[Editor's Note:  There were some very cool pics that accompanied this article.  Unfortunately, we no longer have them.  Our apologies!]

I first met Mike Elizalde back in 1995 during a promotion for the DVD release of the original Fantastic Four. Mike (who began career as a make-up artist) and his wife Mary started their company Spectral Motion back in 1994, marketing model kits on the internet, while Mike was working as an animatronics designer for greats like Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Steve Johnson. When Mike and I met, I was working for Joblo.com and he was kind enough to take me through some of amazing effects work he had done on the first Fantastic Four, for both Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon – The Thing and Dr. Doom respectively. What I didn’t know was that the single room I interviewed Mike in was just the tip of the Spectral iceberg. In the few years since we last talked, Mike has literally turned his small special effects company into force to be reckoned with. The structure houses more then eight different aspects of cinema magic, ranging from design creation to large machine rooms to even a latex room. This time, instead of just hovering in just one room, Mike (a dynamo who has been doing make-up and creature effects for over 20 years!) was kind enough to take me on a VIP tour of the gigantic facility personally and not only was it the thrill of a lifetime, I also got an exclusive sneak peek at some creatures that haven’t hit the big screen yet. So follow me!

Room 1: Lobby

I enter the lobby and again, I’m greeted by the receptionist Sammael, a life size version of the creature that was Hellboy’s adversary in the first film. Also present are Karl, the angry dead guy sidekick to Hellboy, plus various other creatures and nick-knacks. Mike (he still looks great!) greets me with a big smile and asks “Do you want to take a tour with me?” Are you kidding?!

Room 2: Design

I come into a familiar room where we had our first interview a few years back, and the place is buzzing with energy. Everyone in the entire complex is preparing for the new Hellboy movie called Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. I am introduced to various design people, who show me different maquettes of some known creatures like a few from Lady in the Water and Hellboy, as well as some cool unknown ones like Chamberlain, a kind of long faced bug eyed creature that I hear Doug Jones might be playing from Hellboy 2. Plus I run into a life cast of Hellboy himself Ron Pearlman, as well as a statue of my favorite character, the baby Hellboy from the first film. (Wish I could take that little guy home!)

Room 3: Sculpting/Hair/Costumes

Next is a room where I run into a full size clay version of Wink, Hellboy’s adversary in the new film that three gentlemen are working on. At over 6 feet tall, Mike describes him as “kind of like the Sammael in this film” – he’s one big giant behemoth monster! (Wonder if Doug is playing this guy too!) Then I move over to see Sylvia Nava, who has to be the most patient person in the world, plucking real hairs into the head of Hellboy – a process that takes two to three weeks! I also spot work being done on the original Hellboy prosthetics, as they are being freshened and updated, plus a clothes and fabrics department where they are making some breast plates. But the coolest thing has to be the clay version of a new Hellboy 2 character called Yrdrig, a seemingly cut pudgy faced bulldog with three twisted faces – this new film is gonna be good!

Room 4: Life Casting

This is where the true magic starts, where the actors come in and various body parts are then cast for use with everything from suits to prosthetics. There are photos on the wall that show the various people who have been given this process and it’s certainly a who’s who – I feel so privileged!

Room 5: Digital and Computer Effects

Greeted by the hum of computers, this is the room that houses digital and computer related effects. One gentleman is working on some early designs for Blood: The Last Vampire, an adaptation of an anime, while the other is doing Hellboy 2 related stuff. He even stops to show me a 3-D moving version of the golden egg, which blooms open before my very eyes and turns into a robot – presto the Golden Army! Super cool!

Room 6: Machine and Animatronics

I enter this room from the outside and am greeted by some very huge and new pieces of machinery that will be used to make various plastics and such. I also see a head mask for the Chamberlain, which Mike puts on an animatronic head with two eyes in the corners that move. There is also a guy making a very cool and complicated looking Hellboy hand, in which the actor can put his hand and by a set of various mechanical leavers, move the fingers around. Big hand = big money! Plus there is someone working on the wings for the new Hellboy 2 character The Angel of Death, which have a batch of eyes running along the outside. (And with three different sizes, there’s gonna be a lot of work to do!)

