Guillermo Del Toro

I have decided to look into the inspirations and interests of Guillermo Del Toro as I admire his work style as well his creative input that he puts into all of his films. When looking into his work, I realised that he takes influences from many different things, many different aspects of the industry. These include Len Wein, creator of Swamp Thing, Dick Smith, Eyvind Earle, colourist on sleeping beauty as well as Symbolism and James Whale’ Frankenstein. These are but I few of his influences however, I have decided to look in to other ones in which the influence can be seen within his film work as well as the development for the films.

The first influence I looked at is Jack Kirby (1917-1994). As co-creator of Captain America, Fantastic 4, X-Men and The Hulk, he was and still is, one of the most prolific and influential comic book artists. As an artist and creator of comics, he wanted to work in all areas of the industry including Story telling. This is similar to the way in which Del Toro works. Although he works as director and storyteller, he also works along side the costume designers for his creatures, adding his own style and creative input. The reason he does this is because he designs his own characters within his sketchbooks. This is also similar to the style in which Jack Kirby worked. Although he didn’t always draw the characters within the comics, he wanted to design them and so added his creative input. The inspiration for Del Toro’s Hellboy films (comic character designed by Mike Mignola) also came from Jack Kirby’s ‘The Demon’. He used the ideas behind this comic book as a basis for the personality and character traits of Hellboy. The Demon being a good guy with an evil image, ‘not quite a villain but always sparking with little flushes of chaos inside’

The next of Del Toro’s influences was a huge part of Hollywood. Ray Harryhausen mastered the art of Motion picture Special Effects, more specifically Stop Motion Photography. Ray Harryhausen loved to work by himself and this meant that the SFX that he worked on sometimes took 2 or more years to do. Harryhausen worked on many classic films, such as ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’ and many more. The idea of Stop Motion effects and the hand made characters/ monsters have influenced Del Toro’s creative style within his films. Within Guillermo Del Toro’s films, he prefers his creatures to be prosthetic creations as apposed to CGI. This can be seen when watching the special features on the HellBoy films. In this, most of the creatures are created using prosthetics and materials. This gives an organic feeling to the characters as apposed to a plastic feeling to them. Both Harryhausen and del Toro were influenced by the orgininal King Kong.

Another one of Guillermo Del Toro’s influences is the work of Stan Winston (1946-2008). Winston is a Oscar Winning SFX creator and make up artist. His portfolio includes many films including Terminator as well as the creating full scale animatronics of Jurassic Park. It’s this use of make up and animatronics along with Prosthetics that have influenced Del Toro to use this similar style. Guillermo Del Toro, in most circumstances, will create the creatures in his film, whether they need to be 8ft or 3ft. Anything beyond this would be harder to make and so, its this point in which he relies on SFX. Stan Winston as also worked with another one of Del Toro’s inspirations. Rob Pottin worked with Stan Winston on ‘The Thing’, one of Del Toro’s favourite films for prosthetically made creatures.

Guillermo Del Toro has been influenced by many people from all parts of the industry, and the last influence I will be looking at is Chuck Jones (1912- 2002), creator of Bugs Bunny. When looking for a way in which Del Toro was influenced by Jones, I found it hard to link the influences of the drawn animation to the films of Del Toro. It was after a while in which I found quotes by both of the artists which speak about their work whilst also linking them to each other.

Chuck Jones: ‘Animation isn’t the Illusion of Life, it is Life’

Guillermo Del Toro: ‘ All movies should be designed like animation, where the style is the substance’

It was at this point in which I realised that Del Toro likes to create his films in the style of a cartoon, so that the characters should affect their surrounds and the atmosphere, like they would do in Bugs Bunny, One of Chuck Jones’ animations.