Production Information - Visual Hollywood

―How to Train Your Dragon‖ Production Information 18relationship and cause Hiccup to free him. The closest equivalent we could find to thatwas a big stare from a cat or a wolf—stoic, penetrating and powerful. Those are theelements we started with, which allowed us to explore different ideas, feline, wolf-like,and combining those with a little bit of reptilian to keep it in the world of dragons. And,eventually, we arrived at Toothless.‖Head of character animation Simon Otto: ―I take the vision of the directors andproduction designer, Kathy Altieri, which gives me what the film should look like. Fromthere, I pick it up and at that point say, ‗What sort of animation would work best with thatstory in that world?‘ In this case, we have humans and dragons. The humans arefantastic characters that are extremely entertaining, but that also have to deliver abelievable storyline, and be the ones that the audience will become emotionally attachedto. That was one challenge, the other was the dragons. I had to split my time betweenthose two worlds, looking at everything I could in the animal world with any similaritiesto our dragons—birds, bats, reptiles, mammals. When the black cat/panther and wolfreferences were chosen, we began to include surprising references like kangaroos andwombats—slightly odd creatures that we may not be too familiar with, and eventually wecame up with a very warm animal that Hiccup, and the audience, can connect to.‖Perhaps the most comical of the dragons is the Gronckle, which seemed to beuniversally considered as the production‘s favorite dragon (outside of Toothless,naturally). Someone even referred to it as ―crocodile meets Harley Davidson,‖ becauseof its cumbersome, hippo-like shape, topped off with relatively small, bumblebee-ishwings. According to backstory, these guys are so lazy that they might actually fall asleepwhile flying. Chris Sanders: ―But they‘re just these generally likable, gregarious-lookingguys. You probably would like to hang out with a Gronckle after work, if you could, justbecause they seem somewhat friendly and nice.‖But don‘t be fooled by its comic potential, adds Dean DeBlois: ―He really packs awallop by hurling molten slugs of lava that come from ingesting rocks. He barfs themout, kind of like a cannonball. He‘s probably the slowest, most dim-witted of thedragons—and because of that, he‘s lovable and a lot of fun.‖The Deadly Nadder is a star in flight, most resembling a parrot, with its brightcolors, and somewhat-developed reasoning capabilities—for a dragon, it‘s very sneaky