Room 7: Latex

Looking much like a corner bakery, complete with ovens and gigantic mixers, this Latex rook is where everything is cooked and baked. Plus they’re using these gigantic syringes – it’s almost like being in a wacky Tim Burton style room!

Room 8: Mike’s Office

You know a guy is cool when he has models and maquettes in his office. Mike has a bunch from films he has done including Blade 2, X-Men: The Final Stand, Fantastic Four and of course Hellboy. (He even has figures on his desk!) So it was time to talk to Mike and since he worked on the upcoming Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and now Hellboy 2, I got plenty of questions…

So after touring the massive effects warehouse known as Spectral Motion, The 213 sat down with exclusively with head man Mike Elizalde (the first time since my Joblo.com interview back in November of 2005!) for an honest and frank Q & A, about everything from X-Men: The Last Stand to Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer and working for the third time with director Guillermo del Toro on the upcoming Hellboy 2: The Golden Army – check it out!

(213): Having walked this huge complex of cool effects department, did you ever think Spectral Motion would get this big?

Mike Elizalde: I think one of the things that made this happen, along with the help that we’ve received from friends like Guillermo del Toro and other people who have benefited our company is the fact that there was a time when I thought “I want to be a shop owner, I want to be like Rick Baker.” I held Rick in high regard for many, many years and I really watched his career and work and I always thought one day I’ll own my own shop – and now it’s a reality.

(213): When we last talked, you were just starting work on the Beast and Juggernaut characters for Brett Ratner on X-Men: The Last Stand – how did that go?

ME: X-Men 3 worked out really well. You know initially we got a bit of a bumpy start. We had a change of command, the first director left the project and then Brett Ratner came on and he felt like he had inherited stuff that he didn’t necessarily want and part of that was our company Spectral. He wasn’t sure who we were, he didn’t really know us by reputation, hadn’t seen much of our work. So we had to kind of prove ourselves to him and in the end we did. He was very happy with the work that we turned in and as a matter of fact, our designs took us as far as the final seven of the Academy Award considerations. So that’s a big, big compliment from our peers at the Academy; that they felt that our work was that noteworthy to make it to that bake off stage. We weren’t nominated, but the nominees who did get in were fabulous. I mean you know, Pan’s Labyrinth got nominated, Apocalypto got nominated and Click – all that beautiful silicone work that Kazuhiro Tsuji did. So since then we did a couple of other movies, currently we’re working on Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and we’re also doing some work on a project which is an adaptation of an anime called Blood: The Last Vampire. If you get a chance to see it, check it out, the anime is incredible. It’s really one of the better anime’s I ever seen, really brilliant work. So we’re doing some designs for that film; that one’s shooting in Argentina and China. And Hellboy 2 is going to be shooting in Budapest and London (smiles), so we got a little traveling to do this next year!

(213): You did the creature effects for M. Night Shyamalan’s film Lady in the Water – what was it like working with him?

ME: He had a really clear idea of what he wanted when he first met us and the designs were actually done by Mark “Crash” McCreery, he does a lot of work in the industry. He did a lot of the conceptual designs for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, he did a lot of work for Jurassic Park, the original movie. He’s a conceptual artist beyond belief; I mean the guy’s awesome. And he’s a really great person, a really nice man to work with. So Crash is the one who told Night about us and he said you know, Night was kind of checking around town and seeing all the other shops. And Crash said “You know why don’t you give Spectral Motion a visit and see if you like what they do?” So he was in town and I had read the script prior to Night’s visit. So when Night showed up, we showed him around the shop and we had a nice meeting with him and Crash later told me that as they were leaving the building, as they were walking out the door, that Night said “These are our guys! These are the guys we want to go with.” So that was really great, I mean I’m a huge admirer of his work and so to have him come to our shop was amazingly thrilling. And then secondly to have him select us from all the other companies that were in contention for the show, that was huge – that put such a bounce in my step for such a long time. And the designs were pretty much fleshed out by Crash – first of all what we did is we designed maquettes based on Crash’s drawings and we flew to Philadelphia to show Night, we went to his ranch out there and had a few meetings there. And we couldn’t have walked into a more hospitable situation; he took us in like family, he welcomed us, he gave us lunch at his ranch and treated us like his family. It was really pretty cool, it was really amazing to have a director have that kind of warmth and bond so quickly – you don’t experience that very often. I experienced it with Guillermo del Toro and I experienced it with Night and those are the only two people I can say that about. You know Tim Story’s a really dear friend, but I’ve never been to his house! (Laughs) So that is kind of the ladder mark for me – the moment Tim invites me over to his house, I’ll add him to that list! So that was a really wonderful experience, creatively and professionally and if I ever had the opportunity to work with him again, I’ll jump on it.

