The Original Concept

[blackrose108]

Anyone remember that the original version of HTTYD was supposed to have them be 8-year-old or something, and was more of just a carbon copy of the book?

Yeah, we're all glad it went the other way, but since that project was super underway before Chris and Dean jumped on board and made it a theatrical masterpiece, I did some "just for fun" searching and found some pretty funny storyboards that didn't make it into the movie.

Firstly are these from Toby Shelton. He posts a lot of storyboards on his blog, so I wasn't too suprised when I found that he worked on HTTYD, but his boards are from the earlier version. You can see how young Hiccup and the original Fishlegs look, but oddly enough Snotlout looks almost exactly the same even in this early version (though Hookfang is a lot smaller...and on a leash ). And, yes, that small dragon running around the floor is Toothless, isn't he cute?

tobyshelton.blogspot.com/2010/09/going-digital-story-sketches-httyd-2006.html

Some more stuff from Toby shows Snotlout's concept as a girl and more tiny Toothless:

tobyshelton.blogspot.com/2010/09/some-early-character-sketches-httyd.html

And some more early Hiccup/Toothless bromance boards:

tobyshelton.blogspot.com/2010/08/random-story-sketches-how-to-train-your.html

A new guy, Justin Hunt (who I almost confused with Justin Hook--a guy working on the tv series) also had some early storyboards. These are after Chris and Dean joined, so everyone is aged up, Astrid is included, but Gothi seems to have a pretty big role in this version. They all seem to be on a boat going somewhere (almost like in Boneknapper) but I honestly don't get what's going on in this scene...it seems interesting though.

justinchunt.blogspot.com/2011/03/help-japan-animated-buzz-and-some-story.html

And of course there's always this video with a lot of early concept art in it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=20alb2pVBPM

So, have you guys found anything else on old concepts from the movie?

[Unitedmoviemaker]

Wow, those were some pretty cool finds! ;D
Thanks Rose!

[nightfurymaster]

Oh wow. That IS a good find!!! Ohmygoshhhh I'm sooo glad they didn't go that way for the movie

[Unitedmoviemaker]

It looked pretty promising...

One thing I noticed was some of the art from the video in rose's post were in the credits of the finished product! ;D

(That is epic )

[blackrose108]

Yep, I forget the artist's name who did all the artwork for the dragon book and the credits, but he's pretty awesome. I heard in the DVD commentary that he did hundreds of drawings along the course of the pre-production, production, storyboarding, animating, etc. and most of them weren't even used because the story just kept changing.

Another odd theory would be that I think Astrid's character and design might not have been so much a Camicazi copy (sicne Camicazi doens't even come in the first book), but maybe she was the leftover from the girl Snotlout character. Since in the video specifically you can see that girl concept for Snotlout has the same outfit and braided hairstyle as the earlier version of Astrid did. And since Astrid was more of a rival to Hiccup in the movie than Snotlout turned out to be, that might be right.

[Varðr]

There was a document in the bluray disc where the said something like that.... That the project was on its way to its doom ant that it was supposed to a little different.

I think they will slowly raise the bar as the original target audience is getting older...

I hope they do it better than Harry Potter....

[blackrose108]

Definiately, agree with you NorthernStar. I can see them raising the age demographic even with the tv show. Their declaration of it being more "mature" and "dark" is kind of an indication that they understand that's what people liked about the movie, and they're not going to change it. So ultimately I think with future exposure to the franchise we'll definately be seeing more mature storylines than we're used to for Dreamworks, and oddly enough, I think they'll actually be able to pull it off.

Even in "Gift of the Night Fury", the level of character development and their usage of a christmas special to further the bond between Hiccup and Toothless was amazingly done. If that's what we can expect from a christmas special, I'm excited to see what will come on the tv series. And since it's airing on Cartoon Network I wouldn't be too surprised if the tv show retained it's movie rating and was simply rated TV-PG. Cartoon Network has plenty of TV-PG cartoons, so it wouldn't be out of the norm, but I'm still expecting it to be TV-G....having an upper rating would be interesting though...

[Unitedmoviemaker]

I'm glad they are trying to keep the same vibe from the movie. I'm not sure what the difference would be in the rating though...

[blackrose108]

Hmmm, maybe not TV-G but TV-Y7-FV....I really am hoping for TV-PG though. It could give the show some space to be a little more daring, but it's still not risky like TV-14. Plus I think the PG rating would be more for action and violent type content rather than the other reasons...like sexual situations. I highly doubt there will much of those in the series, if any at all.