From Zombos' Closet

Interview: Coraline's Henry Selick

Coraline comes out on DVD Tuesday. Scott Essman talks shop with director Henry Selic about his work on Coraline and Nightmare Before Christmas.

Since he burst on the scene with the wildly imaginative 1993 stop-motion animated feature The Nightmare Before Christmas, California Institute of the Arts graduate Henry Selick has been one of Hollywood’s most innovative filmmakers. After his stop-motion followup to Nightmare, the well-received 1996 film James and the Giant Peach, Selick directed the partially live-action film Monkeybone in 2001.

Now, the long-in-the works Coraline, a surreal mixture of animation and fantasy, arrives on DVD on July 21, 2009 after a successful theatrical run that included both traditional and dynamic 3D screenings.

In this interview from his new Portland, Oregon studio base, Laika, Selick reflects on his lauded career and shares special insights into the creation of Coraline, his most ambitious project to date.

You’ve moved around quite a bit – born in New Jersey, but since the 1970s, you’ve lived up and down the West Coast. How has this journey worked creatively for you, and why so many moves?

I started out at CalArts [north of Los Angeles in Valencia] and worked at Disney Studios for about four years. Then I moved to the Bay Area in the early 80s to work as a sequence director on [the animated feature film] Twice Upon a Time. That was my base up until Coraline. There, I did the features, MTV stuff, commercials and short films. For Nightmare and James we got warehouse space right in San Francisco south of Market. I went up to Portland, Oregon four-and-a-half years ago to get Coraline going. For Coraline, we built out our little in-house team and tried to do a lot of practical effects. Some of the main armature components were made in San Francisco, but 99% of the movie was all done in one big warehouse in the outskirts of Portland.

How did you decide on Coraline as your first feature since Monkeybone, eight years ago now?

The story comes from the Neil Gaiman book. He sent me the pages as a side project. He’d been working on it to finish for his younger daughter. In the book, the basic story is there. Back in 2000, there was a long period of time where I wrote the screenplay. At that time, I did animated creatures for [Wes Anderson’s feature] Life Aquatic. In all of that time, I’d been living this Coraline story and dreaming the visuals. The expanded version had already been fully formed in my mind. I had written an early draft, but Neil told me to go off and reimagine it. He said that the book was not quite a film.

The second draft of the screenplay is when things came to life. I restructured everything, added characters, and came up with the issue of whether the whole world is a dream. When you are adapting a book, it has to feel like the book and smell like the book. But there are several thousand large changes and a hundred medium ones. I would always come back to the screenplay, do sketches, and do a scrapbook of images. For example, I had come across an obituary of a child star from the 1920s – there was a picture in the paper of her holding a doll that looked just like her that was being marketed to the public. I was collecting images for ideas and had a very long time to assemble the world of the film.

How did you devise the execution of the complicated production process for this film?

There is an order to events but everything overlaps and there are certain things you don’t quite resolve and you go back to. Stop-motion animation is much closer to live action films – you have set construction, lighters, electricians, gaffers, a hair department, and costumes. The difference, of course, is that it’s all miniature with many sets working at the same time with a team of animators.

Some of the first steps that happen are to convince people that you can make a movie from your script – then character design and voice casting. Virtually all animation and effects-heavy live-action films are completely storyboarded with temp voices and temp music. In a sense, you are making the movie once, editing it before you actually do any animation. You don’t have a 10:1 ratio – it’s a very close ratio. Then, people storyboard the entire film to get to the next step. You work out the first and second act, and the third act is loosey-goosey. You have your first scenes figured out, you’ve recorded the voices, start building puppets, and build the world. You experiment with materials and do 3D tests.

Eventually, you are testing puppets – how does Coraline walk, what are her poses, what makes her stand out and unique? You figured out the best sync – full replacement faces where you sculpt hundreds of individual faces. You can’t build all of your puppets at once – you start out with a few characters and ramp up to 30 sets at once. You are re-recording pickup lines a year later. You’re hoping Dakota Fanning’s voice [playing lead performer Coraline Jones] doesn’t change that much for the pickup lines. You hit this sweet spot where you have the whole film mapped out and everyone is making the same film in this very effective machine. You are working with animators who are the real actors, planning shots, having dailies four times a day, and start to work with the composer who sketches out the ideas for themes. You get everything shot and bring in an outside editor who can brutally look over the film with a fresh eye.

