BY DAVID SERVER | David Server recently interviewed Wayne Barlowe, main creature designer for Hellboy. Read on for the full conversation:

CD: So youre one of many concept designers on Hellboy, and people have described you as the creature specialist of the team. What role would you say you fill within the Hellboy concept art team?

Wayne Barlowe: I guess that distinction is probably fairly valid. There were a bunch of people that were called in to take a shot at various creature components in Hellboy, but I think that basically the main creatures that needed addressing were kind of laid at my feet, and it was a challenge and a real pleasure to work on them with [Helllboy director Guillermo del Toro]. The creature thing has kind of stuck with me for a bunch of years and I guess its just because I enjoy doing them more than almost any other kind of element in films or books for that matter.

CD: Were you familiar at all with the Hellboy comics before you joined the art team? Or was your first exposure to the material when Guillermo commissioned that painting from you?

WB: Im trying to rememberwhen Guillermo commissioned the paintingthat was maybe a year or so before we actually got the call to come out and work on it. Im a little hazy as to whether I know the property before then or not but certainly by the time that I arrived in LA to work on it I had read all of the graphic novels and was a big fan of it. I thought [Hellboy creator Mike Mignola] had done a really amazing job with it. I had a whole lot of respect for it.

CD: Lets talk more about the painting of Hellboy that Guillermo commissioned from you  how did you go about taking the creature that Mike had drawn and turning it into something composed of biology you might see in real life? Did Guillermo give you any guidelines?

WB: Well, that painting went through pretty much the same kind of arc that almost everything that Ive worked with Guillermo on has. Hes an extremely visual guy, and had a really pretty crisp notion in his head of how he wanted Hellboy adapted for that painting. I had kind of a sense that the painting itself was going to be used as just an initial template for how the character would actually wind up, but I had many conversations with Guillermo during the course of executing the painting and even prior to that, where a very healthy back and forth transpired in terms of faxing sketches and getting his feedback. I was pretty accustomed to that anyways as a result of working on Blade II with him. So his style of directing for films translated itself into working on this painting.

CD: There seems to be almost some ape-like physiology in there, with the prolonged arms and the arched backDid that design have to be toned down at all due to budgetary reasons? I know that Guillermo said that ideally he would have liked HB to look like a smaller Mighty Joe Young, but that concept had be trimmed a bit

WB: Im out of the production now, I finished up back in August. I really had very little to do (after that painting) with Hellboy himself in the film itself. He was kind of not really a creature, this all (to the best of my knowledge) fell to Rick Bakers [Cinnovation make-up company] and Rick himself in terms of how [actor Ron Perlman] was going to be translated into Hellboy. I can say though, that when it came to actually working on the painting, theres a part of me that I think works well when it comes to a director with Guillermos style or even other directors. I very much like to submerge my aesthetic to some degree and kick it in after I know exactly what specific elements the director wants. And so Guillermo, in the course of fine-tuning a sketch that I might do, he may not even mention the Mighty Joe Young reference, but he has it in his head very clearly that hed want the arms attenuated or the hands larger or whatever, and those are the kinds of tweaking things that will go on when I send a sketch over. So there is a part of me that answers myself aesthetically after Ive established what the foundation is that the director, or an art director in the book world or anything else.

CD: Was the chest design on your Hellboy painting your idea or something Guillermo asked for specifically?

WB: The actual design was mine, but it was initially Guillermos idea. And we went through a couple of iterations of how it might appearhe very much likes the sort of Maori body adornment kinda thing, and that was what was the underlying principal behind that.

CD: What other characters/creatures did you work on?

WB: Sammael, Hellboys opposite number, was the primary character that occupied me for about three of four weeks. After that I moved on to Abe Sapien, and after that there were a couple other little items that I took my hand at, like a young Hellboy, but with varying degrees of success Id have to say (laughs).

CD: Word is that the new Abe design is somewhat modified but a lot of the changes were really intelligent ones. Were there any specific adjustments that stood out to you when you took your shots at Abe?

WB: I think that one of the things that Guillermo really wanted was for Abe to be beautiful as well as strange. And Mikes Abe is of obviously foundational and quintessential, its how he envisions the character. So its a little difficult for me as somebody not intimately involved with his graphic novel to come in and suddenly redesign a character of his and I felt very awkward about it, but I did feel that I had to answer to Guillermos needs and the films needs and when he started to tell me basically where he wanted to go with the character, I sat down and started to think less humanoid in some regards and more almost alien really. Hes a bit more streamlined and the proportions have been fiddled with in a way that are rather non-humanbut the underlying principal of him looking elegant and beautiful and strange is really what I was striving for.

CD: Did you look at a lot of fish biology?

WB: Oh, absolutely. In fact one of the things that was key to me in terms of Abes head, and I think once I kind of felt that Id achieved it other elements of his face clicked in, his mouth was a very integral part to making his face expressive. And the only way I felt comfortable doing that was taking myself over to Borders and buy a couple of Caribbean fish books and take a look at the actual structure of that kind of strange oversized scale plating and that sort of thing around the lips, and once I arrived at that, it felt a lot more comfortable messing with his face. There was a certain degree of ambiguity that you could establish with the forms of the plates so that his face could look expressive in different ways.

CD: Will Sammael, the creature that Hellboy is fighting in your original painting, still appear in the film in that form or has he since been redesigned?

WB: Hes gone through a whole lot of redesign. He was a difficult customer to pin down.

CD: What other types of animals, if any, did you examine for reference for him? Because its almost hard to tell what you were looking at for his design in the painting.

