Tuesday, January 18, 2011

How to train Your Dragon Art

I spent nearly 4 years working on How to Train your Dragon. It was an amazing ride and I had the opportunity to work on almost every iteration the movie took. I worked on the movie as a designer and was lucky to be able to do most of my work traditionally. I spent a lot of the time doing large graphite sketches and layouts. I miss being able work traditionally, but not the powdered graphite that seemed to get everywhere. This week some smaller Dragons sketches. I'm going to post some person work on Friday and check back next Monday for some more work from Dragons.

TABLE - Sorting through drawings on the kitchen table. It gives you a good sense of how big these drawings are. There are a few that perfectly covered my 7 foot wide layout table. Also, I'm not drinking from 4 tea cups. I stored the drawings in a tube and they fought me the whole time; each of them trying to return to their rolled state. Unfortunately my scanner isn't working well for the larger stuff so I scanned a few smaller drawings this week.



 

BOATS - Some very very early boat sketches. I believe this was from my first week working on the movie. I had my own office. I was unofficially launched and was allowed to run wild and produce whatever I wanted. it was one of my happiest times at the studio.





Terrain Studies - Also from my first week on the project. We knew that we were looking for a stylized terrain. I wanted something crazy and sculptural. I was strangely (or not so strangely) influenced by the shape of crumpled paper. 






Thor's day Thursday - Location studies from a location dropped from the final movie. Originally this was where the kids showed the village they had learned to train their dragon. It was a really cool concept. The environment was composed out of hexagonal rock shapes inspired from Giant's Causeway in Ireland.


9 comments:

Jason Scheier said...

So amazing... Thanks for inspiring man.

Simini said...

Beautiful work! I especially love the terrain studies.

Ross Tran said...

AWESOME MIKEE!!!!!!

craig said...

awesome. really dig the stylized terrain. Graphic/realistic blend was killer

Colin Campbell said...

Really wonderful.
You all did such an amazing job with How to Train Your Dragon. It's a real pleasure to find some of your work here from it.
Thanks so much for sharing.

Hannah said...

Your landscapes are epic! How to Train your Dragon is a fan-tastic film, it must have been awesome to work on it. Thanks for sharing some of your work with us and I hope that you can keep updating!

nlombardo said...

Awesome work as always!
Any chance we could get a shot of your workspace? Do you draw at a drawing desk or use a light table often?

Tom Scholes said...

I've had these up on my browser for awhile for inspiration, lovely.

Richard C. Lambert said...

I spent nearly 4 years working on How to Train your Dragon. It was an amazing ride and I had the opportunity to work on almost every iteration the movie took. I worked on the movie as a designer and was lucky to be able to do most of my work traditionally. I spent a lot of the time doing large graphite sketches and layouts. I miss being able work traditionally, but not the powdered graphite that seemed to get everywhere. This week some smaller Dragons sketches. I'm going to post some person work on Friday and check back next Monday for some more work from Dragons.bestselling art