How to Train Your Dragon Director on Bringing Toothless to Live-Action (Exclusive)
Director Dean DeBlois explains some key challenges in making a live-action How to Train Your Dragon feature.
Fifteen years ago today, DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon arrived in movie theaters, and a beloved franchise was born!
A CG-animated adaptation of author Cressida Cowell's book of the same name, How to Train Your Dragon was creatively birthed into existence by legendary animation writer/directors Chris Sanders (The Wild Robot) and Dean DeBlois (Lilo & Stitch). It became a huge critical hit, a box office behemoth ($500 million in global returns), and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
In just 78 days, DeBlois will present his reimagined, live-action/CG animated How to Train Your Dragon movie featuring new iterations of the beloved characters including Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Mason Thames), Astrid Hofferson (Nico Parker) and Toothless the Night Fury dragon.
RELATED: Live-Action How to Train Your Dragon Soars to Greater Heights in New Trailer (WATCH)
Dean DeBlois talks How to Train Your Dragon live-action feature film
As the writer/director of this upcoming version, DeBlois acknowledged the enduring legacy of the How to Train Your Dragon book and cinematic universe in a brand-new Instagram message:
NBC Insider recently had our own exclusive chat with DeBlois about the how his HTTYD live-action film has some creative connections to his previous animated versions, and the most challenging aspects of bringing animated characters into the real world.
Dean DeBlois reveals a specific connection between the animated & live-action How to Train Your Dragon films
While animators at DreamWorks Animation brought the whole world of Berk and the dragons to life in the animated trilogy of films, for the live-action How to Train Your Dragon film, it was Framestore — the British visual effects and computer animation studio — and their animators who worked with Dean DeBlois to bring credible iterations of the animated dragons into the real world sets and locations of the Isle of Berk.
DeBlois told us that he was thrilled to work with Framestore because their whole team was so excited about honoring the animated world by making this hybrid, live-action version just as wonderful.
RELATED: Everything to Know About Epic Universe's How to Train Your Dragon - Isle of Berk
"I do know that animators live for this kind of an assignment," DeBlois told us. "Even within Framestore, they've had the problem of everybody wanting to work on this movie so we definitely had our pick of talented crew. At one point, we brought in Simon Otto, who was the head of character animation on the animated movies, just to interact with their animators and talk about references and performance. We've licensed them to find a way of making our dragons as emotive as they can be without reverting to cartoony tropes.
"They're not anthropomorphic," the director clarified of their approach to animating dragons who could literally exist amongst Vikings. "They have the same sort of emotive cues that your dog and your cat might have. We spent a lot of time talking about that, like how can we communicate it so it doesn't fall short of the charm that people expect out of a character? But we don't ever cross the line as well. Yet, we have," he explained. "We crossed the line and have come back because that just doesn't feel like an animal anymore."
It's all in the eyes: the key to making How to Train Your Dragon's Toothless real in any medium
As the franchise's VIP dragon in any medium, Toothless the silent but extremely emotive Night Fury that Hiccup finds wounded in the woods is truly the heart of the story. If an audience falls in love with him, then they're along for the narrative ride.
DeBlois told us that he knew from the start going into making this live-action version that creating a CG Toothless that interacts within the physics rules of the human world, but can still give a compelling performance, was non-negotiable to its success.
"Toothless is an interesting example because the size of his eyes, that doesn't exist in nature, not even on a whale," Deblois said of their challenge. "But the smaller we made them, the less appealing and the less Toothless he became, very quickly. So, we had to find this balance where we're cheating with nature by making his eyes bigger, but we can lean into the rippling muscles over the skeleton, the believable scales, the believable textures, the wetness of the gums and the teeth and everything else, and hopefully get away with the big green eyes. I hope that's the end result. Maybe I'm too close to it, but I hope in the end, you watch it and say, 'I believe it. I believe that character could exist alongside the other animals and the humans.'"
See for yourself when How to Train Your Dragon opens exclusively in theaters June 13, and check out the world of How to Train Your Dragon in real-life as part of the Isle of Berk at Epic Universe.
