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.