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Topic Started: 18 May 2015, 23:40 (5681 Views)
Cartoon Freak
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Deadly Nadder

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While this might be an example it's not the best one to use for reference. Reason being it's expected for there to be some growth and development changes from baby to adolescent/young adult. It's not usual (emphasis on the word usual) though to see it in adults.
It's true that the difference between a baby and an adult is generally going to be significant, but there's another gap of time that can produce a result just as significant: the gap between young adult and old adult. Certainly, this produces a huge difference in humans, particularly in the texture of the skin. It's true that we don't have a handy reference for this with dragons, but it strikes me that if they were ever going to want a dragon that was very old for its species, then they would make it visibly so. Therefore, the cloak being from a very old Night Fury remains the most probable origin, given that there are no other black dragons in the franchise.
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Despite this though I still maintain my point, that this is a plot reveal that is better left ambiguous. But if this is what they decide to do then I can see they'll probably go down the line of protagonist has moral dilemma of whether or not to kill antagonist, and if that's the case I can about bet what they'll do to avoid him making the choice. In which case there's nothing wrong with that it makes for a decent story. I mean it worked for the lion king and no one should have to tell anyone how well that turned out. Hopefully this movie will turn out good to, but I don't know why it does but it just bothers me to a degree. Though if it does turn out that I'm wrong I'll gladly come back and apologize for wasting time until then I'll keep my opinion for now.
If they hadn't already provided a huge evidence to make the audience think that the cloak was from a Night Fury, then yes, these things would probably be better left ambiguous. At this point, however, the evidence is there, and to go nowhere with it would just be frustrating for most of the audience, even if many of the people wouldn't know why.
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I still don't get why people think the cloak MUST have some sort of meaning. For all I care it's just there to underline him as a bane of dragons, and by extension it validates the capabilities to exert his dominion over the dragons that are his. It isn't very convincing to see an old dude with only one arm terrorizing dragons all by himself, so I presume they added some details to him to make it more plausible, one of which is a dragon skin to make him fireproof. What kind of leader of a dragon army would one be if he isn't fireproof?!

Yes, as pointed out as of yet we have not seen more black dragons in the HTTYD universe. But, in addition to that, black (or more like dark grey-ish) is one of the only colours that fit with Drago. I mean, sure, you can make him have a turqoise skin with orange stripes or whatever but you don't have to be a professional writer to know that that would look ridiculous on Drago.
If it was simply that Drago were wearing a cloak of dragon skin, then you would be absolutely right. It's useful to him, it hides that he only has one arm (thus disguising a weakness - not that said weakness really seems to hinder him, but admittedly we don't have a point of comparison), and it shows that he can kill dragons. By making it black, however, they've added another distinctive aspect to it. If they don't do anything with this, then it's pointless.

Drago is already one of the most cliched villains I've seen in living memory, even without the colour choices. By making him wear a black cloak, they just make him cliched in design as well as in everything else. On the other hand, they could easily have gone with one of these two colours:

Purple: A colour commonly associated with rulers, showing how Drago views himself. Now admittedly, you wouldn't go Twilight Sparkle purple on him, but there are plenty of more muted purples that would go fine.

Red: The other common colour for villains, but not nearly as overused as black. Its association with blood and fire could also symbolise Drago's violent and destructive nature.

So there you go, two good colours, depending on whether you want to go with how Drago sees himself or how he actually is. Both work for a villain, neither look ridiculous*, and neither have the problem of immediately making the audience think there's a more interesting backstory to it than there actually is.

*Though I would just like to point out that this is a character whose method of controlling dragons is to shout at them like he's doing a really bad Rain Man impersonation - he's already ridiculous. Admittedly, it's not ideal to make him more ridiculous, but he could have been wearing bright pink, and I would only have taken him a tiny bit less seriously.
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You should pay attention to, say, game designers then. They do it...

All. The. Freakin'. Time.
All the examples that come to mind from video games are things that the player has to search for. Finding the thing is its own reward. This doesn't work with the cloak, which is right there when any non-disabled member of the audience can see it.
Number of times I've watched the trailer: 18.

