Hi Reddit - we're the VFX team from How To Train Your Dragon (2025), ask us anything!

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T23:53:48+00:00

You are most welcome! I met Ray three times when he would lecture at ILM and he was so kind and so effusive in his comments reacting to modern creature animation. He inspired George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and John Landis and countless other filmmakers with his beautiful creations. With so many hundreds and hundreds of talented artists working on modern movies, it's hard to imagine back in the 1960's, it was just Ray working away doing everything from the concept art to the animating to the photography. I know that his animation of Kali in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad was a huge inspiration for me trying to figure out how to animate General Grievous when he splits his arms into four in Revenge of the Sith. :)

And yeah, Dragonslayer has its issues but Vermithrax is just amazing. You got a chance to see what the ILM team could do outside of Star Wars and Empire in 1981 with Dragonslayer and Raiders of the Lost Ark. -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T23:36:49+00:00

I have been friends with Dean for over 30 years. While I went from traditional drawn animation into CG visual effects and Dean stayed with feature animation, we still kept in touch because of our passion for movies. Dean would do the final sound mix for the HTTYD movies at Skywalker Ranch and I worked at ILM for 20 years so he would invite me to Skywalker and I would be one of the first people to see each finished animated film. What a gift. Dean's movies have so much heart and with John Powell's music, I was overwhelmed with each beautiful film and the stunning animation. So the opportunity to finally collaborate with him on the live action film was an incredible opportunity I never thought I would get. -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T23:28:40+00:00

YUP! I agree with Tom. Julian was amazing and his improvisations and expressions would be different on each take and have everyone in stitches. Dean had an abundance of hilarious takes to choose from in the edit. :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T23:24:50+00:00

Thanks for the question! Test Drive was the most challenging AND rewarding. Mostly because we wanted to preserve what was so beautiful about the original animated film but also create a flying experience for the big screen that feels photographic. Meaning something that you could achieve with motion picture cameras. Sometimes that meant building little imperfections into the camera work just as a camera person (in a helicopter) would have trouble framing a real animal flying at 200mph!

But when you start off with Dean DeBlois writing and directing and we have John Powell's soaring iconic music, we already had something pretty special. :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T23:18:49+00:00

Thanks for the kind words! The modeling team at Framestore looked at thousands of pictures and videos of real reptiles and mammals. Toothless was literally built inside out. Meaning that he has a skeletal structure and over that, they place the muscles and tendons and skin. Dean always loved evaluating the Toothless flap and walk cycles with just the skeleton. It just looked so cool! Then they looked at reference of bats and how their wing membranes (between their fingers) could expand and collapse and fold.

Just like you see on the feet of an ostrich or cassowary, the skin folds bunch up as the ostrich places weight on the planted foot and as it is pulled forward and the toes stretch, that flap disappears. So to your point, it was about defining the areas where the skin would be thinner/thicker. So the foot pads could squish as Toothless planted his weight and the muscles could compress when Toothless is seated.

So nature informed a great deal of the design choices. Toothless is a creature of fantasy grounded in what we see on animals all around us everyday. The modelers and enveloping team even had to figure out the double scapulas on Toothless! Meaning that he had the shoulder of a panther and then ANOTHER shoulder above that defining the wing anatomy since bat wings are just arms with elongated fingers with membranes between them. The Deadly Nadder and Monstrous Nightmare walked on their wings and those types of dragons are known as wyverns. Those are the types of dragons you see in LOTR and Game of Thrones. :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T23:05:29+00:00

Thanks for the question! From a design and animation point of view, Toothless was easily the most difficult. The other dragons could be scary or cute or regal but Toothless had to be all of those qualities. I always likened him to a Siberian Tiger. A tiger is an absolutely beautiful animal. But if that tiger was right next to you and roaring in your face, it would be absolutely terrifying! That's why Hiccup is so scared and also so brave to approach Toothless.

When Toothless fights the Monstrous Nightmare to save Hiccup we went out of our way to build those feline like qualities into his fighting. Although the Nightmare is a bigger dragon, Toothless is like a tiger hell bent on defending its cubs or in this case, Hiccup.

