Mike Mignola Analysis

Composition and storytelling

What drew me to this piece was the montage like effect of the different figures which I thought were beautifully arranged. Mike, as usual fills the background of the image with black and we see that the shadows of the characters often connect with this bigger dark shape that fills the page This gives him the opportunity to design shapes in a way that incorporates dramatic lighting in a really interesting way. 

When we break the line of sight down in this image we can notice some interesting way in which he incorporates this mass of bodies on one picture plane. Notice for instance the eyes, if we pay attention to where each of their eyes is positioned in the piece we can see they move down the page and towards us in a almost zig zag type of fashion, with the back two and the front two being almost level. The masses of bodies on the left are odd numbered and they help fill in the space but the majority of the shapes come from the two figures closer to hellboy. 

There is strong use of lines and diagonals throughout the image, the figure in the back holds his axe up just at the right position as to intersect with his eyes, its also important to notice that all the dark values are grouped here, on the right side we can also see that the diagonals point us downward toward hellboy. We can see this in the spears in the back and the weapons placed around them. 

We get a counter balance off this on the other side as we see the club and shovel weapons the ghouls on the right contrast in their direction and again point back to hellboy. 

At the foreground we see hellboy with his back turned to us his silhouette and posture contrasts with the mob of figures around him and we get the strongest contrast in this area in every way. For example the lightest value is in front of the silhouette of hellboy as well as the contrasting small shapes that lead us from the figure in front of him to helllboy  and the crown sitting on the ground in front of him. 

Interestingly as far as color goes, hellboy is actually a desaturated grey blue while the rest of the image is falls into the oranges and the highlight is yellow. Composition wise the image feels like it is sitting a little bit to the right and we get a strong balance between elements on the left and right as Mike connects these shapes through similar shades of value.