Movie PictureToday at the 2006 Comic-Con International we were given a sneak peak at the Hellboy Animated TV show. Present were Matt Wayne, Sean Galloway, Mike Mignola and Phil Weinstein. This show was moderated by Tad Stones. Guillermo Del Toro, who was running late, eventually showed up after we were given an unfinished, animatic/animated clip of the show.

Filled with lots of dark green and black colors, the clip presented an anime style rendering of the characters from the movie. It was also made clear in the trailer that Ron Perlman and Selma Blair are going to voicing their respective roles from the Hellboy film. In fact, the final music that we heard in the clip was actually the music that composer, Christopher Drake, did as an audition piece.

The sequence was filled with a lot of action as Hellboy battled a batlike creature. Smashing into walls and mixing in the franchises trademark humor, the scene eventually became filled with a firey red tone as Hellboy was eventually triumphant.

"Guillermo really pushed for the move to animation." Tad Stone declared. Apparently Tad and Mike Mignola had worked together at Disney so this made putting this project together that much easier. "I knew Tad wanted to do a Hellboy cartoon since way back when. They also cited the animated X Files show as an influence.

This is when Guillermo Del Toro came in to a thunderous applause. He knew going in that the show would "be in the style of the artwork" yet he "wanted it to have a new look." Apparently, Liz was the most changed character in this animated incarnation of Hellboy.

"The idea was that I like short girls." He laughed. "For Hellboy she is perfect.

On the subject of how the concept of this animated series began, Del Toro attributes it to the live action film's long gestation period. "I was like f*ck it, lets just go with animation."

Lastly, they discussed how Sean Galloway was hired to draw the Hellboy animated TV show. He sent in his artwork and didn't believe the email response from Mike Mignola was legitimate. "

"I thought it was a spam email." Galloway laughed.