Illustrating “Wolves”
To create illustrations for Neil Gaiman’s text in “The Wolves in the Walls,” McKean built collages using everything from charcoal illustrations to photographs of bits of map.

“I thought ‘Wolves’ needed a different feeling than the first book I did with Neil, ‘The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish,’” says McKean. “That book needed very simple, childlike line drawings. But I think ‘Wolves’ is a strange story. I thought it needed a slightly different feeling, so the illustrations ended up rather more painted.

“Everything is described in the way I think our leading lady sees them. The tuba is a collage of photographs; they look like massive intersecting bits of horn that don’t make any sense, because that’s what a tuba looks like.

“The wolves ended up being scritchy-scratchy lines. I drew them initially just to work out their look, but I really liked the drawings because I think you’re aware of the scratchiness of their hair. The fire has a beautiful pattern to it, like a cathedral window.”

Explorative Way of Working
To build the illustrations, McKean begins with “endless drawings.” Then he paints the one he likes onto a backboard of color photographs and paper collages. “The basic canvas,” he explains, “has a life to it, with interesting textures, colors and shapes. Then I paint the characters into all of that.

“Sometimes I finish it quite well and sometimes I leave it open and rough, scan it and make sense of it in the computer. The compositing is the fun bit, really, and dragging all these elements together all happens very quickly.”

When McKean wanted to find a more magical version of a fire, he used photographs of a pattern from some metal sheet windows that he had on file. “I always loved the light coming through the shapes,” he says. “I overlaid them a few times and then put flames through and then changed it a bit further on the Mac.

“It’s an explorative way of working,” McKean explains. “I like the fact that I don’t really know what I’m aiming toward completely. I have an idea, but it’s also the shapes shifted and composited in the computer that allow me to find a nice blend.”

Playing with Digital Video
McKean also has experimented in digital video as well, in two short films, “The Week Before” and “N(eon),” and the title sequences to BBC productions. But “MirrorMask” is his first full-length feature film.

“The one thing I really miss in illustration, which is my first love, is sound,” says McKean. “I’ve always played the keyboard and piano — jazz, mostly — and I’ve always worked to music. I’ve always felt I’d like to put a CD of the music I was listening to out with the artwork, because they’ve always felt intertwined, expressions of the same thing.”

McKean’s Own Language
“So ‘MirrorMask’ gave me an opportunity not only to work in illustration and sound, but to try to find ways of telling stories that haven’t been done before.” Then he pauses. “There are so many brilliant filmmakers around,” he sighs.

“Why make another traditional film? I’d rather find a language I can make my own, really, so I looked back at my own way of making pictures, which is very layered and using the computer, and that’s how I set about making my films.”

Some passages in “MirrorMask” are more traditional, particularly in the beginning and the end, where events take place in reality. “But the bulk of the film is a dream,” McKean explains, “so it’s wide open for all sorts of collisions of images and crazy, fantastical city scenes. The city that Helena is walking around in is all of her own drawings pinned up on her bedroom wall.”

McKean is working with Iain Ballamy on the score, drawing on the talents of jazz players from around Europe so the film will have “a real acoustic hum and feel to it, as well as percussive beats and ambient sounds.”

Next page: Transforming Reality