^{The design of the breathing apparatus Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) wears when he is out of water went through a number of iterations, including an asymmetrical helmet.}

–Olivier is a tiger, Javier is a mammoth.

–Episode with a brigade soldier with a rifle in a tree. There he removes the ring he gives to Conchita. In the middle of a sandstorm.

–Look for the ghost’s torso. It could he “splattered” with blue paint “blue screen.” Irregular patterns. CGI

–Just a mistake, that’s all, I thought I was human.

“Abe” with a helmet and his respirator

GDT: The idea I was exploring here [opposite] was how to make Abe Sapien blink. Because back then it was so expensive to make him blink. I knew I needed to make him blink digitally because there was no way I could hide a mechanism in the face. So I said, well, if his breathing apparatus is very elaborate but cool-looking enough, I can have the bubbles in the water, and the eyes lit, and people will find him entertaining, and I don’t have to spend all that money on making him blink. So I designed that, and I added little fishes in the way that you would draw a cheesecake girl as nose art on a World War II bombardier. Or the way that Joker puts “Born to Kill” on his helmet in Full Metal Jacket.

MSZ: So these aren’t real fish. They’re intended to be a motif?

GDT: Yeah. Like, he was drawing on his helmet. And the respirator on the side was sort of like a bellows. Those ended up being Johann’s in Hellboy II.

MZ: Why did you move away from this design? Because it’s a very fun design.

GDT: Well, I got away from it because, when we finally went to make the movie, José [Fernandez] at Spectral Motion took a long time to get to Abe. We fucked around for a long time. Then Wayne Barlowe did a beautiful drawing, and Mignola refined it, and then José sculpted it, and it was so gorgeous that I said, “I’m not going to fucking hide the face.” So I just gave him goggles, goggles with water. Because the face, it was so harmonious. The worst thing you can do—and this is really useful advice—in any design, the worst thing you can do is make a big-headed design. The head has to be the smallest part of the creature.

MSZ: Why is that?

GDT: It’s just aesthetically more pleasing. It’s also the worst thing you can do with statuary. I mean, a lot of statuary is done like that because you are meant to look at it from below, so a lot of the sculptures have big heads and big shoulders because you’re looking at them on a pedestal. But the sign of a really bad sculptor is that they do big-headed designs. And a bad draftsman, a lot of the time, has a tendency for big-headed designs.

^{Underwater scenes, such as the one where Abe dives into the cistern to retrieve the reliquary, reveal his true, more expressive face. Storyboards by Simeon Wilkins.}

^{A more elegant combination of goggles and neck-wrap.}

^{Throughout the notebooks, del Toro persistently draws variations of an asymmetrical helmet, which he has tried to incorporate into several films.}

GDT: At the top [opposite] here, on the left, I very much wanted Hellboy to be talking to someone who was trying to soothe him. You know, “Don’t do that.” But then Hellboy just punches him through the door. But I didn’t do that until Hellboy II, when he punches Johann in the locker room. I like him losing his temper abruptly.

Then I’m gonna keep doing this drawing until I get a helmet with two lenses on one side and one in the other. First on Abe Sapien, then on Blade, and then here.

MSZ: What was this particular version intended for?

GDT: Well, I love Russian technology, and I thought of the idea of a leather cap for when they go to Rasputin’s tomb in Moscow in the winter. I wanted to create a leather helmet like an aviator cap with a set of goggles for Hellboy. The idea was that he would use it to detect the talking corpse. Of course, that didn’t happen.

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 38B}

^{This particular iteration was supposed to allow Hellboy to locate the talking corpse in Hellboy. Although the idea was abandoned for that film, del Toro was able to create something similar with the Schufftein glasses in Hellboy II.}

–Hellboy fucks Kroenen up through a wall or door.

– Final battle “a la” CB? If anime can he translated into an image

– HB wears leather protection with asymmetrical goggles of eastern European design for his trip to Moscow

The texture of HB’s horns should be plainly visible so that they don’t look like goggles

–His face is covered with a series of steel belts.

–The jacket needs to have a collar that can be turned up

–In 1945, when I was 10 years of age I decided to write a book. It would detail my father’s biography. A small story about a small family. The very moment I started writing it, I would feel so full of nostalgia and a sense of loss that I would stop and hurry to his side. Crying. This is as far as I ever got: I live with Dad. We are very happy.

^{NOTEBOOK 3, PAGE 39A}

–Amber-colored Chinese neon signs. If we make the noodle factory, the water needs to look disgusting.

–HB’s bullets are made in Japan and are activated when they are pulled out of their package.

–HB’s leather jacket should be made of leather but it should be lightweight enough to blow in the wind

–A “tracking bullet” is shot at sammael from behind an oilskin window. It vanishes in a “grotto” leading to the subway. Puddles slow.

–We’ve already seen the man who works in the subway in another sequence

–An exhaust fan blocks the light with steam. The plastic curtains are lit from behind.

–Kroenen puts together watches as a hobby. Loose parts

–A girl with Down’s syndrome sees HB and draws a picture of him in a little notebook.

–Telephone call. Static. For the girl with Down’s. Laughter.

–A ghost is what survives death. As an amputation. A scar on the soul. The remains of a destroyed soul.

–Ramps and elevators with [image of lines] and with enormous concrete numbers on them

–They travel in garbage truck. A and HB

GDT: Well, the page above is mostly notes, with this image of a shower curtain with a symbol. I like the idea of things behind plastic. You can see it in Mimic, you can see it in Cronos. On Hellboy, I really liked the idea of finding a series of plastic curtains and seeing Kroenen moving behind them. The idea being that the symbol was painted in blood.