Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1109293
H O W T O T R A I N Y O U R D R A G O N | P E R S P E C T I V E 5 1 E. VIKING GRAPHICS BY KIRSTEN KAWAMURA. F. EARLY DRAGON CHARACTER DESIGNS BY NICOLAS MARLET. PENCIL AND MARKER ON PAPER. G. PRODUCTION STILL SHOWING THE NATURALISTIC HIGHLY DETAILED SURFACING PAIRED WITH A STYLIZED CHARACTER DESIGN STYLE. F E G with additional earthworks. Besides some really late Christian churches, nothing remains from the buildings of that era; most seen today are reconstructions. This detail—or rather lack thereof—provided the design team with a good opportunity to create our own architecture style for the Dragon films. Beautiful stone carvings and metalwork offered a solid vision of the Viking culture's colorful and sophisticated iconography, which was used as inspiration to create the world of the film—a task that fell to visual development artist Kirsten Kawamura. During all three movies, she kept providing a wonderfully stylized version of Viking art deco and graphic designs. Kirsten was also responsible for a lot of architecture in the original village of Berk, as well the more "dragon- influenced" take on the buildings of New Berk, adding a wonderful sense of whimsy to this world. Romantic paintings helped create an epic vision of the Viking world, all of it based on very loose historical evidence. We filmmakers loved their fearless sense of freedom, bigger-than-life mythology and disregard for anything remotely bureaucratic; no forcing them to pay their gas bill at the end of the month. They were awesome! The Style Absorbing Cressida's How to Train Your Dragon books—with their whimsical interpretation of the Viking world and the extraordinary intrusion of fantasy through dragons—served as inspiration to create a stylized shape language. This caricature was complemented by a rich, naturalistic treatment of all surfaces.