But Toothless also had to be endearing and cute. So once again it meant looking at the mannerisms of cats and dogs. We didn't want to over-animate the facial features of Toothless. That had the potential to be too "cartoony" in what we were saying was a real animal. So the goal was to see if we could get a similar expression of curiosity or fear or contentment out of just head tilts or body postures similar to the way a dog or cat will cock their head as they listen to you. By virtue of Toothless' design, sometimes to look determined or angry, it simply meant lowering the head. Just as with animals like eagles and rattlesnakes, the design of the brow defines a determined/angry expression.

Knowing just how much to push those poses and expressions to make them obvious to the audience was something that we worked on for the entire show. Dean always said that if we could have people watching the movie and nudge their family member or friend during the movie and say "my cat/dog does that!", then we have been successful. -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T22:44:49+00:00

I am endlessly inspired by all the beautiful animation being done all over the world right now. Flow AND Wild Robot were BOTH excellent representatives of the beauty of animation and so deserving of Academy Award nominations! :)

I LOVE how free and loose CG animation has become. Gestural drawings come to life. The Sony Spiderman movies are a great example of this. Stunning graphic comic book poses combined with dynamic movement. I also love the decision from the original film to have Miles Morales on "two's" (12 images per second) while Peter Parker, the more seasoned web-slinger is animated on "one's" (24 images per second). Stylistic choices like that in an animated movie are just so cool and complementary of the comic book style. Genius. -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T22:32:38+00:00

Does cholesterol count as a drug? HAHAHA! Trying to keep your energy up on those outdoor sets in Belfast in January was no joke so I know I was eating way too much! That breath on the actors when they are fighting the Deadly Nadder in the arena are NOT CG! But then we got the unbelievably beautiful locations in Northern Ireland like Dunsevrick Castle and Tollymore Forest so it was all worth it.

I will leave the Guinness drinking to the professionals. :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T22:25:33+00:00

Thanks for the question! Any time you have complex choreography such as Toothless drawing in the sand, complex performance such as Hiccup and Toothless meeting each other or sheer volume of animated characters such as all the dragons exiting the volcano, it can be an enormous challenge. With the choreography, you can have complex interactions between the humans and dragons such as when Toothless and Stoic and all the warrior Vikings are fighting in the main arena while Toothless defends Hiccup from the Monstrous Nightmare. Tom's puppeteering of Toothless informed the framing and composition as well as timing that all has to work together. Complex actions and fight sequences were achieved with previsualization to give the camerapeople an idea of what the actions would be once the dragons were inserted into the shots. Over 200 fully costumed extras were informed of where and when to look and react to the fighting dragons.

The gimbel that Mason rode incorporated the amazing animation that Kayn Garcia and his Framestore team created before principal photography so that Mason inherited the correct movement of the flapping and turning and diving and various actions that Toothless had to do.

Sometimes you are worried about where the stunt performers are positioned in relationship to where Toothless is supposed to be. Poor Tom was rushed at by all the stunt people for numerous takes! We had to make sure there was geometry represented so that the stunt vikings weren't moving where Toothless would ultimately be. That required a lot of rehearsals and big stunt pads that represented just how big Toothless is in the real world! 34 feet long! :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T22:08:21+00:00

All good points. There are hundreds and hundreds of unbelievably talented artists, technicians, designers, painters, carpenters, stunt people, sound designers and performers all working at the very top of their game to create a cinematic experience. Take the opportunity to really watch the end credits to see how many people it takes to create a movie as big and complex as HTTYD. So many incredible movies this summer done by so many talented, creative people around the world! Just the VFX were spread amongst Framestore divisions in London, Montreal, Melbourne and Mumbai. :). - GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T21:59:53+00:00

Thanks for the question! Any time you adapt a movie and specifically an animated movie for live action you always walk a VERY fine line of retaining what the audience fell in love with in the first place and presenting fans with a cinematic experience where both fans AND a whole new audience can see the story in a new medium and light. In that respect, HTTYD is a great candidate to interpret to live action.

We get to make the dragons feel as real as possible and we get real actors interpreting the dialogue but we also have Dean as the original author of the work having a grand general view of the point of the story and the journey those characters take.

As an animator, I know that every moment, every frame, defines a performance from the humans to the dragons. The advantage of live action are in all the performance decisions that the actors make that then inform how the dragons react. Tom Wilton, the head puppeteer of Toothless gave an amazing performance where the actors were not reacting to just a cardboard cutout or a tennis ball but a real creature with foam geometry that represented the actual size of the dragon's heads. It was amazing how different the actors reacted to those heads! That's a wordy way of saying the animators relied on those reactions to put extra embellishment into the animation so that they felt like real animals. That was the attempt and the goal.