18 months is the actual shoot time. The core of the crew working hard every day making the film is 150 people. We have an additional 150 who work for a short period of time. They may have done inspirational artwork or armatures. There is also a big support group and a visual effects team to paint out rigs.

Can you describe your typical day whilst the film is in the throes of production?

We have two edit rooms so that I can ping pong back and forth. We do lighting and camera tests and stand-in puppets. Then you work with the animators. There is a lot of time spent in editorial. Then you go out on the sets checking in on shots. The animators shot digitally so that we can play back what we are doing and respond to it. We are still building final characters to the end. In the heat of it, 60% is editorial and 30% of the day roaming set to set and checking the art department and sound. Everyone thinks that stop-motion is watching paint dry.

The actual performance of the animator coaxing performance out of these puppets is slow. But as a director, you are supervising all of the individual animators and supervising and four lead animators. What are the poses, walks and motions for the characters? I am very much talking through performance with the animators, timing, and posing of every scene. That is how I spend the majority of my day.

How is the type of animation that you are doing for Coraline different from what pioneers Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen created in King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949)?

It’s different in that I have a much larger number of people, but at the heart of it, it’s exactly the same – the ball and socket hinge joint puppet posed a frame at a time – 24 times a second – to get the illusion of movement. The process is identical. On top of that, we are shooting digitally. Back on Nightmare and James, we had to send our footage to the lab.

Now, if a puppet breaks in the middle of a shot, we can get the puppet repaired. We have digital assisting. We can put the puppets on a simple metal rig and hand animate and later paint out the rig. We can also program camera moves. At the very center of it, it’s the same. Harryhausen and Willis O’Brien are true pioneers who carried a huge amount of weight on their own. Before Coraline, we had 17 assistants, which seemed like a huge number.

How would your describe your working relationship with Tim Burton, who produced your film The Nightmare Before Christmas?

Tim had developed this basic idea inspired by How the Grinch Stole Christmas and rewrote is as a nightmare. He deserves credit for the clashes of holiday worlds. I partly inspired the character of Jack Skellington. Tim did a drawing of the main characters and Rick Heinrichs sculpted them. We presented them at Disney in the 80s and they thought it was too weird. No one was sticking around. Tim had to leave to make feature films. I did my first stop-motion in 1978 that was funded by AFI. Fast-forward to Tim having huge success. He had seen my work for MTV – station IDs. Rick got Tim and me together to direct. I spent three-and-a-half years growing a team, and I did my films with a very talented team. Then Tim made Batman Returns. The film was called A Nightmare Before Christmas till a month before it came out. It was unsettling for it to be changed to Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim is a genius and gave me my break, but I think he couldn’t stand to not take more credit. With Coraline, I got the creative support that I had before Nightmare.

How did Danny Elfman become integrated into not only the music but songs and story elements as well?

Danny Elfman was chosen to do the music for Tim’s first feature by Paul Reubens, and Tim and Danny hit it off, so that it definitely a Tim choice to work with Danny again. He has done 90% of the music of Tim’s films. Danny is a huge contributor of story – for the songs, Tim would say that we could use a song here and Danny would make up what he felt was right. We started the movie before there was a finished screenplay. Danny wrote three songs. The writer was ill and later the screenplay was written by Caroline Thompson who strung the songs together. Danny deserves a third of the credit at least for the creative spirit of the film.

Aside from your conflict with the release title, how was your experience making your first directorial feature with Nightmare?

It was incredibly joyful experience making the film. We had previously only been able to make 5-6-minute short films. To get to make a stop-motion feature was such a gift. Everyone was so goddamned happy every day. We were also fearless. We didn’t worry about the success or failure – we wanted to make the film as good as we could. It was a low-budget film to lure Tim back to Disney. But the real gift to Disney was Nightmare. We had a lot of fun coming up with those characters and figuring out their personalities. That world was the easiest in many respects. That’s where people had the most fun. There was the real world, and then Christmastown which was Seussian world. Tim has always said that Dr. Seuss is his favorite artist of all time.

Do you shoot tests to see if potential investors/distributors might be interested in making your films?

You do character designs and possibly an animation test. For Nightmare, we did a test – we built a very simple Jack Skellington with a wire armature. The people at Disney scratched their heads. Tim Burton was positive, and they thought the test was a small price for this curiosity.

At Laika, we did shoot tests for Coraline. We used an existing character from another short film. Honestly, most people couldn’t even tell the difference. I took Coraline to the former head of Fox who responded well. It took us a long time to get the film financed. Travis Knight [President and CEO of Laika] wanted to do it as a stop-motion feature, and I wanted to shoot 3D. Even if you get a green-lit film, you are going to do tests for yourself, getting the look of it.

