Mike Hill is a real life Victor Frankenstein. As a creature designer, FX artist, and sculptor, Hill brings his creations to life with uncanny realism, with Frankenstein marking the artist’s third feature film collaboration with director Guillermo del Toro. Some of Hill’s creations were recently on display at the limited Frankenstein: Crafting A Tale Eternal exhibit, an immersive exhibition launched in London before landing in Los Angeles. The collection included screen-used costumes, props, and sculptures, as well as some pieces Hill crafted especially for the event.
Frankenstein: Crafting A Tale Eternal Exhibit
“The full figure stature of Jacob [Elordi] was created specifically for the museum. Well, kind of. I was already putting it together for Guillermo, then when I was asked about stuff for the museum, we decided that would be a good one to put in there,” Hill shared about the show-stopping centerpiece depicting Frankenstein‘s Creature himself. “We also did the oversized head just to show what was the makeup and what was Jacob. Originally, we were going to just do that from a life mask with appliances glued to it, cut down the middle, but Guillermo said, ‘Let's do it double human size,’ and it was the right move. It's a lovely piece.”
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing one of Hill’s sculptures up close in person, you’ll understand that I simply cannot overstate the lifelike feel infused into his work.
“I don't know what it is. I think that I'm trying to work from the inside out, and I know it sounds very arty-farty, but you've got to give these things a soul,” he details. “Anyone can copy a nose or copy a cheek or replicate this to make an artificial human, but there's got to be soul in there. Without the soul, it's just static. It's a life mask, and life masks don't have any soul at all. People don't even recognize them for who they are half the time. It's all about getting the soul in the eyes. That to me is the triumph. If you can get that right, you'll make people believe that. It's kind of eerie at that point.”
Hill shared a tip on capturing the illusion of movement when sculpting a statue. “When there's a movement, I want to grab the moment in between, and that gives a sense of movement that's not really there if the figure's static.”
Admittedly, part of the Creature’s pose in the exhibit statue had more to do with practicality than anything else. “I had to think of displaying it in Guillermo's home as well. I'm making a copy for myself, so it's built around having room. We wanted to show that big costume, and I want it to be almost royal, majestic. I could have made him looking pitiful or angry, but I just wanted him to look majestic and royal, like I guess he would've been after the end scene of the movie when he finally accepts his place in the world and absorbs the sun. I think from then on, he's a majestic creature. He's a little bit better than man because he's multiple men in some ways.” Hill muses before cracking a smile and punctuating it with “Arty-farty again.”
Aside from the two sculptures Hill created, the rest of his work on display in the exhibit were actual screen-used pieces. There’s the bent over corpse, the dissected half corpse, the little falling man, and more.
“A lot of the stuff from the movie ends up back with Guillermo, which I think is fantastic because he creates this stuff and saves it forever. He also allows people to visit. He's talked about what he will do with the collection one day, so we just know it's safe and it's not stuck in a warehouse somewhere.”
Frankenstein Creature Design
At this point, del Toro and Hill have collaborated on multiple projects. When it came to designing the look for the Creature, Hill explained, “Guillermo's very good at telling me what he doesn't want. And what we didn't want was a garishly scarred up creature with jagged stitching. We've seen it before, and we've seen it done incredibly, but we don't need to see it again.”
Hill approached the creature's design from Victor’s perspective. Del Toro’s iteration of Victor, to be more precise. “We figured that Victor had been planning this thing his whole life, and he's an artist. He wanted this thing to be as clean and as beautiful as it could be. As Guillermo eloquently puts it, he wasn't trying to make a dented Volkswagen. He was trying to make a Porsche. It was his first attempt, maybe it was his first draft that didn't go quite as well as he would do a second one, but he was pretty pleased with it. And he certainly didn't want it to be ugly in any way. He was trying to make a superior man and prove everybody wrong about what he could do.”
Rather than drawing on the aesthetic of cobbled-together corpses, Hill and del Toro turned to works of beautiful art. Because to Victor, that’s what his creation is. “Guillermo has taught me to see beauty in imperfection. The Creature could be a marble statue that's smashed and glued back together. I don't know, a plate-glass window that shattered. It's something beautiful that's been put together. We looked at alabaster statues and stuff like that because alabaster has this kind of inner glow and almost translucent look to the skin. It can also have these purples, yellows, and these hues all over it. I knew with Guillermo I could do that. I could put a little yellow heart window.”
