Hellboy 2

[telophase]

Anyone else here watch Hellboy 2 and spend the ENTIRE MOVIE thinking "If they didn't get Dave McKean to design this movie, he needs to sue the pants off of whoever designed it because it looks EXACTLY LIKE HIM?!"

Comments

[octopedingenue]

A McKean/Mignola design-off smackdown, I would pay to see.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Nope because I was spending the whole movie waiting for one of the girls to do something, sometime and grumbling when they didn't.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I kinda see what you mean--same palette, for one thing--but McKean's weird use of flatness makes me squint and twitch uncomfortably, whereas these designs didn't.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It was the off-kilter asymmetric face designs, creature designs, and use of texture as well. It felt like someone took his designs and translated them into three dimensions.

I'm going to buy it on DVD when it comes out for the art direction alone. :)

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too :)

Did you see "Mirrormask?" They did such a good job working with McKean that I wasn't sure whether I liked it! It was pretty good, though.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I didn't really care for Mirrormask. For all it was imaginative and well executed it didn't resonate in me; it was too alien or something.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I saw Mirrormask. I loved the visuals, but the story seemed a bit blah and predictable, moreso than I usually expect from Gaiman.

[amberley.livejournal.com]

I forgive MirrorMask much for the line "You can't run away without destroying somebody's world" but I liked Neverwhere more.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I know Gaiman was on the set of Hellboy 2 so maybe his buddy McKean was helping there too?
I know what you mean tho, the scene in the troll market there is a strange, square faced fae with what seems like a tree or building growing out of its head and it's eyes are asymmetrical and so is its head and I could see McKean painting that.

But I did feel the designs were a bit more cohesive than what McKean usually does, he's so very abstract sometimes, but the feeling was very similar. I liked it! Otherworldly without being completely alien to me.

[baka-neko.livejournal.com]

Guillermo del Toro did Pan's Labyrinth (http://www.panslabyrinth.com/) which was a fantastic, dark European fairytale. He was the one who directed the Hellboy 2, hence the gorgeousness of his designs. A friend and I both saw Pan's Labyrinth, which has some incredible imagery in it, and we were commenting that Guillermo was wasted on Hellboy -- the elemental monster, the elvish throne room was pure Guillermo, but it clashed badly with Hellboy -- as in Guillermo is too pretty for this kind of movie?