How difficult is it for you at this juncture to launch a new feature film project?

I’m at a great point right now. For a number of years, it was very difficult to get funding for stop-motion films. Between Nightmare and James, Toy Story came out. In the ensuing years, it was virtually impossible. No one just wants to make a profit – they want to make a huge profit. Then Aardman animation got another film going. Tim Burton got Corpse Bride, so things circled back and the timing was great for Coraline. People come to visit us and they see several hundred people in the credits. They can’t believe it’s not done in China. It’s still about 1/3 the cost of Pixar and DreamWorks computer-animated films. These films don’t date, because they are already out of time. It’s a good time for me. The major European countries are opening. People send me books and scripts. Right now is the easiest time to get a film set up and made. You can sell one on a pitch and the screenplay. But I haven’t figured out what I am doing next.

What was ultimately your greatest challenge in making Coraline?

There is no one single thing. Getting Coraline made and holding onto the scary elements was a huge challenge. At various times our distributor and main producer, Bill Mechanic, for him, animation has fit into this one type of storytelling. Just trying to make a scary film for kids was quite a challenge for Coraline. I would like to start pushing the boundaries of what animation could be as in Pixar films.

The new film Up is pretty astonishing in the emotional content of the lead character. There is a movement afoot to keep pushing the boundaries. I wouldn’t want to do another scary film for kids, but if I do, there would be a new element. Animated animals have been at the forefront since the beginning. There are new types of stories to tell with higher-level drama and less jokes. I like to make films for kids but something that is for everyone – also appropriate for kids but not safe. I couldn’t be happier with having made Coraline.

Scott Essman has been writing about crafts and craftspeople in the entertainment business since 1995. His book, Tim Burton – An American Original, is due in 2010 from Praeger Publishing.

Movie Review: Coraline (2009) Sweet Without Sugar

Zombos Says: Excellent 

The cat dropped the rat between its two front paws. "There are those," it said with a sigh, in tones as smooth as oiled silk, "who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one--after all, it permits the occasional funny little running snack to escape, from time to time. How often does your dinner get to escape?" (Neil Gaiman in the novel Coraline)

 

Right after seeing Coraline, an urge to read the novel drove me straight to the bookstore. I needed to know more of Neil Gaiman's tale of Coraline Jones and the bizarre neighbors and ancient wickedness living in her new home. I needed to know how much of the literary story was captured in Henry Selick's stop-motion animated screenplay. With a dad-playing piano, glowing flowers and snapdragons that really snapped, and a peculiar room where giant bugs are the furniture, I was curious. Gaiman might be that odd individual with sleeping dust in his side-pockets, a razor-sharp, barely chipped axe in his hip pocket, and a candle flame floating to and fro behind his eyes, but the visual tone of Coraline, the movie, is dark but strikingly peppered with color, making it festive and morose and desolate and cheerful all at once. There is no brave little mouse, no fumbling robots, no dancing zoo animals to liven up culturally proscribed moral lessons because there are no moral lessons. Coraline, without the usual spoonful of sugary-animated, paternally medicinal Hollywood characters, is a Halloween treat in February that goes down smashingly well without the sweetness.

Movie Review: Monster House in 3D (2006)

Zombos Says: Fair

Monster House is a disappointment.

It seems like a natural Halloween treat; take the decrepit old "haunted" house every small town has, toss in the decrepit, loony old hermit--that every small town has--to live in the house, then play on all our childhood fears by making the house a monster that eats people, gobbles them up when they step on the lawn or get too close. But this almost goody-bag treat quickly turns into an out-of-candy trick itching for a few eggs tossed its way. The animation lacks whimsy, charm, and style in its characters as directed by Gil Kenan. From the too-realistic, nasty Goth baby-sitter with the dull-witted, drugged-out boyfriend, Bones, to the fat kid sidekick, Chowder, the tone of the story is humorless and the dialog lacks wit. Instead of naive, carefree chat between friends, we listen to recycled potty jokes, the highlight of which is pee in soda pop bottles. The writers apparently forgot their own childhoods when bringing Chowder, DJ and Jenny to life.

Movie Review: Igor (2008) Where's Dwight Frye When You Need Him?

Zombos Says: Fair

The most clever artifice in Igor is the name of the country the title character lives and works in--Malaria. That is as clever as it gets in Anthony Leondis's animated movie about a mad scientist's assistant who wants more out of life; to create it, mostly, like any self-respecting mad scientist craves to do.

