BY DAVID SERVER | Spectral Motion, the new special effects company working on the creatures for 'Hellboy', are up to their ears in demonic claws, fake drool, and fluttering gills -- and Spectral's main man, Mike Elizalde, took some time out of his schedule here on the Prague set of 'Hellboy' to talk about it as part of CountingDown's continuing Hell-coverage!

CD: How has production been going thus far for Spectral Motion?

Elizalde: I think it's going well. I just saw a rough cut of the film and it was reeeeeeally sweet, I was very happy with what I sawI'm not gonna talk about *that* at all, but I feel very privileged to be able to have seen that, I'm very very excited. We're on the home stretch, here, and we feel the weight of our responsibilities, but it's going well.

CD: In terms of the work that you do, are you getting finished products to Guillermo as he needs them, or are all the things that are used on set rigorously tested and then brought on set afterwards?

Elizalde: We have tested some of the things we've been required to make, and some of the things that are ending up on film we've improvised at the last minute, so it's a little bit of both. Some of this stuff is planned, some of it [isn't]. But I think that everything we're shooting is looking pretty dynamic.

CD: Now that Doug Jones, aka Abe Sapien, is wrapped filming and all the Abe make-up work is behind you, how would you say all of that work went in retrospect?

Elizalde: Really well. We were really pleased with the results, both the performance and the look of the make-up, and it's actually a little bittersweet not having Doug around anymore, not having that energy with us here on set anymore. We miss Doug.

CD: Was there anything about the makeup that proved more challenging or ended up working better than you had expected?

Elizalde: I think that some of the things that we had in our favor is the fact that the heads in particular were really sort of modular, the make-up was applied so that we could switch heads out as we needed to on the day [of shooting]. Sometimes he had that out of the water look, sometimes he had the underwater look, so that that helped. It was a pretty fast changeover. Mark Setrakian designed mostly everything that moves [for this movie], including the gills on Abe's make-up, which are very low-profile but very effective, and they create a really nice sort of undulation. He's a brilliant guy and we're really happy to have him on our team.

CD: How are the Sammael make-up effects working out on set for you guys?

Elizalde: All the stuff I've seen on film looks astonishing. I've been very pleased with the results. I don't have any regrets about it. Her shoots a lot of days, too, so we have our work cut out for us even from this point forward but I think it's a great character.

CD: How much fake drool and slime do you go through for Sammael on any given day of shooting? In the stuff I've them shoot, it looks like he's almost in a constant state of drooling and spitting

Elizalde: [Laughing] I don't have an exact figure on that, we'd have to weigh it at some pointbut that suit takes on a lot of sweat, he loses about 10lbs a day in that suit, and that's not an exaggeration.

CD: Last time we had talked, you were uncertain as to whether Spectral Motion would be creating any mini-busts of the characters from Hellboy as part of a promotional tie-in. Any update on that possibility?

Elizalde: I had a conversation from Mike Richardson at Dark Horse, and I brought the topic up, and it's still on the table. We haven't made any final decisions yet, but that's still out there in the open.

CD: Does Spectral Motion have any other big projects lined up for after Hellboy or are you mostly focused on the Hellboy shoot right now?

Elizalde: Our focus is one this right now. I actually haven't been back to Los Angeles since we started this, which was in February, so I haven't had a chance to really pursue and leads. I've had Brian Walsh, who is our chief administrator back at home, lining up leads for us. And y'know, [Hellboy] is out first time out [as a special effects company], so it's not like everybody knows who we are yet, but we hope that this will put us on the map, and if everything I've seen is true to my belief, it will.

After that, it was back to the trenches for Mike and his crew, who had one angry Sammael to refill with all the requisite drool that he needed. Look for more interviews and set reports from the 'Hellboy' set here in Prague as soon as we can churn them out here at CountingDown.com!