Toothless | We Have Dragons!

July 6, 2019 Fanart

HTTYD Fanart Gallery #7 – A Dragon Fantasy

Toothless towards viewer, surrounded by rocks

A story outside a story – out of character, out of universe and its time. Whatever the following art shows, it wouldn’t quite fit into the official HTTYD story. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t pretty amazing though!

Sometimes one will come across fanart featuring the official HTTYD characters along with the artist’s own created characters, or variations of the official story.
Personally, I feel it’s not only interesting to see re-tellings and beautiful snapshots of the original story, but also artists’ imaginative variations and fantasy.
This is a subject that I’d like to post about again in the future.

Here are some of my favourite HTTYD fanarts, that are a fantasy of the official story:

June 12, 2019 Fanart

HTTYD Fanart Gallery #6 – Theme: An Unexpected Style

How to Train Your Dragon fanart, painted and drawn a little differently than you might expect.

Hiccup and Toothless looking at each other, like best friends. — By: LivingAliveCreator

Every piece of HTTYD fanart I’ve seen, is influenced by the artist’s unique style. However, one can usually tell that an artist’s own greatest influence when drawing HTTYD fanart, was DreamWork’s main style from the movies.

Cartoony drawing of Astrid and Stormfly looking at each other happily. — By: JellyPuffer

Sometimes, fanart can also take on a “children’s book” appearance. I enjoy seeing peoples’ fanart, no matter in what style it was created, as long as it’s well-made and still makes sense.
Although sometimes, one comes across something that still looks good, but different-good.

This blog post is all about the fanart that to me stands out, just a bit more than first expected – thanks to its unique style that doesn’t easily remind of the style from the official movie or children’s books.

June 11, 2019 Fanart

HTTYD Fanart Gallery #5 – Theme: For the Love of Toothless

Toothless standing on rocks, looking out to sea

Fanart of Toothless, from the movies and TV series! Well, Toothless is my favourite dragon. He’s more than just a super-powerful, fast and rare dragon to look at from afar, but also a dragon who’s willing to reach out and open himself up to those with truly good intentions, rather than just isolate himself completely.
No wonder he’s so popular.

Drawing of small green dragon, with red wing membranes — Original book version of Toothless – Cressida Cowell

The original book series version of Toothless is a “little” different – being small as a rabbit, green and very naughty, but he too grew on me as I went through the books.
In the book series, Hiccup rides a “Windwalker”, who is a very fast and agile dragon. Hiccup was teased by his peers for choosing the Windwalker as his riding dragon, as they’re supposedly common and “an ugly duckling” when younger.

June 9, 2019 Fanart

HTTYD Fanart Gallery #3 – Theme: Funny Hiccup & Toothless Moments

Hiccup and Toothless walking on a log across a river.

Hiccup eating regurgitated fish, scene from HTTYD 1. — Food Gift: DreamWorks A.

The movies had a good deal of fun moments between the Vikings and dragons, and the long-running TV series had quite a lot more.

Hiccup almost completely buried in fish, and Toothless looking at him smugly. — MEGA Food Gift: DreamWorks A.

When the Vikings and dragons in the TV series weren’t learning to work together, or risking life and limb to rescue other dragons, they usually had fun goofing off or were out discovering new things in the Barbaric Archipelago.

Hiccup and Toothless both standing on 2 feet and looking at each other. — Two Bros. DreamWorks A.

These relaxed, fun and adventurous situations have surely helped inspire funny fanart as well.
Today’s blog post is all about fanart showing fun moments and adventures with Hiccup and Toothless.

June 8, 2019 Fanart

HTTYD Fanart Gallery #2 – Theme: Best Friends Hiccup & Toothless

Inseparable - Hiccup and Toothless - by ElinTan

More beautiful Hiccup and Toothless fanart? Sure!
In the coming days and weeks, I’ll not only be uploading and sorting into themes my favorite older fanart, but will also be selecting brand new favourite fanart as it gets sent to me and released.

