MSZ: In the notes on the page, you mention Basil Gogos—that you had hoped he would do a painting of this.

GDT: He did. It’s upstairs at Bleak House. It’s a funny story. I had not met Basil or contacted him. It was the early days of the Internet, so I went through the white pages, and I just found, like, four Gogoses in New York. There was a “Gogos, B.,” and I called, and he picked up, and I said, “Are you Basil Gogos?” He said, “Yes.” And I commissioned the painting. At the time it was so expensive for me. I don’t know how I paid him.

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 19B}

^{Del Toro’s illustration of Hellboy at at advanced age.}

–During the [?] they disconnect the phone, but she has the cell phone so he hears her whole plea. They cut the power off. They lock the windows and the doors, and open a window to blow out a candle.

–The tape is about the adults’ failure and absence

–Someone discovers one of them trapped in one of the mousetraps. It’s bleeding!!

When I made this portrait of Hellboy, I thought it would be used as the basis for an oil painting by Basil Gogos, but it looks as though this isn’t going to happen. Yesterday I thought that Mignola might be able to do the Monte Cristo comic because his style lends itself very well to the Gothic. I think the mechanical hand might be very interesting visually. What would happen if I proposed to do Mephisto with Ted McKeever. I think it might be a good idea.

Señor HB at age of 101 yrs.

^{Del Toro thought to cloak the character in a duster that would hide the dissimilarity of square human shoulders to the sloping arms of Mike Mignola’s original character. Mike Mignola, Hellboy’s creator, endorsed the idea by drawing Hellboy in the long coat.}

GDT: This drawing [opposite] is a variation on Mignola, because Mignola does the sloping gorilla shoulders [above]. The reason I drew this was I was already thinking of Ron Perlman in the role, which meant the shoulders needed to be human. I wanted to see how he would look. Some of the stuff that ends up in the movie is already there. You can see he’s wearing pants, whereas Mignola’s Hellboy wears shorts. This is already my way of finding Ron in there.

This drawing is also important in the sense that it was right at the time where I felt, “It’s going to happen.” So I drew Hellboy because I felt, “Well, I gotta learn to draw him before I make the movie or I won’t be able to understand him.” So this was an attempt.

^{The idea was implemented in the costuming for the film.}

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 30B}

^{to help ensure an actor could play Hellboy.}

Another version of Hellboy drawn just to kill time or so I don’t forget.

Agoura Hills on 25/11/2001

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 18A}

^{One of the challenges del Toro faced on Hellboy was minimizing the ape-like qualities of his protagonist}

–Domu, he’s mugged in the subway and kills every one of them there.

–She and him are able to do the fastest reading of books and files.

–It takes I blackout to go back to the Middle Ages in any city anyplace.

–“Fuck you. I have more taste on my dick.”

DAOD —Dad please get me out of here. I’m so, so tired. Get me out.

–You have a choice: You can believe her or simply think that she’s having a total nervous breakdown. Either way her mother will help her calm down.

H.B. running

–Climbing the rose trellis.

You’re telling me that something reached out through that fireplace and pulled them through the hole?

–I only know what I’ve been able to piece together over the years. He opened the fireplace. But it was already there…

Smoke. Dissipated with wings

^{By making the character more human, the love story between Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and Liz (Selma Blair) would be believable.}

MSZ: The evolution of how you approached Hellboy is interesting. I remember there’s a note in this notebook where you say initially you were thinking of doing Hellboy as CG, and then maybe having close shots of a real person. But, of course, that evolved and that wasn’t how you approached it.

GDT: Well, that shift came out of a conversation with Jim Cameron. I was saying to him, “I want to create a giant puppet like Mighty Joe Young,” because I love gorillas, and I thought, “Hellboy could be kind of King Kong–ish—a big, ten-foot-tall brute.”

I visited Rick Baker, and I saw the controls of Mighty Joe Young, and I said, “It’s absolutely possible.” I asked Jim, “What do you think?” And Jim said, “That’s a great idea, except there’s one thing you won’t be able to do.” And I said, “What?” “The love story. Because you can make the girl kind of like the monster, but the really human love story, that’s not going to play.” I said, “That’s absolutely right.”

So I went back and talked to Rick. He said, “Well, there are these two guys, Chad [Waters] and Matt [Rose], that are obsessed with Hellboy, and they want to do a test for you where he’s Ron Perlman.” And I always wanted him to be voiced by Ron regardless—I always wanted Ron to be the face of the character. So they did that bust on the stairs at Bleak House [above right], Matt did, and it was clear to me it was going to be a prosthetic job.

^{An important part of this process was finding star Ron Perlman in Hellboy’s features.}

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 19A}

^{Figuring out how to make the creature’s limbs changeable.}

One-year embryo

Sammael as a fetus

Reversible arms for Sammael.

“Reversible” legs for Sammael

Fingers can turn in any direction

Mouth with outside tongue.

^{Wayne Barlowe created the first successful concept that addressed this need by incorporating a hidden bone spur into the demon’s forearm,}

^{which Mike Mignola then depicted in his signature style.}