INSPIRATION / A PROFILE BY ROB URBAN
Guillermo
del Toro
Look closer
at the creature.
The hands that make a monster can also teach us how to care about one.
In Pinocchio, a wooden boy becomes expressive without losing the evidence that somebody made him. Guillermo del Toro and his collaborators turn that visible construction into part of the character.
A surface tells us how to look at a character. The suggestion of wear can give a newly made object a past. A visible joint can make a gesture seem difficult. A face that resists perfect symmetry can hold our attention differently from one designed to settle immediately into beauty.
I admire del Toro’s willingness to stay with the unfamiliar face. His creatures are allowed to take up space, to be complicated, to need something. The care spent making them visible becomes an invitation to care about them.
That is why the craftsmanship matters so much. A monster can be a momentary shock. Del Toro and the people who work with him give it enough presence to become someone we want to understand.
PINOCCHIO / 2022
The pause
makes him
real.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, released in 2022, was directed by del Toro and Mark Gustafson, with a screenplay by del Toro and Patrick McHale. Criterion’s credits name Ian MacKinnon, Peter Saunders and Georgina Hayns as directors of character fabrication, Guy Davis and Curt Enderle as production designers, Frank Passingham as cinematographer and Brian Leif Hansen as animation supervisor.
Those names tell us how a piece of wood acquires a thought.
Stop-motion builds a performance from successive positions of a physical figure, photographed a frame at a time. Timing becomes a material decision: how far a hand moves, how long a head stays turned, when the body catches up with an intention. The animator has to create the interval that an actor might discover in a breath.
The interesting question is what the movement suggests. A perfectly efficient gesture can communicate an instruction. A hesitation can suggest that the character has a choice to make. Both require control; they ask that control to accomplish different things.
A pause gives the audience something to recognize. We know what it feels like to reach for a word, to change our minds halfway through a gesture, to want to speak before we have decided how. Put that hesitation into a wooden body and the body begins to seem familiar.
Let him remain
himself.
The story’s tenderness has an unusual requirement: the boy must be allowed to remain himself. His visible construction belongs to him. Acceptance would mean very little if it depended on making every difference disappear.
Matt Zoller Seitz’s Criterion essay connects the film’s puppetry to its treatment of obedience and power. He also describes pauses and small, apparently incidental movements that make the figures seem alive.
That gives the carved boy’s resistance a particular force. A body made to be moved by someone else becomes the body through which the story considers a will of one’s own.
That is the part of del Toro’s imagination I find most moving. He makes room for a being whom other people are quick to define. The label arrives before the understanding; the film asks us to keep looking.
There is courage in giving this idea such extravagant form. Every unusual silhouette makes the invitation more demanding. Can we extend our sympathy to a life that does not immediately resemble our own?
FRANKENSTEIN / 2025
42
prosthetic pieces.
A living performance.
Find the eyes.
That attention reaches the eyes of another made being in del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025).
In Netflix’s conversation with Jacob Elordi and prosthetics designer Mike Hill, Elordi explains how the Creature’s makeup directs attention toward his expression. Hill adapted the design to the actor’s features. The full-body application involved 42 prosthetic pieces, developed with a team that included prosthetics supervisor and hair stylist Megan Many.
Forty-two pieces, and the important thing is that we can still find the person.
I love the discipline implied by that. Such elaborate work could become an attraction all by itself. Here, its purpose includes making another artist’s performance readable. The makeup has to carry the creature’s history while allowing a glance to reach us.
A memorable design gives the actor possibilities. It leaves room for what happens after the design is finished, when a person begins to move inside it.
Many imaginations.
One world.
Del Toro’s visual identity is unmistakable. Looking closely makes it possible to admire that identity and recognize the many people through whom it becomes real.
A puppet must be built to permit a performance. Its range of movement, the way its face changes and the surfaces that catch the light all constrain what an animator can do with it. A design can be striking in a still image and still need considerable work before it can carry a scene. That exchange between making and moving is where the separate crafts become inseparable.
On Frankenstein, production designer Tamara Deverell described spending five months refining the laboratory before construction. Costume designer Kate Hawley drew on beetle anatomy and cellular structures for fabrics associated with Elizabeth, the character played by Mia Goth. A set and a costume could each carry part of the film’s living world.
These are wonderful details because they reveal what a shared vision actually asks of people. Someone has to discover the shape, solve the practical problem and make the thing. The director’s imagination gives the work a direction; the collaborators contribute imaginations of their own.
When I think about why del Toro inspires me, this matters as much as the finished image. He pursues a world specific enough to recognize, and large enough to require other people’s gifts.
THE MARKS WORTH KEEPING
Care has
a texture.
Writing about Pinocchio, Seitz also describes the production’s use of CGI and digital compositing. Those tools allowed corrections and adjustments alongside the physical animation. The handmade quality is a chosen effect of the finished work, not evidence that the production rejected digital help.
Del Toro’s craft offers a different definition of finish. A work can be meticulously completed without erasing the evidence that completion required hands. The chisel mark and the fabric texture do not announce carelessness. They tell us what kind of care was chosen.
That gives us a better question to ask of a finished work: which details deserve to survive?
Some marks distract. Others let us feel the history of a body, or the resistance of a material, or the effort inside a small movement. Craft includes learning the difference. The care can be exacting even when the surface remains rough.
Del Toro makes this distinction feel human. His characters ask for attention before they have become easy to admire. We come closer, discover what they carry and find ourselves invested in a life we might have dismissed.
The wooden boy does not have to become immaculate to deserve that attention. Del Toro and his collaborators let us see him clearly enough to care.
Behind the films
Who directed Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio?
Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson co-directed the 2022 stop-motion film. Del Toro and Patrick McHale wrote the screenplay, based on Carlo Collodi’s book.
Who designed the Creature for del Toro’s Frankenstein?
Mike Hill designed the Creature’s prosthetic makeup for Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 Frankenstein. Jacob Elordi played the Creature, with the makeup developed to support his expression and performance.
Was Pinocchio made entirely without digital effects?
No. Its physical stop-motion animation was supported by CGI and digital compositing. The film preserves the expressive character of its puppets and materials while also using digital tools.
Sources: Criterion’s film credits and Matt Zoller Seitz’s essay Sculpted to Life; Netflix Tudum’s interviews with the Frankenstein cast and craftspeople, published in January and February 2026. Links appear beside the relevant details.
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I’m Rob Urban. The choices behind meaningful work are a recurring subject in my writing. Get to know my work, or talk with me about a writing or consulting project.