Hellboy: Sword of Storms has drawn the participation of several members of the cast and crew of the 2004 live-action Guillermo del Toro-directed Hellboy feature, including Del Toro and actors Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Selma Blair (Liz Sherman) and Doug Jones (Abe Sapien). The new animated film was directed by Stones and Phil Weinstein and co-written by Mignola. Del Toro and Mignola are the creative producers.

Stones worked at Disney for 29 years before leaving the company. He created the character Darkwing Duck and has been a producer and director of animated video features and television series, include Disney's Atlantis: Milo's Return, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins and Disney's Aladdin and the King of Thieves. He is the supervising director and supervising producer for IDT Entertainment.

SCI FI Weekly chatted with Stones about Mike Mignola, the future of animation and developing his own creator-owned property.Beyond animation, what significant differences are there between Hellboy: Sword of Stones and the earlier Guillermo del Toro live-action film?

Stones: Well, our animated films are much closer to the comic. Basically, every media has its own Hellboy universe, and Hellboy's creator, Mike Mignola, is very careful to keep his universe separate. He tends to say, "Well, that's Guillermo del Toro's universe" or "That's the animated universe." But in our case, our goal was to get, character-wise, certainly, and the tone of the story to be as close to the comic as possible. So in the comics, [Hellboy and Liz Sherman aren't in love, as they were in the live-action movie], and so we're much closer to that. And yet I don't think anybody will be confused. It will just be a momentary "Oh, I thought they were together. OK." At the end of the comic they'll say, "Oh, good, they're not together."How did you get involved in the project?

Stones: From day one, Guillermo del Toro was really pushing to do an animated version of Hellboy. He was one of the people who got me here, because I met him through the Internet fan sites about the Hellboy movie. He knew my background, and I met him a couple of times. We kept up the relationship, and he's part of the reason why I'm here [laughs]. So I certainly appreciate that.Tell me about Hellboy: Sword of Storms.

Stones: Each of these movies are completely different from the other. But the first movie is Hellboy: Sword of Storms. It's kind of like a trip to Alice in Wonderland, but instead of seeing the Mad Hatter, Hellboy falls into the world of Japanese folklore. Basically, the movie is about a professor who finds a forbidden scroll. He's very much into old folklore, and by reading the scroll out loud he becomes possessed by the demons of thunder and lightning, and their role is to return to Earth and awaken the dragons. These are not dragons in the classical sense, but these are monsters that are hidden around the world. And if they return, the dragons will destroy the Earth or at least enslave mankind. Hellboy doesn't know much of that, because he picks up this sword and is transported into this world of Japanese folklore and has these varied adventures, everything from floating vampire heads to strange talking foxes. We find stories within stories, and he's trying to figure out what he has to do to return back to our world.

Basically, the audience knows more than Hellboy does, and that the possessed professor is putting obstacles in his path. Each of those characters out of folklore that he meets are trying to get the Sword of Storms away from him. That is the key to returning the demons to Earth. Meanwhile, Liz and Abe are on Earth, and they're dealing with some of the monsters that are starting to return. And Liz is coming to grips with the use of her fire power. How many movies are being planned at this point?

Stones: To begin with, two, and then, depending on how they're received, we hope for a series of movies. Although a regular series has been talked in the past, as we got into these movies it really was important to be able to fine-tune sequences and lengthen things and build more emotion into them. They've turned into something special, I feel, anyway, at least in American animation. We're just doing things that American animation hasn't done before, although Japan has been all over the place. In terms of suspense and horror, kind of a more naturalistic writing style, it is certainly unique. Different from anything I've done before.What's it been like to explore Hellboy's universe with Mike Mignola?

Stones: I've got to say the most exciting, most fun part of the project has been working on the stories with Mike. We clicked early on, and my proudest moments are when I say, "What if we do this sort of thing?" and Mike says, "Ooh. I'm going to tell people I wrote that [laughs]." But he's actually been very generous in his compliments. I feel good that as we work, we're getting more and more in sync, because, again, he's got several universes to worry about, and he doesn't want to give up his ideas. He is a wellspring of thoughts and ideas and visual images. If I say, "Well, here's what we're thinking of doing," and he'd say, "Oh well, you could do that, but what if we turn it on its head and did this and brought in this kind of character?" And you're just saying, "Yeah, that's what we want to do." Because my job is to keep the uniqueness of Hellboy, which makes him different from any other comic character, and that's the point. There's no point in taking Hellboy and turning him into the next mutant in line. You may end up with a lot of people watching this who are fans of the movie, who maybe never saw the comic.

