Henson and Froud developed a story idea from the photo, about goblins who kidnap the charge of babysitter Jennifer Connelly, who journeys on a quest through the labyrinth to regain the baby. Then Monty Python's Terry Jones was brought in to develop a script. Jones was chosen because Froud and Henson were impressed by two books he wrote, called Fairytales and Erik the Viking . Certain of the little scribbles I had been fiddling around with from the beginning sparked him off and he developed them into characters for the film. Jones responded extraordinarily well to my images.
Some characters are grotesque, but always with a twinkle.
For example, the evil goblins are basically incompetent. They try their best, but they fall over themselves a great deal. Building the characters in such a way that you would believe them involved a lot of trial and error and subsequent rebuilding to get them right. We pushed some of the techniques further than we did the last time. But of course, I always designed the creatures with an awareness of the technical problems.