated/2005/11/what_will_it_lo.html
We didn't dive too deeply into the "why" on this point in the article -- which might have been a mistake on our part! But Mignola does tend to follow the MO of inviting different takes on Hellboy in the comics, and the del Toro films are their own original spin on the series that isn't much like the comics at all. So, it's believable that he just wanted the Hellboy Animated team to try something new. Sorry we didn't explore this in the piece!
Oh interesting about the production blog, thank you! At the end of the day, artists don't owe us explanations, so I'm happy to remain confused on this. Zero need for an apology (I bet that exploring something like the reasons behind that stipulation could make for an entire issue on its own as well).
Really fun article as always. Thanks for sharing the The Spirit of Genius I wasn't aware of this documentary despite being very fond of Fyodor Khitruk's work sometimes information on Eastern European and Russian animation can be sparse if you don't know where to look and often its not translated into English. Thanks again.
Much appreciated! And it's great to hear that The Spirit of Genius is up your alley -- it's definitely one of the tightest, most complete rundowns of an Eastern European animator we've seen in English.