Production Information - Visual Hollywood

―How to Train Your Dragon‖ Production Information 23Sanders and DeBlois were lucky to be the recipients of a great deal of artwork —everything from breathtaking vistas to astounding characters. Much of those earlyrenderings proved a quite sturdy foundation on which to build the Viking world in theirfilm. ―Given all of this incredible artwork, we knew the size and scope of the world andhow larger-than-life everything was, from a table to a battle tower, so there had to be avery visceral, exciting pace of life for these Vikings,‖ remembers DeBlois.For Jay Baruchel, even having recorded Hiccup for nearly two years, seeing thecharacter and his environment come together was eye-opening: ―I‘d like to think that,after playing Hiccup for the better part of two years, I knew him like the back of myhand. That being said, seeing the final finished product of what Hiccup looked like, itwas almost a goose bump moment. I was beaming with pride.‖Part of what Baruchel no doubt found awe-inspiring was the detail thatDreamWorks Animation‘s proprietary software was able to produce in things longconsidered ―problem areas‖ in computer-generated animation.―I‘d like to think that I‘ve come to know that in the world of computer animation,things like fur, hair and water are really tough to pull off convincingly,‖ says Sanders.―These Vikings are practically all fur and they are nearly all beard. Stoick‘s beard isamazing, because it‘s huge, just like he is. It moves so convincingly, and it kind ofcatches your eye, once in a while, because you‘re just drawn to it because of the way itlooks and moves. The fur that he wears is a real breakthrough and I challenge anybodynot to be fascinated with it at some point when you watch this movie. In fact, all of thematerials, the fur, the metal, the leather, the texturing and lighting are just unbelievable.‖Character effects supervisor Damon Crowe seconds, ―This project is unique in theamount of fur that we have. We have beards on everybody. All the hero characters havefur on their garments somewhere. We‘re dealing with interaction with that fur whencharacters get touched or just touch anywhere on themselves, and in addition the beardsneed to interact with the garments. We‘ve tried to come up with some really goodsolutions to make the fur process more efficient in character effects, and we have someproprietary tools in house that do that job really well for us which we‘ve been honingsince ‗Shrek 2.‘ I would say this film represents the farthest that we‘ve come in ourability to make fur interact better with the characters.‖