New Soundtrack for Riders of Berk

Here's a recent interview with John Paesano, the Annie Award winning composer for Riders of Berk about what it's like to compose for animation and for Dragons in particular.

It also mentions that they are currently working on making a 60-minute soundtrack for the first season of Riders of Berk! Combined with the film score, we now have over two hours of dragon music to listen to!

More Dragons 2 Trademarks

DreamWorks registered several new trademarks related to How to Train Your Dragon 2 on May 4th, some of which may will be familiar to you if you saw the leaked movie photos:

• Snagglefang (dragon breed)
• Windgnashers (dragon breed)
• Cloudjumper (name of dragon)
• Bewilderbeast (name of dragon)
• Valka (character)
• Eret (character)
• Drago Bludvist (character)

Does anyone have any guesses about who these new characters and dragons are?

Five new dragon names for Dragons 2

On April 25 and 26, DreamWorks trademarked several new names in the software, paper goods, clothing, and action figure categories. All of these names were trademarked "in connection with a dragon breed in an animated motion picture." Here is the list:

• Hobblegrunt
• Groundsplitter
• Stormcutter
• Cloudcutter
• Raincutter

If DreamWorks felt the need to trademark these, then they are probably important for the plot (as well as merchandising). So I'm expecting some new dragon toys!

HTTYD 2 photos have been taken down

I heard that the photos that I just posted from the forum may have been stolen from the DreamWorks campus rather than taken at CinemaCon. I don't know whether this is true or not, but in the meantime, I have taken these images down. Sorry.

If anyone thinks they know the real source of these images, please tell me in the comments.

UPDATE: Please stop sharing the photos on Tumblr and Facebook, and please link people sharing them to this page. Thanks!

UPDATE 2: I have contacted DreamWorks, and they would like the images taken down as well. Although it sounds like they did not come directly from the DreamWorks campus, the images were not released to the public (or intended to be online), so I feel uncomfortable keeping them up on this site.

Please help them out by deleting the images you shared.

UPDATE 3: According to frostyjackk, here is an explanation from the original poster of the images:

"There is a small office in Bentonville Arkansas that is acting as a vendor for Walmart. That’s where I took the pictures. I am NOT a Dreamworks employee, I’m just someone who walked in when the door was finally unlocked."

Fox screens Dragons 2 trailer at CinemaCon!

Storyboard frame from Dragons 2 drawn by DreamWorks story artist Tom Owens

According to several sources, Fox screened a preview of How to Train Your Dragon 2 featuring Toothless and an aged-up version of Hiccup, as has been rumored. No one has seen the actual footage yet, but we do have several descriptions.

IGN describes the extended trailer:

The trailer opens with Hiccup (masked and in armor) riding Toothless over the ocean where what appears to be winged whales swim across the surface. Hiccup then leaps from Toothless and goes into freefall through the clouds, plummeting toward the surface. But then Hiccup's spreads his arms and his armor turns into a medieval version of a squirrel suit (like the ones seen in Transformers 3) and he and Toothless fly alongside each other. HTTYD 2 opens in 2014.

And io9 describes Hiccup, the "leather-tricked out hottie":

Hiccup is clad head-to-toe in protective flying leathers. In fact, you can't even see his face until the end, when he rips off his leather helmet (how they didn't make this guy do a slomo hair shake is beyond us). His leg is still gone (an unfortunate injury from the first movie) but it's been replaced with an inventive prosthetic that we're sure Hiccup created himself. Toothless and his buddy race to the sky and then Hiccup jumps off his back, skydiving as a pair towards the ground. But when the ocean appears below the clouds, Hiccup spreads out his arms and reveals leather wings (like a flying squirrel). Together the two fly across the waves.

Who knows whether the this footage will be released to us normal people any time soon. But if it does, I'll be sure to post it here. And if you have any more information, please post it in the comment or leave a message!