Just in time for the apocalypse, some tools to stop that kind of thing from happening. Skelton Crew Studio, the folks who have been producing amazing replicas of the keys from Joe Hill’s IDW horror series Locke & Key, the recent Chew project, and the just announced Mouse Guard line, have acquires the rights to Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. Specifically to create the “Artifact Archive Collection.” Above are the first prototypes of Bog Roosh’s Nail, Bishop Zrinyi’s Button and the Elf Shot. “I’m approaching these as pieces that would have been in the pouches of Hellboy’s belt orpicked up in B.P.R.D. members’ travels,” said Israel Skelton, owner of Skelton Crew Studio.“The possibilities are almost endless and so awesome.” Mignola himself said he’s “very excited” about the project. Expect to be able to purchase the finished props winter of 2013 and check out all of Skelton Crew Studio’s products here.

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The definitions of “good” and “evil” get toyed with in this animated short by Phillip Simon. It was the thesis film he worked on with Alyse Miller for the Ringling College of Art and Design and features two very different young girls and what happens when they don’t get along. I’ll leave it up to you how to view the main characters but needless to say, the quality is top-notch and the monsters, they are adorable.

(via Sketchlock)

If you’re a follower of the career of Guillermo del Toro, which we certainly are, from Hellboy to Pan’s Labyrinth to his involvement in the very early concept stages of this December’s The Hobbit, you might be aware of one of his longest gestating projects, At the Mountains of Madness. Shelved once again in March of last year, the adaptation of the most famous work in of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos, has continually had trouble getting greenlit, as a conceptual horror movie about the ultimately uncomfortable relationship between mankind and the rest of the universe that would require a large budget, big special effects, and an R rating.

Wait… that sounds familiar…

In fact, all of those things could also apply to Ridley Scott‘s long awaited return to the Aliens universe, and del Toro feels this makes the market a bit to saturated.

A lot of people are having a tough time understanding Tom Hardy’s Bane in the prologue and trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. It’s become such a thing that the studio has asked him to go back and re-dub the audio. He says he’s not going to apparently but people are having a fun time while they decide. For instance, a Twitter account named MuffledBane has popped up (which you can spend the afternoon deciphering). And now we have this fan film. It starts off a little slow but once the subtitles kick in, I think you’ll love it.

(via Bleeding Cool)

We’ll start off by saying just one thing: we’re pretty sure that kraken were not creating self-portraits in shallow water during the Triassic period. Because kraken aren’t actually real, and goodness knows if there were even mirrors around in prehistoric times for them to use as a reference tool. But some paleontologists are wondering exactly why a collection of icthyosaur (aka shonisaur) bones in Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada have been arranged the way they’ve found them. And their theory is that a 100-foot cephalopod may have salvaged the bones after killing the dinosaurs and used them to create self-portraits. Uhhhhh, okay!

Guillermo del Toro‘s dream project, a film adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness subsided beneath the deeps three months ago, the eldritch whispers of its gestating emergence into reality fading with the news that Universal Pictures wasn’t willing to take the bet that del Toro could turn a profit on a $150 million R-rated movie.

However! del Toro, like a certain tentacle-faced high priest we could name, is steadfast in his determination to bring Lovecraftian horrors into the lives of each and every one of us.

Artist/blogger Michael Bukowski at Yog-Blogsoth has been pursuing a goal to draw every character mentioned in the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. Above is one of the most famous of those creatures, Cthuhlu. Descriptions from the writing in which the character appears are also included. He hopes to complete this task in a year, including popular characters with lengthy descriptions to those that are merely mentioned. Click through to see if this artist’s imagination comes close Lovecraft’s!

In case you were worried that Guillermo Del Toro‘s film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft‘s At the Mountains of Madness, was just a crazed fever dream you had several months ago, set your fears aside. It’s going to start filming in June.

Producer Don Murphy (Transformers) confirmed the shoot date, though not much else is known about the production. James Cameron is also tapped to produce, and Tom Cruise and Ron Perlman are the only listed members of the cast. (Perlman confirmed his involvement in January; his character did not appear in the original novel, but will be a “no-nonsense dog sled guy.”

Cameron says that this will be an “epically scaled horror movie,” and added, “The fans certainly won’t want for a visual feast with this film.” That’s pretty promising coming from the guy responsible for Aliens.

(io9)