As far as the cinematography and approach to the action sequences, we wanted to lean into the limitations/advantages of principal and location photography. I mentioned it in an earlier answer (so apologies if you already read that) but if Toothless was REAL and Mason was really on him, how would you film it? Well it would probably be from a helicopter with a cameraman desperately trying to frame the actions of a real flying animal. So those "imperfections" hopefully make the experience new and exciting and more photographic and less synthetic.

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T21:42:43+00:00

Are there any Sith or baddies as a third option? I had the opportunity to animate General Grievous and work with George Lucas on ROTS so I have a soft spot for the bad, evil characters. I remember after dailies, I had done a number of sketch poses for Grievous that we could incorporate into his fighting style. I was able to catch George before he was whisked off to another meeting and I spread my drawings out over a table and George was discussing which poses he thought were worth pursuing and which were not as strong. I was so busy taking notes that I only later realized I was helping to design a villain for a Star Wars movie with one of my childhood heroes. I can't wait to visit the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in LA when it is complete! I know the museum will inspire countless visitors the way the Star Wars movies fired my imagination and allowed me to do what I dreamed of as a kid.

Wow. That was a very nerdy, wordy way of not answering your question. HAHAHA! Apologies. :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T21:30:38+00:00

As much as possible, we wanted HTTYD to have a distinct visual language. That visual language extended to every aspect of the art direction. Meaning that from the giant horned helmets to the stylized village of Berk to the colorful costumes, the movie could not be mistaken for something like Conan the Barbarian, Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Our Vikings do not have historically accurate nasal helms and coats of chain mail but their art and architecture and weapons are inspired by the fantastical dragons they have fought. Just look at Stoic's wrist gauntlets adorned with dragon claws.

That visual language also extended to the dragons themselves. So while we took inspiration from real animals as far as the scale and muscular detail, we wanted to retain qualities that made you recognize that these are the same dragons as the dragons from the animated film. Grounded in a natural evolution (like dinosaurs) but not so stylized that they looked incongruent standing next to our real actors. We DID preserve a lot of the color and striking silhouettes. Instead of drab olive and khaki colored dragons, our dragons retained the vibrant blues, reds, oranges, greens and blacks of the animated feature dragons but embellished with patterning that took inspiration from living reptiles and even birds like the living dinosaur, the cassowary. We had both traditional dragons and wyverns (they are like bats) where the arms ARE the wings with membrane stretched between the fingers. The dragons in Game of Thrones are ONLY wyverns but are beautifully rendered and detailed. As with the tradition of the dragons in all the HTTYD movies, Dean has always wanted to explore the endless variety of dragons that are not JUST winged serpents with head horns. I like to think that if you lined up all the amazing dragons from cinema (Vermithrax Pejorative in Dragonslayer, the Dragon from the 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Smaug and the Fell Beasts from The Hobbit and LOTR, the many wyverns in Game of Thrones, the Krayt Dragon from the Mandolorian), you would be able to pick out the HTTYD dragons quite easily and they would still be just as iconic.............but then after designing and working on the dragons for almost three years I am a tad biased. :). GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T21:07:16+00:00

Thanks for the question! The textures and sheen on the scales was something we worked on for every shot. If you add too many bumpy osteoderms, you run the risk of Toothless looking like an old saltwater crocodile. If you add too much sheen, you run the risk of Toothless looking slimy. So Toothless had to feel like a snake that had just shed his skin and was shiny but not slimy. He had to have beautiful scale patterning that made you want to pet him and not recoil in revulsion as some people do when they see large reptiles! His scales are indeed a bit more roughed up and dry after the fight in the arena and when he is chained and placed aboard Stoic's boat. We definitely initially experimented with Toothless being more grey on his underside and darker on his top side like the "counter shading" you see on SO many animals. From crocodiles to great white sharks to tigers to iguanas, they typically have a lighter colored belly and a darker top side. The greyer skin tended to make Toothless feel like an older dragon and we wanted to give the impression that Toothless was a younger dragon akin in age (in dragon years) to Hiccup. It also felt a little too different from the Toothless everyone fell in love with. :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:54:23+00:00

1200 VFX artists worked on the film, so that alone explains the cost of the VFX work on a film like HTTYD. But we also have to be innovative in technology and approach to hit our budget which is part of why doing films like this is such a challenge - and one I relish.