If you have some of your own favorite fanart you’d like to see posted here – old or new – by all means send it my way! If it becomes one of my faves, I’ll post it on the blog. You can also sign up and post your own art to our “Creative Wall” on the forum. (You must be signed in to see it.)

Let’s begin this blog post with a more mature-looking Hiccup, sporting some manly Viking stubble. The next painting, will show Hiccup when he was just a boy, first discovering Toothless.

June 7, 2019 Fanart

HTTYD Fanart Gallery #1 – Theme: Best Friends Hiccup & Toothless

Hiccup and Toothless resting in beautiful sunlit forest

Woo-hoo! To kick off my weekly favourite How to Train Your Dragon fanart compilation, I’m starting with my favourite subject – showing the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless!
They’re such buddies, it’s adorable.

Hiccup hugging Toothless — Best friends: DreamWorks A.

If you’ve watched the HTTYD series, you will have seen all the dragon riders develop the friendship with their dragons, and learn to get along and work together. The thing I’ve especially kept my eye out for, were cute and friendly Hiccup and Toothless (HicTooth) moments – and the series had plenty.

Hiccup and Toothless, happy — Best buddies: DreamWorks A.

Well let’s get things started, and if you have some of your own HTTYD fanart that you’d like to show, or would like to nominate another artist, then by all means head over to the submissions page and send it my way! I’ll be putting older art into my favourite compilations, and posting the favourite latest art as it comes.
Maybe you could also sign up to the forum, and post your creative HTTYD goodies to the “Creative Wall” for other members to see.

January 6, 2019 Editorial, News

Review of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” – The Hidden Shrek?

Toothless holding up the script to "HTTYD: The Hidden World" and saying "What the hell is this?"

Only a very few minutes of this final HTTYD (The Hidden World) movie, make sense in the context of the entire story up to this point, starting from the first movie in 2010.

Futurama's Fry and HTTYD's Hiccup with attached Brainslugs — Montage. Hiccup, Brain Slug. DreamWorks Animation

Whatever remains, appears to be dedicated towards somehow legitimising unusual personality changes to the Viking and dragon characters.
These personality changes, appeared to have been required in order to push an unusually large amount of modern-day mainstream-media-style themes that simply don’t fit into a “mythical Viking and dragons story from long ago”.
An entire hour of this movie, is spent watching the Dragon Riders either running away like panicked insects and leaving their ancestry, friends, lives and livelihoods behind, or farewelling their dragons.

In the real world, the toxic compromises and concessions the characters of this movie make, would mean the collapse of the society that gives in to them.

The Dragons TV series used to be officially described as the events between the first and the second movie. Unfortunately, the unusual changes in this final movie appear to be so major, that now the TV series was “supposedly” never canon (not part of the official “universe/story”), after all.
Even ignoring the TV series, doesn’t help in explaining the now frequently daft and nonsensical actions made, by this movie’s Berkians.

Editorial, News

Review of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” – The Hidden Shrek? (Bewilderbeast Edition)

Sign above toilet, warning not to flush kitchen rolls, sanitary pads, solid objects, live fish and dragons.

The Hidden Shrek? Or: How to Flush Your Dragon?

Living in Australia, I managed to see the movie when it was first released to theaters here on January 3 2019. One of my first impressions was, that it was made so blatantly clear in the film trailers what the story was about, that there weren’t too many surprises left. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as anything new that wasn’t revealed in the trailers did keep the story chugging along, and also helped prepare the devoted big and small fans for the so-called “bittersweet ending” that we were told would happen.

At the end of the movie, around a third of the children in the cinema on the day were crying and inconsolable.

Along with the predictably positive professional reviews for this movie, at the time of writing this review (January 5), there are already several glowing moviegoer reviews on the biggest movie reviews and information website.
The reviews were mostly from people with accounts that are apparently many years old, but they had never left a review for any other movie or made any other real contribution to the movie information website. I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but let’s move on…