Missing from this fairy tale of endlessly dark and stormy days, laboratories in high towers crackling with electricity and maniacal laughter, and evil scientists churning out evil devices, is the defining touches that Dwight Frye brought to the role of Fritz--not Igor--the hunched back assistant in Frankenstein. Absent, too, are the refining touches that Bela Lugosi brought to Ygor--pronounced E-gor--the hunched back, broken neck lunatic and part-time assistant in Son of Frankenstein. Not even a hint of Marty Feldman's hilarious Igor--pronounced Eye-gore--another energetic, rather persnickety laboratory assistant in Young Frankenstein sparks life into this surprisingly lifeless nuts and bolts story by Chris McKenna.

Surprising because given the rich cinematic history of monsters and madmen this film should have drawn upon, we are instead given yet another reworking of what has become a clichéd theme in animated movies geared toward the younger set: disillusioned male yearns to break the mold and become something he is told he cannot be. Toss in misfit--but funny--sidekicks, add a dramatic failure or two, then end with boy making everyone see the life-altering truth he triumphantly uncovers as he achieves his dream. Along the way, make sure to depict female characters in conniving, devious, helpless, clueless, romantic, or otherwise secondary roles. Unless, of course, this is a Walt Disney movie; then just switch male and female roles: everything else still holds (at least before Pixar, anyway).

Interview: Little Girls and Big Monsters

One of the greatest pleasures derived from writing a horror blog is meeting so many interesting people involved creatively with the horror genre and how they express themselves through the moving image, the written and spoken word, a chilling melody or ominous sound, nightmarish illustration, or a fiendish photograph that freezes horror for one lasting moment in time, somewhere between our feet dangling into the deepest pit of our fears and the tips of our fingers holding fast to the shorn edge of our reason.

I'm not quite sure whether photographer Joshua Hoffine has lost his grip yet, but let's chat with him while we still can about his morbid curiosity getting the better of him, and his nightmarish visions clouding his better judgment; in other words, his freaking-me-out photographs of horror.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND MUTATE FROM WHOLESOME SUBJECTS TO FANTASTIC HORROR?

I started making photographs shortly after graduating from college with a degree in English Literature. My original portfolio of photographs was very dark and disturbing. At that time, I was interested in Frederick Sommer and Joel Peter Witkin, and was creating proto-horror assemblages that sometimes included animal parts. I landed an internship with Nick Vedros, who is the biggest photographer in my hometown of Kansas City, and Nick encouraged me to make my work more palatable to survive as a commercial photographer. From Nick I moved onto Hallmark Cards, which is also based in my hometown.

At Hallmark I mastered the art of making things pretty. I left after only 18 months, and started shooting weddings. With the free time and resources that wedding photography afforded me, I began my first project as a mature photographer, a series of horror photographs called After Dark, My Sweet. Without a gallery or an agent or an audience of any sort, I drove my family into poverty time and time again as I self-financed this costly work. My images are not photoshop collages, but meticulously lit performances caught on camera. I build sets, and use costumes, elaborate props, special effects make-up, and fog machines to bring my ideas to life. I am only restrained by budget.

WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS? HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH THE SITUATIONS YOU DEPICT?

From my own memories and fears, as well as the fears of my children. There are sometimes allusions to specific horror films or fairy tales. I am especially attracted to any fears that might be considered universal - like the fear of a monster or boogeyman lurking under your bed.

I FOUND 'CELLAR' PARTICULARLY DISTURBING, AND EVOCATIVE OF J-HORROR NIGHTMARE. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS ONE?

That image is directly inspired by Henrietta bursting out of the earthen floor of the fruit cellar in Evil Dead 2.

MANY OF YOUR PHOTOS HAVE A LITTLE BLOND-HAIRED GIRL IN THEM. WHO IS SHE? WHY NOT USE A LITTLE BOY INSTEAD?

The Little Girl is played, alternately by my daughters Shiva or Chloe. I chose to use a Little Girl because it carries more archetypal power, and references other Little Girl characters like Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy in Oz. In my work, like everywhere else, the Little Girl symbolizes innocence and wonder. Simultaneously, the work possesses a subtext about child predation - which is more easily conveyed, I feel, by using a little girl rather than a little boy. I am interested in the operation of subtext and metaphor in Horror.

I'LL ASSUME YOUR A HORROR FAN IN GENERAL. WHICH ARE YOUR FAVORITE MONSTERS AND WHY?