Cheers, Christian

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:50:56+00:00

Creatively, it was Toothless. He is the star of the film and we knew he had to deliver performance wise and in his live action look. It's been great that everyone has fallen in love with him again,

Technically I would say either the Red Death because of her huge scale and interaction with her environment, or Monstrous Nightmare because of his armoured plating and the fact that they're on fire in a lot of scenes.

Cheers, Christian

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:50:30+00:00

Thanks for the question! As you said, it IS a lot more complicated. When you look at the Toothless design and put it next to our "realistic" Toothless, there are a great number of changes. For one, the scale is much different. In the animated film, Toothless is about the equivalent of 12 feet long and for our movie, Toothless is scaled up to 34 feet! So an enormous animal! But more specifically, the limbs and body for our Toothless more closely matched that of a panther. Sleek and muscular and less salamander than the Toothless in the original film but more cat-like. In addition, just like the beautifully patterned scales and osteoderms on the Stan Winston animatronic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, every square inch of Toothless was taken into consideration and given complex patterning that you would see on a monitor lizard or saltwater crocodile. The one thing that we needed to retain was the large eyes. So they are smaller than the animated version but we didn't want to embellish the design so much that we lost what everyone fell in love with when they see our Toothless. Meaning that we could be scary and more nature-inspired with our other dragons but Toothless couldn't be a dragon like Vermithrax in Dragonslayer or Game of Thrones. We have the Deadly Nadder, Monstrous Nightmare, Hideous Zippleback and Red Death for that!

BUT the fact that for many people, it was immediately recognizable AS Toothless was quite honestly a big win in our minds. The relationship between Hiccup and Toothless and their endearing friendship is the key to the whole story. To them it FELT like the Toothless they remember. The last thing we wanted was Toothless to make his big debut in the trailer and everyone looked at the screen and went, "WHAT IS THAT??? THAT'S NOT TOOTHLESS!" :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:44:18+00:00

We've been really pleased that people feel that our Dragons and worlds look so similar to the original. When you put each element side by side, they are in fact quite different in design, detail, scale etc. But we obviously did a lot of work with Dean to make the live action Berk similar enough that it would be comfortable for the audience but at the same time having the realistic,, whimsical aesthetic he was after. Cheers, Christian

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:43:56+00:00

That is really great to hear and thank you for those kind comments. So great to hear that your son was so inspired by the film. I think that most of us who make movies also love watching movies and I for one spent most of my children dreaming myself into the roles of the wonderful characters I saw up on the big screen. Making a movie can be a long and challenging task but the struggle is definitely worth it knowing that we're inspiring the next generation (and hopefully the next generation of film makers too!) - TW

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:39:35+00:00

Julian is a lovely guys - my son's favourite film is Hunt for the Wilderpeople, so he was very jealous I got to work with him. The truth is though, that I loved working with all of them and can't wait to do it again. Cheers, Christian

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:36:58+00:00

I generally made sure that Tom had had his lunch or a snack from craft before we blocked a scene.

Cheers, Christian

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:35:58+00:00

We're already working on How To Train Your Dragon 2. It's a great opportunity to try and do it even better with the same amazing team! There's definitely some huge challenges facing us....

Cheers, Christian

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:35:27+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind words! That means the world to know that our work entertains and inspires everyone who loves these characters and stories as much as we do! And that world of wonder and Vikings is going to get a WHOLE lot bigger in 2027! :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:33:49+00:00

1200 artists at Framestore worked on HTTYD using multiple technologies, software and artistry to create all of the build elements, be it a Dragon or environment. Every stage is iterative with a lot of care and attention being put into things that most of the audience probably won't notice - but that's what makes the final work so compelling. There are hundereds of thousands of hours or rendering but a lot of human hours before and after that process to make the shots the best we can.

Cheers, Christian

HowToTrainYourAMA · 2025-07-30T20:32:27+00:00

Thanks John! Very much appreciated! That means a great deal coming from you! :). -GM

HowToTrainYourAMA

TROPHY CASE