Film: Step into the haunting world of Guillermo del Toro's beautiful sketchbooks

I owe a debt to The Guardian for showing me these beautiful images at the weekend. Sat eating some porridge on Saturday morning I turned to a double-page spread of ghoulish faces and scrawled, bloody text and was so excited I spat oats. Ever since Cronos gave me nightmares as a nine-year-old I’ve been a tentative and latterly whole-hearted fan of Guillermo del Toro’s films, so to have the opportunity to sneak a peek into his haunted mind via the busy pages of his sketchbooks is an absolute treat.

Weirdly his drawing style has a roundness to it that makes his sketches of sets and mocked-up characters seem that much more friendly than in their final, terrifying iterations, but the book still gives the overwhelming impression of leafing through a satanic bible written in blood on the skin of a sacrificed victim. Which, in the end, is probably the look Guillermo was going for.