Stones: That's why we have to be careful. That from both directions: that we don't confuse the movie people and we don't confuse the comic people. Or, for that matter, just somebody who's going to turn it on who's never seen either before.

Mike did a charity signing for Katrina victims at a comic store, and he was signing a limited-edition poster. He was watching kids coming in and picking up his trade paperbacks who had never read them before. They were drawn by the movie, which is a fantastic way to bring them to the stories.How is Hellboy different than some of the other projects you've been involved with?

Stones: I was at Disney for 29 years, and I've created characters like Darkwing Duck when I was over there. Just because we were dealing with children's animation, there's always a subject matter level that is as much as you say, "Oh, I write for myself. ..." That's true, but you're writing within the certain confines. These movies are written and the Hellboy comics themselves are PG, PG-13 at most. These shows are like an animated X-Files which has scares in it, has certainly suspense, has moments where you don't know what's going on, and that's OK. You don't have to be overly clear, and certain things are left unsaid. It's been more of a challenge to me to push the storytelling and artistically looking at trying some art direction that is inspired by what Mike does in the comics. Like monochromatic sequences, changing color as a story point changes ... just some stuff that will be cool if it works. And I sure hope it works [laughs]. I've just felt like the unique part is writing something that an adult is going to watch and enjoy and it doesn't matter that's it animated or not. So it's not limited in its audience. It sounds as if in some ways you can do more with a series of movies than you could with a regular weekly animated series.

Stones: These are 75 minutes, and that's plenty time to really develop things out. There are certain things in the movie that I told Mike, "OK, it doesn't feel like a Mike Mignola sequence, but it feels right for the movie." And what it was is Mike really simplifies not only his artwork, but his stories. I mean on one hand they're very, very sophisticated. He tells it in a very clean, as few words as possible, way. What he doesn't do a lot of are two characters talking to each other, and we've got a couple sequences with Liz and Abe that are fantastic sequences. One that I think is very funny, but you really get a feeling of, yeah, these are two agents who've seen a lot and they share a closeness that generally in his comics he doesn't have the time to do, 'cause he's making these epic stories in four-issue or five-issue arcs. So we've really gotten to use the film medium to just explore things a little in depth. How has the Cartoon Network's involvement on the films been?

Stones: It's the only time that I can remember an executive of any sort quoting source material to me. We talked about when the first movie would premiere, and they were saying, "What about December?" And I laughed and said, "Do you really want a Hellboy Christmas?" and the executive said, "Well, you remember Mike did do that Hellboy story that happened at Christmas." I was like, whoa. I love them because they are excited about animation. And the fact that they are such big fans of the comic have made things so easy. Notes have been very, very few. I think they appreciate Mike's stamp on the character and on this project. What's the title of the second movie?

Stones: The second movie is Hellboy: Blood and Iron. The first one is this Alice in Wonderland thing. The second one is a tighter—as Mike says, "the Hammer film they could never afford to do [laughs]." And the third one that we've talked about is again an entirely different step, still well grounded in the Hellboy universe, but a totally different kind of movie. I can only image what a line of these could be like, 'cause there's not the feeling "Oh, make sure this one feels just like that one." It really is "Let's just make a great movie." What if this was the only movie? It should stand on its own.When is the DVD of the film coming out?

Stones: I don't think there's a set date, but I believe it's early February of 2007. What's been talked is the second movie would premiere about that same time. It's like all the advertising for the second movie will connect to the sales of the first movie DVD. And hopefully soon after the first one's on the air we'll get the okay to start on several more. Let's dig into you a bit more. Out of all the things you can do in life, why did you end up producing and directing animated features?

Stones: It started very early with me, although I thought of myself as an artist. I created a humor weekly in my high school. I told myself then it was an outlet for my drawings, but I ended up writing most of the thing myself. I started as an art major in college, and a teacher accused me of plagiarism on a piece. It excited me because I didn't plagiarize it [laughs]. And he didn't know what to do, the fact that I was all excited that he was accusing me of it. It was like, "Cool! You think it's so good that it was written by somebody else!"

I started in animation at Disney features, and back then you basically progressed by doing a little test in your spare time, and I found I kept on not finishing the test and coming up with a new story, and I realized that what I really wanted to do was to be a storyteller. Animation is a great medium that really lets you tell just about any story you want. You don't have the budget restrictions, although these days live-action films are half animated anyway, like Lord of the Rings.What's special about animation for you?

Stones: Animation is a medium that always has its own sense of fantasy to it, and yet reality to it. That you can lose yourself in it. But the main thing is I wanted to be a storyteller. I remember telling stories as a camp counselor, kind of having an outline in my head and just making it up on the spot as we walked around the campfire.

