“He needed to be a creature you could fall in love with.”
Guillermo del Toro has been quoted as saying that “the asset” in The Shape of Water wasn’t designed as a monster, but rather a leading man. Indeed the creature, portrayed by Doug Jones, is the leading man of the visionary film, a unique love story between a human woman and an amphibian animal with a heart of gold… and a taste for cat.
The design process on the creature reportedly took a few years, and a new featurette video highlights that road from concept sketch to sculpt to creature in the flesh.
The Shape of Water scored an incredible 13 Academy Awards nominations earlier this week, but weirdly was *not* nominated for Best Makeup. Go figure!