Designing Frankenstein: When Production Design Becomes the Emotional Language of Film
The 2026 Academy Awards nominations have been announced, and among the films that have drawn attention since their premiere is Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic literary classic. Earning nine nominations, including Best Production Design, the film breathes new life into a story that has been retold countless times, transforming it into a visual experience charged with emotion and humanity. Cold, quiet, and deeply human, del Toro’s Frankenstein constructs an artistic world that mirrors the isolation of its central figure–the Creature, portrayed by Jacob Elordi.
Behind this striking visual achievement stands production designer Tamara Deverell, working closely with concept artist Guy Davis. Both are long-time collaborators of Guillermo del Toro. In an official interview with Joe Fordham from The American Society of Cinematographers, Deverell carefully breaks down the artistic decisions that shaped the film’s world, tracing how research, craftsmanship, and emotion were woven into every design choice.
Del Toro’s Frankenstein is conceived as an ode to Mary Shelley’s Victorian-era novel, a project that has haunted the director’s imagination for decades. From the earliest stages, Guy Davis led the exploration of the film’s visual language, encompassing color, form, and narrative direction, while remaining faithful to the novel’s literary roots. Rather than simply reconstructing a historical aesthetic, the design team sought to translate Shelley’s core themes–alienation, ambition, and longing–into a language of space and material.
Physical locations became a crucial element in this process. While scouting locations across the United Kingdom, Deverell and del Toro encountered historical artifacts that helped ground Victor Frankenstein’s scientific experiments within a tangible reality. One of the most influential discoveries took place at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in England, where they studied the Evelyn Tables, 17th-century anatomical studies by John Evelyn. The pinewood boards, glazed with intricate tracings of arteries, veins, and nerves, became a haunting bridge between science and art.
“I hand-drew the veins, and then we made them out of threads with little sculpted lymph nodes. We 3D-modeled that and applied it to an old board that we had weathered. Everything was painstakingly handmade. Guillermo and Dan wanted to light real things, and make real beauty from that,” explains Deverell.
This emphasis on materiality–objects that could be touched, aged, and illuminated–became a guiding principle throughout the production. Other design elements emerged from Guy Davis’s conceptual sketches, which functioned as an intuitive extension of del Toro’s imagination.
"Guillermo has a long-standing relationship with Guy," says Deverell, “Guy's drawings are often very loose, hand-drawn. He works on an iPad or a tablet, but very loosey-goosey, like Guillermo, and Guillermo uses him to get what's in his head."
For the film’s most ambitious sets–an Arctic exploration ship frozen in ice, and Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory perched atop a Victorian-era water tower–the art department relied heavily on 3D modeling techniques. These digital tools allowed del Toro to explore the sets virtually, testing artistic ideas alongside technical limitations before construction began. More than that, this approach opened space for deeper exploration of texture, scale, and atmosphere.
Architectural inspiration was drawn from stately homes across Scotland and England, which informed the design of the Frankenstein family residence, while locations in Toronto stood in for Switzerland and the Arctic. Throughout the process, color played a central role.
“Color is so important to Guillermo and Dan,” Deverell says. “We were shooting in many different lighting conditions, beginning with the low, harsh winter light of the Arctic. For those scenes, we discussed how we'd use the Northern Lights. And in night scenes, we discussed how we'd use real fire and candlelight to keep it all within the realm of believability for the period.”
One of the most complex structures in the film is the Royal Danish Navy ship The Horizon, which frames the conflict between Victor Frankenstein and his creation. In designing the vessel, Deverell combined her background as an art student who once worked with a wooden boat manufacturer with extensive historical research.
Art historian Matthew Betts assisted in determining the ship’s dimensions, while marine advisor Jim Dines ensured the accuracy of period rigging. At the same time, costume designer Kate Hawley reinforced visual cohesion by selecting crew costume colors that complemented the frozen blue tones of the ship’s lighting and environment.
Beyond visual spectacle, Frankenstein’s production design is deeply shaped by character, particularly del Toro’s vision of the Creature as a sensitive, wandering outsider. The relationship between space and character is used to underscore the imbalance between creator and creation.
“The Creature is always living in borrowed places,” Deverell observes, “Whereas Victor had his family home, his apartment, and his lab. When we meet the Creature, he's in Victor's lab, but he doesn't belong there. So, we didn't focus on creating a space for the Creature.”
Within the film’s narrative, nature itself becomes an extension of the Creature’s identity. His escape from the laboratory leads him into the forest, where light and landscape emphasize solitude rather than threat. Nearly every frame of the film seems to summon emotions shaped by isolation and loneliness. Del Toro himself understands the film as a deeply personal work, one that revolves around forgiveness and acceptance.
“And it is deeply biographical for me,” del Toro explains. “It started with me thinking about making the movie about me and my father. It ended up being about me, my father and my own kids. While I was busy being a son, I became a father, and I kept behaving like a son. And I wanted to talk about that moment in my life when I realized that my absence represented my transformation into my father in my 40s. The rephrasing of the novel is all tailored around me as Victor Frankenstein. It is me as a creature, me as a child, and even me as Elizabeth. In the same way that the novel was deeply autobiographical for Mary Shelley, Frankenstein is all about the things I have experienced in the world.”
In del Toro’s hands, Frankenstein emerges as a gothic world that is profoundly human. Through production design executed with extreme precision and guided by an intensely personal vision, the film gives breath to empathy, regret, and human connection, manifested not only through narrative and performance, but through spaces that feel alien and blue, yet strangely capable of evoking warmth and familiarity.