My pet peeve: people who refer to complete strangers by their first name. The correct ways to refer to a "John Smith" whom you have never met are Smith, Mr Smith, or John Smith. Not "John". He's not your buddy.
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Greyliminator
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Small home repairs viking

Demonwolf002
17 May 2015, 21:48
Greyliminator
 
You should pay attention to, say, game designers then. They do it...
All. The. Freakin'. Time.
Not sure this is the best example to be honest. While this does happen it also is a different medium as well. While they are similar and the stories they tell are told in similar ways more often than not, they shouldn't be. Usually movies work best when they're following the show don't tell technique. This technique doesn't work as well with video games, though I also don't feel it has been adapted all that well either. Reason being games are interactive movies aren't and so games should tell there stories through there interaction not through showing their player something while taking away control. But this could be a whole other topic in and of itself.

Simply put (And another answer you'd end up getting if I don't say it now) most game designers aren't really story writers. So they tend to make mistakes most writers wouldn't have made. Saying that though there have been some amazing stories written by game designers who weren't full fledged writers,(at least in my opinion) but I would consider these the exception not the rule.
I think we have a different understanding of the term 'game designers' here, but that would be my fault due to the lack of explanation. In this instance, I meant a whole team that, at least for bigger titles, includes not only programmers (which is what many people only think of when they hear it) but also artists, musicians, designers and often also storywriters. It's not like they do it as a side thing next to coding or whatever. They (I assume) generally have an idea of what they are doing.

Cartoon Freak
 
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You should pay attention to, say, game designers then. They do it...

All. The. Freakin'. Time.
All the examples that come to mind from video games are things that the player has to search for. Finding the thing is its own reward. This doesn't work with the cloak, which is right there when any non-disabled member of the audience can see it.
Right. I get what you are telling me, but I wasn't referring to objects that you have to search for. I could try to give an example of what I do mean, but in the end I must admit that the example of game designers isn't the best out there due to the different state of a narrative in a game. To be honest, after I pressed the Post Reply button I was already asking myself that, but I had figured it might be better to wait and see. ;)


Cartoon Freak
 
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I still don't get why people think the cloak MUST have some sort of meaning. For all I care it's just there to underline him as a bane of dragons, and by extension it validates the capabilities to exert his dominion over the dragons that are his. It isn't very convincing to see an old dude with only one arm terrorizing dragons all by himself, so I presume they added some details to him to make it more plausible, one of which is a dragon skin to make him fireproof. What kind of leader of a dragon army would one be if he isn't fireproof?!

Yes, as pointed out as of yet we have not seen more black dragons in the HTTYD universe. But, in addition to that, black (or more like dark grey-ish) is one of the only colours that fit with Drago. I mean, sure, you can make him have a turqoise skin with orange stripes or whatever but you don't have to be a professional writer to know that that would look ridiculous on Drago.
If it was simply that Drago were wearing a cloak of dragon skin, then you would be absolutely right. It's useful to him, it hides that he only has one arm (thus disguising a weakness - not that said weakness really seems to hinder him, but admittedly we don't have a point of comparison), and it shows that he can kill dragons. By making it black, however, they've added another distinctive aspect to it. If they don't do anything with this, then it's pointless.

Drago is already one of the most cliched villains I've seen in living memory, even without the colour choices. By making him wear a black cloak, they just make him cliched in design as well as in everything else. On the other hand, they could easily have gone with one of these two colours:

Purple: A colour commonly associated with rulers, showing how Drago views himself. Now admittedly, you wouldn't go Twilight Sparkle purple on him, but there are plenty of more muted purples that would go fine.

Red: The other common colour for villains, but not nearly as overused as black. Its association with blood and fire could also symbolise Drago's violent and destructive nature.

So there you go, two good colours, depending on whether you want to go with how Drago sees himself or how he actually is. Both work for a villain, neither look ridiculous*, and neither have the problem of immediately making the audience think there's a more interesting backstory to it than there actually is.

*Though I would just like to point out that this is a character whose method of controlling dragons is to shout at them like he's doing a really bad Rain Man impersonation - he's already ridiculous. Admittedly, it's not ideal to make him more ridiculous, but he could have been wearing bright pink, and I would only have taken him a tiny bit less seriously.
I think this all pretty much boils down at how one perceives both the use of colours and cliché bad guys. Yes, black is used by a lot of evil characters, but I do not associate a black cloak on Drago with cliché bad guys for a two main reasons:

1. It's a dragon cloak. When looking back on the dragons I know (from all kinds of stories, movies and games) and when I count how many of them were black, it only seems normal for me for this skin also to be black. I know that in the HTTYD universe black dragons might be super rare, but for all we know the character designer just took his/her share of artistic liberty and made the thing black.

