Students at Lake Grove Elementary got lessons in pursuing their dreams — and training their dragons.
Dean DeBlois, co-writer and director of the upcoming Dreamworks film “How to Train Your Dragon,” stopped in for a visit at the school March 16. He shared with a few classes how he got involved in the movie business and how animation works.
DeBlois worked with Chris Sanders to write and direct the movie. They have also worked together on Disney’s “Lilo and Stich,” which came out in 2002. In “Lilo and Stitch,” the two came up with an original script and idea. This time around, the movie was based on the book, also titled “How to Train Your Dragon.”
The book was fairly simple, and DeBlois told students that they had to add to the story.
“We used imagination to make it bigger,” he said. “It’s about making friends with enemies.”
Another major difference was that the 2002 film used all hand-drawn cartoons. This time around, DeBlois explained, it was all animation done on the computer.
The students got to see some of the final product, watching the new trailer with DeBlois, laughing at parts of the short clip.
DeBlois told students about picking the cast and matching up the actors’ voices with the sketches of the characters. In some cases, the voice behind the image is completely different, like Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who in real life has often been picked to play the nerd. However, in “How to Train Your Dragon,” he plays a hulking bully. DeBlois said his voice just better fit a larger character.
Starting out
DeBlois encouraged the students to stay with what they are passionate about. He personally started drawing when he was a kid, hoping one day to make comic books. But when it came time for college, there wasn’t a comic book major. There was, however, a degree in animation.
“Do what you love,” he told the students. “Eventually people will notice and then they will hire you.”
That has worked out well so far for DeBlois. In addition to “Lilo and Stich,” he was also a co-writer and director for Disney’s “Mulan.” The key, he said, was to make movies that everyone will enjoy.
“We always go back to our 10-year-old selves,” he said.
Technology
DeBlois explained to students the animation movie making process, which still involves quite a bit of hand drawing.
First, the artists do drawings for the animation, figuring out how the scenes will look, the camera angles and the changes from shot to shot. Then animation is used to create very basic puppet-like creations, where it can be seen in 3-D and moved around. After that is finished, animators will add the details and create the movement on each screen shot; 24 shots are required for every second of the film, the same as traditional cartoons. It is the massive amount of images that usually require animation films to take two to three years to create. However, this time it only took a year and a half, DeBlois said.
Finally ,the lighting, textures and background are added into each shot.
“Then it looks like it’s moving, it looks like it’s real,” DeBlois explained.
“How to Train Your Dragon” will also be available in 3-D.
“For 3-D, we make it just like I talked about,” DeBlois said. “But for 3-D, since you have two eyes we put two cameras… When you put on the glasses, then it looks like you can see around it.”
Video games
DeBlois also allowed students to ask dozens of questions, many of which had nothing to do with the movie. But the kids loved it and DeBlois answered every question as best he could, including dozens that centered on the soon-to-be-released video game based on “How to Train Your Dragon” — which kids and some of the adults were quite excited about.
