A review by trike
The Art of How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, Tracey Miller-Zarneke
3.0
One of my favorite parts of this book had very little to do with the book itself. I was listening to music as I read it and just as I got to Craig Ferguson's introduction talking about how the movie explained his love of flying, which he discovered after becoming a pilot to combat his fear of flying, Phillip Phillip's song "Fly" started playing. It was a nice little coincidence.
As to the book itself, I want to like it more than I did, but it feels strangely lightweight to me. I think part of the problem is that Cressida Cowell's introduction is really terrific and is a hard act to follow.
My favorite part of the book was the discussion of how the character of Fishlegs evolved. He went from a skinny, bespectacled dragon nerd to the overweight final character. Originally intended as Hiccup's sidekick, they decided that the story was more powerful if Hiccup did his journey alone, and so they changed Fishlegs to better distinguish him visually from Hiccup, who is also a skinny nerd.
Which clarifies what is bugging me about the book: there's very little of this process on display. Perhaps Fishlegs was the most dramatic alteration, but four-plus years of development surely resulted in a huge number of changes in every aspect of the production since it is apparently a huge departure from the source material. Instead we mostly see final designs, with early sketches thrown in here and there.
I also really liked the Viking iconography designs, which are really just incidental things to populate the background of scenes, but the look is cohesive and fun. I could see some of these becoming popular in the vein of garden gnomes, because they combine Viking aesthetics with a Mayan/Aztec visual flair for a peculiar yet whimsical North/South fusion.
Which is kind of weird, since the movie itself is simply jam-packed with interesting stuff. For some reason the book doesn't show them off to their best advantage. I did like the factoid that dragon designs on the Viking houses indicated which dragons those Vikings and personally slain.
Anyway, there are a lot of great pictures here, but I merely liked the book rather than loved it.
As to the book itself, I want to like it more than I did, but it feels strangely lightweight to me. I think part of the problem is that Cressida Cowell's introduction is really terrific and is a hard act to follow.
My favorite part of the book was the discussion of how the character of Fishlegs evolved. He went from a skinny, bespectacled dragon nerd to the overweight final character. Originally intended as Hiccup's sidekick, they decided that the story was more powerful if Hiccup did his journey alone, and so they changed Fishlegs to better distinguish him visually from Hiccup, who is also a skinny nerd.
Which clarifies what is bugging me about the book: there's very little of this process on display. Perhaps Fishlegs was the most dramatic alteration, but four-plus years of development surely resulted in a huge number of changes in every aspect of the production since it is apparently a huge departure from the source material. Instead we mostly see final designs, with early sketches thrown in here and there.
I also really liked the Viking iconography designs, which are really just incidental things to populate the background of scenes, but the look is cohesive and fun. I could see some of these becoming popular in the vein of garden gnomes, because they combine Viking aesthetics with a Mayan/Aztec visual flair for a peculiar yet whimsical North/South fusion.
Which is kind of weird, since the movie itself is simply jam-packed with interesting stuff. For some reason the book doesn't show them off to their best advantage. I did like the factoid that dragon designs on the Viking houses indicated which dragons those Vikings and personally slain.
Anyway, there are a lot of great pictures here, but I merely liked the book rather than loved it.