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n n n n CGI•Stereo ter system.” Te supervisors led 51 animators at PDI/DreamWorks in northern California and at DreamWorks Animation in southern California. Although Otto noted that organiz- ing the production by character rather than sequence can sometimes be more difficult to manage and less efficient, for this production that wasn’t the case. “It turned out that it helped us in the long run,” Otto says. “Because the animators worked on one character, it was significantly more efficient, particularly with complex char- acters. And, the consistency of the characters grew as we went through the film.” Systems within the animation rig helped the animators handle that complexity. At top, two Terrible Terrors illustrate the color range in this species of dragon, as they fight over a bit of food. At bottom, Hiccup shows his astonished yet dubious friends how to train a Monstrous Nightmare. fresh,” Otto says. “Dragons have been in many films, but they’ve mainly been in 2D or live- action movies, like Dragonheart. We didn’t need to match a live-action design or match to plates, and we could make a more complex dragon than a drawing. Nico [Marlet] looked for a shape language—what a short, stubby dragon would look like, for example. We drew inspiration from real life and steered the de- signs into something naturalistic and recogniz- able for the audience. We wanted to have fun with them. Make them believable. And at the same time, somewhat silly in their nature.” Te animators drew from personal experi- ences with their cats and dogs for Toothless. But, Toothless is also a dragon in the Night Fury species; a bird of prey, a panther, black like a stealth bomber, that fires white-hot lightning bolts. “Toothless has four legs, two sets of wings, a tail, and a tail fin,” Otto says. “[For us] to have maximum artistic control, he had four times the number of controls as Hic- cup, the main character.” Te Deadly Nadder, on the other hand, has the muscular legs and aggressive nature of an ostrich and the beautifully colored feathers of a parrot. His tail is spiked, and he shoots swirl- ing, white-hot sparkly shapes, but he doesn’t see well. Gronkle is a tubby, green dragon with tiny wings that Otto describes as a cross between 14 April 2010 a walrus, crocodile, bumblebee, and bulldog. “He’s silly like a bulldog is silly,” Otto says. “Te dragons aren’t funny as in a Tex Avery cartoon, but there is a funny aspect to their design and behavior that’s drawn from real-life observa- tion.” Gronkle flies like a hummingbird, but scoops up rocks and turns them into lava balls. Hideous Zippleback has two heads that zip together. One head spurts gas, the other head ignites it. Te tiny Terrible Terror attaches it- self to the larger dragons for free rides. “His fire is close to propane gas,” says Craig Ring, visual effects supervisor. “Te funny thing is that it’s so out of scale for the dragon. It’s like a 20- or 30-foot blowtorch.” Te red and black Monstrous Nightmare, which looks most like a classical dragon, sets itself on fire. Lastly, the Red Death is the biggest of all, in every way. Rather than have the seven supervising ani- mators be responsible for having their teams perform all the characters in entire sequenc- es, Otto organized the supervisors and their teams by characters, using a system typically implemented for traditionally animated films. In addition, separate sets of animators worked on crowd scenes with armies of Vikings and big groups of dragons. “Most of the supervisors were classical 2D animators who had worked at the studio for a long time,” Otto says, “so we persuaded the studio to go back to a supervisor-per-charac- Wings and Fire “We spent a lot of time optimizing,” Ring says. “Te biggest problem was the complex- ity of the characters. For example, when you have hundreds of spikes on a dragon’s back that can be moved independently, putting in controls that don’t bog down the animators is a big challenge.” Tis film was the first to use the studio’s rewrite of its in-house rigging system. “Tat definitely helped because it’s faster,” Ring says. “Also, we gave animators low-res proxy ver- sions of dragons. Tey could turn off the parts they didn’t need.” To help the animators control the dragons’ wings, the riggers started by looking at mov- ies of bats for reference. “Ten we broke down the wings mathematically,” Loofbourrow says. “Each wing had five, six, or seven divisions based on how they would fold up.” For each dragon wing type, the animators created flap cycles for different flying maneu- vers—landing, coasting, and so forth. Ten, the riggers added those flap cycles to the wing rig, and the animators could make the dragon fly using a few simple controls. “It was almost like they could turn a crank in the dragon and the wing would flap,” Loofbourrow says. “Tey could dial in weak, medium, and strong cycles as they animated. We embedded the curves the animators crafted, and the system interpolated between them over time and strength. Tey could slide between no flapping to the stron- gest flap. Te curve shape would change, and the dragon would move smoothly.” Te com- bination of flight cycles and tweaks gave each dragon its unique method of flight, whether hummingbird or bird of prey. As with all the procedural and simulation systems created for the characters, whether dragon or human, the animators could tweak the performances. And because each dragon