I moved into story at Disney on features, storyboarding. This was on the original Fox and Hound, and you aren't working from a script. You're actually just working from an idea. I was uncredited. You basically were told, "Well, this is the sequence where the hunter is setting traps for the fox. He's laying them out." And you would just brainstorm different ways to set them up. What would the mood be? How would he set out the traps? And then the director would come in and say, "I like those six, but I don't like these two, so develop those six more." It really helped me think visually as I was creating these story moments. Then, when I moved into television animation, that's much more like a normal movie process, where you're writing a script which will then be storyboarded. All my visual background really helped me to not do talky scripts and to worry about the visuals.

Which turned out to be great for Hellboy, because he barely talks at all [laughs]. We definitely don't have the character walking around talking to himself, doing big monologue. In fact, my timing director laughed at me once. I said, "It doesn't really feel like a Hellboy comic, 'cause there's too much dialogue," and he started laughing because he'd never worked on a project with so little dialogue before [laughs]. Not a dramatic project, anyway. So that's the long way of saying it's the storyteller in me that loves the combination of the image and the writing and the performance. And I have to say also I love creating in a social environment. In other words, it's not me in a room alone working on a comic book. It is interacting with artists who are much better than I am in their given areas, whether it's background design or painting or character design. I certainly know enough of what I want and what I can do to direct them, but the execution is much better than I can do, and it's just fun having a group of people who are all trying to make a project be better and better. In your career, what haven't you done that you still want to do?

Stones: Well, about eight more Hellboy movies [laughs]. Beyond that I have an original character that I want to start developing, that people have seen and said, "That's a great character. We could sell that as a series right now." I know Nickelodeon is looking for that kind of property, but I want to develop this character, maybe put her out as a comic book, whether I publish it myself or go though Dark Horse or someone else, if they'll accept it. And I certainly have a movie in mind that I could then pitch around. But then I'd be stepping into Mike Mignola's world, where it's a creator-owned property. I spent my whole career coming up with great ideas and creating characters, and I've always handed them off to other companies. And it's like, you know, it would be nice to have something of my own. That would be my goal.That's a good goal.

Stones: Yes. Well, this project is really pushing into new areas, and I got to write a backup comic story for a Hellboy digest that will be coming out. That's fun, exciting stuff, and it's getting me to dip into that world, although I've been a comic fan all my life. I got my old collection, some early Marvels and whatnot. But to actually do it on a professional level with advice of some of the top professionals of comic publishing, I'm learning a lot, and that always excites me. What is the one thing most people don't know about you?

Stones: Ever since I started the blog [hellboyanimated.typepad.com], there's less and less of that [laughs]. I'm going to say I was a radio DJ in college. "Playing stacks of wax for Jills and Jacks. Give you a deck of hits and you got the Joker, with the Stoner."Did you really talk like that?

Stones: No [laughs]. I'm not that old. It was the mid-'70s, not the '60s. When you were a little kid, did you ever image that your life would turn out the way it has so far?

Stones: No, I think early on I was intrigued by comic strips and comic books. But as I got older, I just felt like the only place worth animating was at Disney, and they basically have their animators, the same guys who started with Walt. Which was true until, luckily, I graduated college, when they were starting to train a new group of animators.Do you think it's harder to break in right now?

Stones: Well, right now, things are getting exciting again, because John Lasseter, coming to Disney from Pixar, is talking about actually moving forward with developing some 2-D animation there again. He was part of the reason why people fled from 2-D animation, thinking that 3-D animation or CG animation was the way to go. Where in truth, it's like, "No." Pixar was doing better characters and more engrossing pictures, and you can do that 2-D or you can do that in CG or you can do it with puppets.Their movies do resonate emotionally.

Stones: Exactly. On Toy Story, I saw one of the early animatic reels, no finished animation, mostly story sketches, some weird computer marionette kind of things blocking though it. Before we knew what the final project was, we just saw the story reels of it. It was hilarious. It worked at that stage. So it's not about the tools. It's about the artists who wield them. And I think if John can bring 2-D animation back and we have animation in 2-D and CG, because they both have their strengths, that would just be fantastic, and I think then there'd be a lot more things in the industry to go to. Right now the people who have trained in one medium suddenly have to retrain, using different tools. But there sure are a lot more animated movies out every year than there ever have been. I think it will be great when animation turns into something you don't worry about whether it's animated or not. You just say, "Did you see that great movie?" Not "Did you see the latest animated cartoon?"