(213): What about the film you did called Altered?

ME: Yeah, that was fun! (Laughs) That was a movie that was created by Eduardo Sanchez and his producing partners. They were the guys who did The Blair Witch Project and we met with them and we were all excited about it cause we were all fans of The Blair Witch Project. So they came here a few times, we built some stuff for them and it’s actually the first movie we got to do some digital effects for, so we got to get our feet wet in the digital world. Chet Zar did all of the visual effects, Brad produced the visual effects and I supervised it all. And it was a really fun experience; it was one of those jobs where you feel like your making a movie with a bunch of your pals, it doesn’t feel like you’re doing something like Hollywood style at all. I mean this is like you know let’s go out into the woods and let’s put a guy in a monster suit and let’s have some fun! (Laughs) And that’s what they did!

(213): So you did the effects work for both Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon in the first Fantastic Four, did you still do both of them as well as Silver Surfer Doug Jones for the second film?

ME: We did. Now I’m not sure how much of the news is out at this point, so I’m going to be very conservative about what I say, but I will tell you that we re-designed The Thing suit…

(213): You had mentioned in our previous interview that Michael found the suit very heavy and hot…

TV: Yeah, we definitely made some improvements and not only did we make internal improvements, but we also improved the exterior. In the first film the original design was more of an understated version of The Thing and the prevailing sensibility over at Fox was that if you saw The Thing walking down the street, he would look more like that then he looks in the comics – the comics being the antidotal version of the real guy. So they wanted to pull it back and make him less drastic looking. So that’s what we did for the first film; there was a point in plot where Ben Grimm turns back into Ben Grimm and then he decides, to save his friends, to turn back into The Thing. When he changes back into The Thing, the first thing he says coming out of the change pod is “It’s clobbering time”, you know, the trademark line that The Thing says in the comics all the time. We thought that would be a great opportunity to punch it up a little bit, to make him look even more like The Thing, saying this is Thing 2.0. They liked the idea, so we came up with some designs for it and when it came right down to it, they decided that they were just going to stick with the first design. So what we did was we took that second evolution, that second phase of design and we applied it to The Thing now – the sensibility or the logic being you know he’s the Thing now, I mean he has become The Thing, he’s not going to be Ben Grimm again. And I’m not going to give away any plot points, but in that sort of place he’s looks a lot more like he looks in the comics. His brow is a little bit bigger and more chiseled, his lips are a little more like what you might expect to see, his body is bigger and more angular. So we did make all those cosmetic changes to the outside, along with the considerations that we made to make Michael more comfortable. And some of those considerations involved not making a solid foam latex suit, but making a suit that had a breathable material on the inside with a skin on the outside that would give us the exterior that we needed. We also incorporated larger openings in the head that we could remove while shooting, so his head could cool off. The hands came off and on a lot faster; overall the suit was more comfortable. So there were a lot of modifications made on The Thing suit.

(213): You also made prosthetics for Julian for the first film – did you not have to make those this time around, since he’s going to be wearing a black body armored suit?

ME: We did design some prosthetics for Julian, but they’re not what you might expect and I’ll let you see that in the film when it comes out. But there was some make-up that we did for Julian and we designed a full different look for Doom.

(213): Was that design from Director Tim Story or the studio?

ME: It came from Tim. You know, Tim wanted to see more of the armor that Doom wears in the comics. And so we designed a lot of different drawings, came up with a lot of different designs for him to look at and he chose some elements of each drawing that he liked. And we came up with a maquette and the studio approved it and we went into full production and designed a full suit of armor for Doom. And when we got it all together and put it in front of the camera, they decided that it was too bulky, that it didn’t look like he could move around very well, so they decided to trim it down a little bit. We kept some of the elements like the breast plate, the mask of course, the cape, the hood. The costume department designed his cloak that would go over the pieces that we came up with, so I think we ended up in a very good place with him.