My favorite monsters include Rob Bottin's work on The Thing, the original Nosferatu, Chris Cunningham's Rubber Johnny, and the child-devouring ogre in Pan's Labrynth. Because they are perfect.

DO YOU DO COMMISSIONED WORK; FOR INSTANCE, TAKE SOMEONE'S NIGHTMARE IDEA AND PHOTOGRAPH IT FOR THEM?

I do commissioned work all the time, mostly for bands and musicians with independent record labels. There is no art director with small labels, so I'm able to write an original piece tailored just for the musician. My most recent work was done for a Detroit rapper named Prozak. Some of his work has a political streak through it, so I wrote 'Uncle Sam' for him to use as artwork on his CD. Other times, he just had a prop he was interested in, like a gas mask or a chainsaw - and I'd hammer out a scenario to go shoot. We're gearing up to do another one in fact, based on The Slumber Party Massacre.

WHAT'S THE ONE QUESTION I SHOULD BE ASKING BUT DIDN'T? AND WHAT'S YOUR ANSWER?

Question: Do you still shoot weddings?

Answer: About 20 a year. But under a fake name.

Movie Review: Ray Harryhausen Presents The Pit and the Pendulum (2006)

I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

--Edgar Allen Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum

Zombos Says: Very Good

Having grown up on TV shows like Davey and Goliath and Gumby, stop motion animation is an enjoyable form of storytelling for me. From the simplicity and witty fun of Gumby, to the richness of design found in The Nightmare Before Christmas, the stories are often magical and the characters always imaginative. Stop motion techniques can be used with clay, puppets, and realistic-looking articulated models like Willis O'Brien's emotive King Kong or Ray Harryhausen's creepy fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts.

Stop motion has been skillfully and shoddily used with many traditional and avant-garde horror and science-fiction films since around 1908, and lends itself to the short subject rather well, especially when the setting is simple, and the actions straightforward. Marc Lougee's stop motion adaptation of Poe's, The Pit and the Pendulum, is a good example of this. Poe's story is a straightforward narrative of despair, desperation, and horror. The anonymity of the villains, the delirium of the victim, and the increasingly horrific situations he confronts is ripe for a short film that captures this singular time frame of struggle against increasingly dire odds.

While Poe's story is required reading for many college kids, this visualization of the torments suffered by the unnamed prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition would be a welcome addition to the curriculum. While a bit of license is used for dramatic visual effect (the prisoner doesn't have a metal helmet locked around his head in the original story), the short seven-minute film adheres to and captures the essence of terror with vivid detail in its CG-enhanced miniature sets and stylized puppets.

There's an exaggerated character-movement inherent to stop-motion. It can either breathe dramatic life into the actions of its diminutive characters, or create a cartoonish-effect that hinders more serious storylines. Poe is deadly serious here, and animators Weiss and Fairley create movement that conveys much of the drama and tension without whimsical or absurd motions. The robed tribunal members, murmuring and motioning with their heads and hands in a condemning way, and the prisoner's halting steps, exhausted posture, and fearful exploration of the dungeon, visually portray the literary tone of the short story with their painstaking and time-consuming attention to detail.

Dwayne Hill narrates the inner thoughts and feelings of the confused and fearful prisoner, condemned to the dark dungeons, without maudlin overtones. His voice is of a rational man in irrational circumstances; a man trying to reason through his predicament in hopes of finding an escape from his tormentors, and their fiendish instruments of torture and death.

One ray of hope and beauty written into the film, and not in Poe's gloomy tale, is the entrance of a brightly-colored bird fluttering around the solitary window of the cell, high up out of reach. The cheerful scene contrasts with the somber browns and blacks of the walls and floor. It is a nice foreshadowing of hope as the prisoner looks up toward the feeble light, entering through the bars, illuminating the red feathers of the bird flying about carefree. It fortifies the visual storytelling in a simple but majestic manner.

Though not based on historical accuracy, the fictional pit and pendulum of the story heighten the fearsome depravity and inhumanity of the prisoner's death sentence. In true horror story fashion, death is not the worst part, but getting there is. While reason keeps the prisoner from succumbing to the razor sharp blade of the pendulum, it can't stop the heated iron walls of his cell from forcing him ever closer to that infernal pit in the middle of the room. What horrors await should he fall down into the deep darkness?