Hill drew inspiration for the Creature’s heart from a familiar place. “I actually based the heart on a big old lock in my shop, which has a little brass thing you turn to one side to put the key in. I kind of made it gold colored to match that old brassy color. Even if Guillermo's not sure of it, he trusts me, and I'm allowed to present him with that stuff. That's why the Creature is somewhat beautiful. I know a lot of people say he's dashingly handsome as well, and hot and all these terms. I didn't see it like that. I was following Shelley to a degree because she said his skin was super tight over his face, so that's obviously why the cheekbones start to show there.”
The inspiration from the rest of the body came from vintage medical texts. “If you look at old books on medical practice at the time, you'll see a picture of a corpse, and it's got a diamond cut out of the abs. Why the hell did they do that? Because they didn't really know what they were doing. I think Victor, again, was following textbooks at the time, or in my psyche, he is.”
The way Hill approached the creation of the creature as a whole, was similar to an actor preparing to get into Victor’s headspace, tapping into the psyche of the creator. When I pointed out to Hill that he himself shares these similarities with Victor as creator, he chuckled. “It's so funny you say that because I go to my workshop, I have one light, when I'm sculpting and designing this head, this creature. I have one light on in the darkness, and I have some very low classical music playing, but then I have a thunder soundtrack as well. So there's thunder and lightning and rain, and then there's this classical music to put me in the period, and that's it, I'm off and running. I'm a Victor Frankenstein avatar right then.”
Shutting out the modern world, in full Victor Frankenstein immersion, allowed Hill to hone in on a vibe fruitful for creation. “When I can hear cars outside, and I need to get lunch at a diner, everything’s modern. In that workshop, I had to be in one pool of light, one ball of light, and be in the 1800s. That's where I needed to be.”
Awards Season Buzz
There’s been a lot of well earned buzz around Frankenstein this awards season, from the film's Golden Globe nominations to Oscars chatter. As the Academy Awards official announcements rapidly approach, I wondered whether Hill puts much thought into that side of it. His response is refreshingly honest. “I can play it cool and say, no, who cares? A lot of people say, ‘Oh, I don't care about awards.’ Yes, you bloody do. It's very nice to win an award. It's nice to be honored for something you put a lot of heart and soul into. I can say that Netflix has been fantastic about this whole thing. They've been so supportive, and it's been amazing. It's not just awards, it's not just getting that award. It's meeting the people who did the other movies; it's just been this incredible whirlwind. It's tiring, I admit, but I'm going to look back on this one day and say it was one of the best times of my life.”
Asking an artist to pick a favorite creation can be like asking a parent to pick a favorite child. But for a full-blown “Frankenstein-phile” as del Toro has referred to him, this is a special movie for Hill. So this time, when I asked whether this is his favorite creature he’s ever created, the answer came quickly and simply: “For a movie, certainly, yes.” Before he amended it to, “Actually, yeah. I'd say yes in general. A lot of my work is replicas. People want to hire me to make a Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi or somebody like that. To be able to recreate one of my favorite creatures of all time, to coin the phrase, and it's so overused… it's a dream come true. You know me, I can't think of a better one. Guillermo del Toro asked me to redesign the Frankenstein creature for a modern day movie. How do you beat that? You can't beat that. I'm extremely flattered. I'm extremely honored. And if anything happens to me tomorrow, it doesn't matter. I got to make Frankenstein.”
Frankenstein is streaming on Netflix and back in theaters for a limited time (check here for showtimes near you). There has been no official announcement to extend the Frankenstein: Crafting A Tale Eternal exhibit, but given its wild success, we’re hoping Netflix will announce extended dates and additional cities so more fans can admire these creations up close and in person.
For more Frankenstein, check out FANGORIA Presents Frankenstein, a one-off special edition magazine featuring exclusive interviews with Guillermo del Toro, Mike Hill, and more. The book also takes a deep dive into the history of Mary Shelley’s creation and the various iterations that have been brought to life.
Watch our full interview with Mike Hill below.
