How To Train Your Dragon Cat Animation

Tim hither. This weekend sees the release of How to Train Your Dragon 2, the outset of just ii major animated features coming out this summer (and having to imply that Planes two: The Aeroplane Fight Fire Now is a "major" motion-picture show tastes like ash in my mouth). More than importantly, it'southward the sequel to a four-yr-one-time flick that's broadly regarded equally the best movie DreamWorks Animation has ever made. And in that location accept been many appreciations advanced through the years every bit to why How to Train Your Dragon is so good – a comic tone that never trumps the basic sincerity of the story, John Powell's gorgeous, Celtic-tinged score, the first bodily decent animation of normal humans in the studio's history – I tin can tell you pretty hands why it'southward my own personal favorite: it's the all-time movie about cats ever made.

Okay, that's a stretch. But the motion picture's primary dragon, Toothless, is near as peachy a cat-analogue as the movies accept made, and information technology'southward non an accident. There's a gif that'southward been going around forever, so I'thou sure enough of you have seen information technology by at present, that compares footage from the sequel with footage recorded by one of the animators of his cat with duct tape on the tail. For "reference", which is the lawmaking give-and-take professional person animators utilise when they torture animals for their job.

But I'thou already globe-trotting a lilliputian bit from my point (a bit of drifting is worth it for that gif), which is that of the many reasons the HTTYD franchise is artistically the all-time thing DreamWorks has going for it, Toothless being one of the most charmingly designed and well animated characters in any big budget animated film of the 2010s is nigh the elevation. Information technology'south his eyes, that's what does it; nosotros're difficult-coded to find anything with big eyes to exist merely the damn cutest, and Toothless'due south are as wide and interested and warning as they come up.

Broadly, Toothless borrows from the design of Stitch, the alien creature introduced in Disney's 2002 Lilo & Stitch, which was not coincidentally directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, the aforementioned team who establish a happier home at DreamWorks when they made the first HTTYD (DeBlois has stayed on for the sequel, while Sanders has jumped ship to make The Croods and its own sequel for the studio). What worked at that place worked hither: large, ovoid eyes; floppy ears, a behemothic mouth that'due south perfect for being, messy grins, and torso language based somewhat on everyday animals. Dogs in Sew'due south instance and, yes, the common housecat here. Specifically, in the first movie, the cat owned past the character's supervising animator Gabe Hordos (who isn't working on the sequel).

Linking the movements, shape, and personality of an blithe creature and so specifically to a real-life fauna that wouldn't be the first thing you'd necessarily think of when the word "dragon" comes to heed paid of terrifically. When Toothless moves, information technology's with the thoughtfulness and smoothness of nature, stretching, looking, twisting in ways that communicate his thoughts swiftly and elegantly; and anyone who has ever tried to interact with a cat can recognize the exact meaning of all those individual gestures.

It's a cute piece of animation, but beyond the technical elements, this is just plain adept storytelling: making us autumn in love on the spot with the adorable, but not besides cute to seem implausibly cartoony dragon. And once that'south all done, the rest of the film can do what it will: we're either 100% on board with the characters or we're probably not ever going to exist. Luckily, like all cute animals, Toothless is easy as hell to dearest, even if he's just a agglomeration of 1s and 0s all in a line.

It's for that reason, more than anything to do with its world-expanding story or character arc, that How to Train Your Dragon 2 is worth getting excited over: it'south some other take chances to spend time with this remarkably well-made, personality-filled picayune creature. DreamWorks can run the franchise into the footing as hard every bit they want: equally long as the spectacular physical operation of Toothless is still part of the production, they tin't make a story shabby enough to make information technology an entirely bad experience. The fact that the films are, so far, pretty bully otherwise is really just icing on the cake.

P.S. Like I said, the Stitch/Toothless relationship is obvious even if y'all're non looking for it; it's as well the inspiration backside one of the goddamn cutest pieces of fanart I've ever seen, past deviantART user TsaoShin. Voila: