With the upcoming Hellboy reboot starring Stranger Things' David Harbour as Big Red himself coming to theaters next year, Academy-Award winning makeup designer Joel Harlow recognized the challenge of differentiating this incarnation from Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy films, which featured Ron Perlman as the titular character.

"I love the Del Toro films and absolutely appreciate all the characters that were brought to life in them," Harlow told IGN. "It's a tough act to follow for sure, so we all made a conscious decision to not reference any of the live action versions that came before. We focused on the artwork and the comics."

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With creator Mike Mignola acting as an executive producer and consultant, Harlow would consistently bounce ideas off Mignola to make sure the designs and any necessary alterations fit the characters he created. He also worked meticulously with Harbour to capture the actor’s likeness in Hellboy’s design, and when it all came together, Harlow said that it left quite an “imposing presence.”

"We wanted to deliver real-world representations of his two-dimensional illustrations," he continued. "I felt he needed details that grounded him in reality, so we added scars along with arm, tail and body hair. I also had a variety of horn shapes and lengths because his horns are constantly growing, so they would likely never look the same after he cuts them down. These touches made him feel grittier and more appropriate for an R-rated Hellboy."

Harlow also commented that while the designs for The Grugach, Baba Yaga and Hellboy’s Anung Un Rama were amongst his favorites, the real challenge was making the designs of these wonderful and strange characters believable in the context of the world they inhabit.

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“There are a few worlds we glimpse in Hellboy," he said. "There is the ancient world, populated with creatures such as giants, trolls, goblins, and beasts of legend. There is the world of creatures that interact with our world on a 'regular' basis. Then there is Hell”.

Opening on April 12, 2019, director Neil Marshall’s Hellboy stars David Harbour as Hellboy, Ian McShane as Trevor Bruttenholm, Milla Jovovich as Nimue, Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan, Penelope Mitchell as Ganeida and Daniel Dae Kim as Ben Daimio.