It's hard to capture Poe's narrative detail, the rush of terror-filled thoughts overwhelming the long-suffering prisoner in his final moments before succumbing to the foul-smelling pit, especially in a six-to-seven minute film. But the climax here, with its carefully framed arm darting down to rescue him as he descends into oblivion, pulling him back to sanity and safety, is thrillingly done.

The Pit and the Pendulum's stop motion artistry proves old techniques, when combined with creativity and a touch of new technology, still have much to offer.

Monster Modren Art

There's nothing like a classic horror done up classy, I always say. Stalwart ZC reader, Chindi, points us to these beautiful wall-hangers for over the fireplace. Go to Worth1000.com and scroll down the page to view the the Monster Modren artwork.

Why don't I ever see any of these priceless paintings on Antiques Roadshow?

Interview: Drawing Cthulhu With Dave Carson

It is hard to say whether Dave Carson, award-winning pictorial chronicler of the macabre landscapes and alien creatures of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, is illustrating from some creative well of inspiration, or really just simply drawing his own family members during frequent festive get-togethers in crumbling tombs and chilly, aquatic climes.

Whatever the true nature of Carson's disposition, the fact remains that his unearthly illustrations of those things not spoken of, living in those places not visited by sane men--save for him—bring a great, but disquieting pleasure to the rest of us more fearful worshipers of Cthulhu.

Dave put down his drawing implements long enough to answer a few questions scribbled by moonlight and slid beneath his door.

How did you get started in your illustration career?

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a career really. I’ve been illustrating books and magazines since the early eighties or thereabouts, but I also had various full-time jobs while I was doing it, it’s always been a kind of on/off thing with me. There was no way I could support myself solely on illustration. For instance, when I was illustrating H.P.LOVECRAFT'S BOOK OF HORROR, and had about a week to do it, I was in the middle of a six week contract to renovate an old School building. Grueling work to say the least, after which, when I finished for the day I had to get home and do one illustration a day for a week. The friend who I was staying with while the work was going on had to keep me awake with coffee just to get the drawings finished on deadline. Some nights I just fell asleep on the floor with exhaustion.

Of course for the past ten years I have had no other kind of job to get in the way, but now I’m more interested in doing sculpture and digital artwork rather than the laborious process of black & white stipple drawing. I do miss it at times, but I rarely feel that it’s worth the bother of putting pen to paper.

When did you begin drawing Lovecraftian landscapes and their denizens?

1978. Seriously. However, I’ve been doodling all kinds of monsters my whole life.

What is it about Lovecraft's alien, ichthyoid characters that fascinate you?

Possibly it’s that I’ve always been interested in animals, natural history and the sea, as well as having a life-long obsession with all things weird. That’s what inspired me to start drawing them. I love all those winged, tentacled, gelatinous masses, starfish-headed things, deep ones and others that shamble through his writings.

There seem to be a common misconception that H.P.L’s entities aren’t clearly described. I have no idea why this should be, as many of them are fleshed out in great detail. I don’t know how many times I’ve read that “Lovecraft’s descriptions are vague to say the least”, or similar nonsense. Just read THE CALL OF CTHULHU for instance, a clearer description of Cthulhu is hardly possible. 

Why do you think Lovecraft's mythos continues to be a popular and influential fictional and graphic wellspring?

It's taken some time for Lovecraft to reach the audience he now has. When I discovered him back in the mid 60's relatively few people outside of fantasy and horror fandom had heard of him until all the paperbacks of his stuff became very popular later that decade. They influenced a whole new generation of writers who had never even seen a copy of Weird Tales. I guess the Cthulhu Mythos appeals to artists on the basis of its incredible possibilities and scope for their imaginations, and writers for the same reasons.

How do you do it? Tell us about your creative process from inception to finished drawing.

I do a pencil rough and ink it in, usually with Rotring technical pens – no great secret process. Just hard work, long hours, a sore back, strained eyesight, etc.

Who are your favorite illustrators and why?

Lee Brown Coye is my favorite. His work was extremely strange and remarkably original. Harry Clarke’s work is also outstanding.

What question would you like to be asked and what's your answer?

Q : “Hey DC, did you see on the News that R’lyeh has risen in the Pacific?”

A : “I already knew.”

What's your favorite Lovecraft story? Why?

It's 'The Call of Cthulhu' without a doubt. I love ‘the piecing together of dissociated knowledge’ element throughout the story, and the references to artists and sculptors being more susceptible to Cthulhu's dreams appeals to me.

What is the easiest and the hardest thing about being an illustrator?

Easiest is being able to work through the night and sleep during the day. Hardest is being broke all the time.