(213): With Doom wearing a mask through most of this new film, was it Julian in there or was it mostly a double?

ME: He had a double, but Julian did a lot of the performance himself and I think that was his choice. I think Julian decided that he felt that he wanted the character to be him, he wanted to own the character in the respect that even though his face was covered, his mannerisms and his voice and his persona was still underneath all of that. And I think that’s pretty noble, cause a lot of guys wouldn’t do that, they’d say get the double in there! (Laughs) So artistically, I think that was a good choice that he made and I think the director was probably 100% on board with that and the producers I don’t think had any problem with it either.

(213): So the big mystery, The Silver Surfer, anything you can tell me?

ME: That whole thing has been very much a…you know obviously we created a maquette and some designs, some original designs that came from our shop here. Beyond those elements, what we did do for the film…you have to wait. I can’t really talk about it.

(213): With Doug Jones having played everything from Abe Sapien to the mysterious Silver Surfer, what is the relationship like between you guys?

TV: (Jokingly) We can’t stand each other, I cringe when I see him walk in the room, and he’s just paralyzed with envy when he looks at me! (Laughs) We’re dear, dear friends, Doug is a sweet man; he’s one of those people who…it’s almost strange because he’ll walk into the trailer at four o’clock in the morning and the first thing he’ll do is he’ll give every person in the room a hug and tell them how much he loves them. He’s amazing and that’s Doug.

(213): With you doing so many of Doug’s characters do you have a cast of Doug that you don’t throw away and just keep handy?

ME: Yeah, we do! We have body casts; we have molds of his body cast, his head cast, his hands, its all here. So if we ever need to do a character on Doug, we just start, we don’t need to get him in for a life cast really. He was in here yesterday for a life cast, but it was for a specific use. We’re designing one of the characters in Hellboy 2 called The Angel of Death and we needed a snap – we take an element that has already been designed and we put it on Doug and then we life cast the rest of his face, so that we can then sculpt an appliance that goes over the rest of the piece. And that’s what he was in here doing yesterday and also doing some suit fittings for all the other characters he’s playing in Hellboy 2!

(213): He sounds like a one-man army!

ME: Oh, yeah, Guillermo’s really loading him up, man! The credit crawl is going to be Doug Jones for like fifty names on the cast list! (Laughs)

(213): So how busy are you now working on Hellboy 2?

The number of creatures and designs we’re creating for this new movie is three times as many as we did for the first film. Originally, they had intended to do some of the work overseas, because it was such a big workload and they were having a lot of trouble finding someone to do the work. So we ended up with a lot more of it then we originally thought we would. And basically we’re the company, we’re the ones who are doing the lion’s share of the work here – there are some smaller pieces that are going to be done in London. The big difference on this show is that we’re also doing Hellboy this time. Hellboy was done by Rick Baker’s company last time around, so we shared the bill. This time around we’re doing all of the main characters, which is a big plus for us, not to have to share the marquee – especially with Rick Baker! I mean, you know, it’s like there’s Rick Baker and who else?

(213): With a relationship spanning from Blade 2 to now Hellboy 2, how has your relationship with Director Guillermo del Toro evolved over the years?

ME: The first experience was Blade 2 and it really showed me who Guillermo was. And it also told me that Guillermo is the kind of person that I like. I mean I’m just a huge fan of his; I was a fan of his before I met him because I’d seen Cronos and his other movies. And it was right around that time that he was releasing The Devil’s Backbone. You know even Mimic, when I saw that I thought “Wow, who is this guy? Who directed this movie?” Because even thought the movie wasn’t great, you could see the directorial brilliance in that movie. So when I first met him, I was expecting this person who was untouchable and just a brilliant mind who you sort of regarded with quiet respect. And when I met him it was the exact opposite! You know, he bounced into the room, laughing and joking; his first greeting to me was a hug! It’s like wow, I love this guy! So ever since then, when I went to set to spend more time with him on Blade 2, we really formed a very close bond and today I can call Guillermo one of my very close friends. He’s really become a big part of my life both personally and professionally and we enjoy a great relationship together. And that includes the team, the Spectral team, he loves everybody here. Obviously the relationship developed during the first Hellboy – and that was the opportunity that opened the doors to Spectral motion.