Making you believe

I think what gives fantasy its strength is when it's about real things - real people in a real situation,' says Dave McKean, award-winning British illustrator and comic book artist. 'The Lord Of The Rings and so on mean nothing to me.'

It's perhaps a surprising statement from a man who is constantly in demand for films such as Harry Potter. 'These people were obsessed with trying to crack problems I wasn't really interested in. Like, if Hippogriffs really existed, how would their legs work? I mean, who the hell cares?' he grumbles.

McKean's own best-known work to date is the rich, graphic novel series Cages, a feverish visual tone poem set in a modern apartment block. But that could change on Friday when he unveils his debut as a film director.

Mirrormask is a sophisticated family fantasy film about Helena, a 15-year-old circus girl who wants 'to run away and join real life' - until her mother's illness makes her retreat into a childish kingdom of imagination.

'I'm not at all interested in stories about goblins and fairies,' insists McKean. 'But I am interested in people who need to believe in such things. My definition of a fantasy world is everything that isn't what's right here, right now in this room. Everything else is make believe: the dreams you have; what happened this morning; what you hope will happen in the future. They're all fantasy.'

And Mirrormask is, by any definition, fantastical. 'I liked the idea I would get to make a city from scratch,' grins the ebullient 43-year-old. And he did: a mesmerising, macabre menagerie teeming with scuttling eyeballs, people with
birdcage heads, flying books and sweeping, collaged landscapes that looks and feels exactly like one of his Sandman comic covers brought to life.

Which is unsurprising, considering the film was written with his long-term collaborator Neil Gaiman, himself a recognised visionary of the industry. So linked are the pair that it's hard to know where Gaiman's vision ends and McKean's begins. Yet Mirrormask is not a straight comic book adaptation. Why?

'For some reason, film feels like it's the ultimate incarnation,' he says. 'Yet a lot of adaptations are not as good as their originals. A comic may not be as loud or as much of a mass experience. But in its own private, personal way, it's just as powerful. Their language is very intimate and seductive - I don't think it's actually very good for telling big action adventure stories.'

McKean's newest challenge is the novelty of working with live actors, especially as most of Mirrormask was filmed against blue-screens. 'Rob Brydon [who plays several parts, including Helena's father] had a minor freakout at one point when I was trying to explain that the White Palace was behind him and he was actually on a massive staircase standing next to a chicken who looked like Count Dooku,' he confesses.

And for someone who normally works solely on paper, the demands of a budget clearly took him by surprise. 'You don't need any money to make a comic, you can just do it. It's so liberating,' he says. 'It's strange with film. Huge things like a city crumpling up like a sheet of paper are cheap.