WB: Well, to be honest, the same kind of principals that went into the painting went into the final design for Sammael, but there isnt any single creature that I would say he resembles or that I took any particular designs cues from. He does have his own look, and in some ways if you were to describe him, you might well think that he looks like what he looks like in the painting, but he really doesnt, hes gone through a lot of changes and I dont want to let anything out of the bag, but I will say that this was an intimately hand-in-glove kind of working procedure that Guillermo and I had to the point where, and I really thoroughly enjoy this kind of thing because I like trying to fulfill anybodys vision if thats what Im hired to do, but it was a classic case of, Can you move this eye over here, and then Id go back and Id do it, and then come back down and that would be fine, and then it was Can you make this look a little bit different, and it was a very close working relationship and I think Guillermo was very happy with it once it was achieved, I know I was and I cant wait to see what it looks like when its fleshed out.

CD: Have you seen any of the test work for any of the creatures you designed?

WB: I saw a very early maquette in clay, and it looked very good, but Guillermo had certain proportional things that he wanted to work through and I remember seeing him sit at his desk with the clay in his hand sort of working over the maquette, and hes really good at all that stuff! His notebooks are fabulous, and his raw ability to take a maquette and fiddle with it until its satisfying him is really impressive. Its just fascinating, and great to watch.

CD: Of all the different characters or creatures you designed, was there one you were particularly proud of?

WB: I am really happy with the way Abe came out, he is very strange. I think that however its worked on the film, Ive been told that the maquette looks quite a bit like the finished drawings that I did, so I think Im gonna be really fascinated to see how hes realized. And I know that hes kind of a favorite character. So Id have to say when all is said and done, I was really pleased with him.

CD: Youve said that you tried to fuse your design sensibility with Mikes abstract style. That must be challenging considering the level of detail present in your work and the stark simplicity of Mikes work. Did you ever sit down with him and go over how something might translate, or do you just see what comes out and go from there?

WB: I think it was the latter really, I mean we both have an awareness that we have a very different take on creating artwork, and I think that it would have been ludicrous for me to sit down and try to either emulate or ape his style and so the way I approached it basically was like any other preproduction job, my job was to realize something as fully as I could in a realistic way rather than trying to come up with a simulation of his design idiom, it just wouldnt work and I dont know that anybody could make his design idiom really function on the screen in any form other than an animated form. It works beautifully in a graphic novel but there are certain things that are physically impossible to translate into a live action screen, and I think Guillermo had a really good awareness of that and basically didnt want me to dare doing that, I dont think any more than Mike did.

CD: This is your second time working with Guillermo (having designed the Reapers for Blade II). Whats it like working with him as a director?

WB: Well, Ive worked with a few people and I hope I dont offend anybody, but I enjoy working with Guillermo..so far hes one of the best. I enjoy his company, I enjoy his stylehes got a world of knowledge on these pictures, and its just fascinating for me to sit across the table and hear him talk about it. And hes just one of the most generous people Ive ever met, really. Hes just a terrific guy, I cant say anything bad about him. Hes just a remarkable person! I dont know how he manages to keep all the balls in the air the way he does. And yknow each relationship that I have seems to be a bit different, distance having a lot to do with it, I frequently do a lot of work on the East Coast so I dont have the luxury of the kind of interface that I had with Guillermo when I was out there. Im sure other directors are equal in his givingness, but so far hes just been a remarkable guy to work with.

CD: Sweet. Sounds like Hellboy is really coming along nicely.

WB: Well, I think its just gonna be amazing when it hits the screen, I think Guillermos gonna bring something totally differentIm starting to really get very tired of the comic book to film thing, and I think Guillermos visual sensibility is going to make this stand out, I really do. And I dont say that just in a sort of ass kissing sort of way (laughs). Guillermos got a level of creativity that I think is just beyond most directors, he really feels passionately about a lot of the elements that are in Hellboy, and I think thats gonna come out. He and Mike are two sides of the same coin really.

CD: Any progress lately on adapting your works Inferno or Expedition into films? I know thereve been some rumblings

WB: There have been rumblingsbut there isnt any progress that Id want to talk about now. Im still working on the Inferno stuff for myself, and expanding that universe, and putting together a novelized form of it, and weve got products coming out on DarkWorlds.com, three dimensional renderings of some of the characters, and those will be up and ready very soon. One of them is actually available as we speak. Its a really lovely bust of [Decurian], the character on the cover of Brushfire. But yknow I have a fairly good realization that Inferno is a dark piece of work, even the story that Ive created to go along with it is actually a story thats uplifting and has very redemptive elements throughout it. But, in a community like Hollywood, when you hear Hell, youre gonna think the worst. And my real goal is to have my cake and eat it too, to show a world thats dark and moody and has all the elements of the Inferno, but to tell an uplifting story.

CD: We hear that your next project is doing preproduction art for the third Harry Potter movie  are you at liberty to talk about your work on that project so far?

WB: No. (laughs) Its an ongoing process, Im enjoying working with the people in the UK, this is a new experience for me. I was over there two weeks back aboutI met with the director and the production designer, they were both terrific guys. The guys that were already there, the two artists, are also extremely talented guys and I got along real well, and that was very pleasant. And now Im back here, scanning my artwork in, feeling somewhat removed from the progress of it, but I think doing some very different work from what I did on Hellboy. But its satisfying and its a lot of fun, and I have to admit I hadnt read any of the Harry Potter stuff up until I worked on this, and its a challenge, its fun.

CD: Got any other projects on tap in the near future?

WB: Im tinkering with the idea of doing a second Expedition book, and that would be very much with an eye towards conceivably getting somebody interested out in Hollywood in rendering that in some format. I still think that hasnt really been done yet, in fact I dont think its been done unsuccessfully (laughs). So I think thats a fertile field for me. If all goes well with and the Inferno novelization thing goes as I would like it to, I think Id probably like to revisit that.

CD: Great! Thanks again, it was a real pleasure talking to you.

WB: Same here!