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CGI•Stereo ■ ■ ■ ■ stereo 3D experience and brings a Viking world to animated life in a CG adventure-comedy By Barbara Robertson DreamWorks forges a new he title of DreamWorks Animation’s latest fi lm is How to Train Your Dragon, and indeed, the star of this animated fea- ture, a teenaged Viking named Hiccup, does just that, albeit in his own way. So, it makes sense that the biggest chal- lenges for the real-world animators, visual eff ects art- ists, modelers, and riggers centered on “training” CG tools to help the crew create these dragons. Seven dragons in all. Unique dragons devised by Annie Award-winning character designer Nicolas Marlet (Kung Fu Panda,Over the Hedge), who also designed the main characters for the fi lm: Hiccup, his big- bearded father Stoick, a young female Viking named Astrid, and various other Vikings young and old. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, the team who wrote and directed Disney’s Lilo and Stitch, directed How to Train Your Dragon and wrote the screenplay. It’s the second fi lm created in stereo 3D at Dream- Works from start to fi nish. T e story, based on the children’s book by Cressi- da Cowell, pits the brainy Hiccup against his brawny dragon-slaying tribe: Hiccup breaks with tradition, befriends a dragon, and dubs his dragon friend “Toothless.” T e tribe is not amused. Simon Otto, head of character animation, began working with Marlet, a design team, modelers, and riggers three and a half years before the fi lm released, as part of a small development group that brought the two-dimensional drawings into the 3D world. “T e design language of the movie pushed caricatured shapes set in a realistically textured world with live-action-esque lighting,” Otto says. “We had exaggerated shapes, but the story is epic and naturalistic. So we needed to be sure we could deliver the emotional beats with realistic acting.” Production started a year before release. “T e magnitude of the dragons was a main task to tackle,” Otto says. “And on the human side, we wanted to make sure the Vikings had beards, and that created challenges for the rigging and charac- ter eff ects departments.” Dragon Power At fi rst, the riggers thought they could set up the controls for one dragon and apply them to the oth- ers, but it wasn’t that simple. “We ended up with seven bespoke dragons,” says Nathan Loofbour- row, character TD co-supervisor. “T ey share many controls, but each is unique with special powers of its own.” T ey all had legs and wings, but one had spikes that move up and down based on the dragon’s emotional state, and another puts his wings down and crawls. T ey each walked diff erently, fl ew dif- ferently, and spewed diff erent forms of CG fi re. And, they had diff erent personalities. Unlike the dragon in PDI/DreamWorks’ Shrek, these drag- ons are primary characters. “We tried to hit a tone that was hopefully April 2010 13 ©2010 DreamWorks Animation LLC.