2. It's not like he's in full black. Drago also has his share of other natural colours like grey and brown. This in combination with black doesn't make him a bad guy by definition for me. For all I care they could've used his design as Hiccup's lost dragon riding uncle or whatever.

As you may have already noticed, you can see that the above two reasons are riddled with 'me's and 'I's. That, and the fact that I do not at all agree with your statement about Drago being ridiculous (regardless of whether his methods are far-fetched), makes me think that the way of how a black cloak on Drago is perceived is mostly if not almost entirely personal.

Again, you're probably right that it'll be a Night fury skin, my point is just that I myself do not really agree with black=badguy. But, alas, Dreamworks and I are not the same in that respect, and so I fear that all of what I said will become moot sooner rather than later anyway.

Um.. Hi?
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Demonwolf002
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Lone Dragon

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I think we have a different understanding of the term 'game designers' here, but that would be my fault due to the lack of explanation. In this instance, I meant a whole team that, at least for bigger titles, includes not only programmers (which is what many people only think of when they hear it) but also artists, musicians, designers and often also storywriters. It's not like they do it as a side thing next to coding or whatever. They (I assume) generally have an idea of what they are doing.
(Trying not to go to far off topic here so going to try to keep this short.)

This was also kind of my fault for one working off a somewhat older and a far less common occurrence now of the idea that game designers have to wear many hats. This admittedly happens less often now than what it did 10-20 years ago, but it still can crop up from time to time even now so was why I brought it up.(Looking at it I don't know why since it has practically no bearing on the topic at hand so there's that) Although there are still other problems with current Narrative design and story writing in games. One being it's still not given the attention it should be. It's better and getting better but we still have quite a few instances of story writers being brought in late into a games development cycle to just write a whole lot of words really quickly. And well it's really just a poor idea of what a story writer does if someone thinks that's all it takes. Admittedly this is probably more a problem with publishers and less game designers so yea...

To sum it up succinctly pay attention to my first paragraph not the second since the first has somewhat more bearing on the context at hand. Even though it might also suffer from personal opinion. (But at least it has the benefit of me not being alone in it so there's that.)
See you in the skies Dragon Rider!

The Dragon Root:Thing what I wrote.

Is Toothless Evil? :Me possibly being crazy, but fun.

The BerkCast The HTTYD podcast, you should listen.
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Cartoon Freak
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Deadly Nadder

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I think this all pretty much boils down at how one perceives both the use of colours and cliché bad guys. Yes, black is used by a lot of evil characters, but I do not associate a black cloak on Drago with cliché bad guys for a two main reasons:

1. It's a dragon cloak. When looking back on the dragons I know (from all kinds of stories, movies and games) and when I count how many of them were black, it only seems normal for me for this skin also to be black. I know that in the HTTYD universe black dragons might be super rare, but for all we know the character designer just took his/her share of artistic liberty and made the thing black.

2. It's not like he's in full black. Drago also has his share of other natural colours like grey and brown. This in combination with black doesn't make him a bad guy by definition for me. For all I care they could've used his design as Hiccup's lost dragon riding uncle or whatever.
1. (a) The classic dragon tends to be either red or green. You can see this in such things as visual representations of Saint George, the flag of Wales, and every visual representation of Smaug I've ever seen (which makes me think the book probably mentioned that he was red, but I have a headache, and thus can't be bothered checking my copy right now. There has been a move towards black nowadays, but that's mostly in video games, and generally reserved for a dragon who's also blatant, cliched evil.

(b) Drago's design would have gone through dozens of people, at least. Are you seriously suggesting that none of them raised the point that only Night Furies are black in the HTTYD universe? Once that connection has been made, it cannot be unseen, and DeBlois would be smart enough to know that not making that cloak a Night Fury skin would just piss off the audience. It's in there, they know it's in there, and they know that's how the audience is going to interpret it.

2. Hypothetically, the design could have worked on a different character. When you use it on someone who's already a ludicrously cliched villain, however, the whole ensemble just makes the character seem even less interesting. People will be a lot more willing to forgive boring characterisation if they at least have interesting, different designs to look at. Unfortunately, black on a villain is just boring, and only makes the villain more boring. And I'm pretty sure that DeBlois is smart enough to realise that, given that he is at least a very good director from a visual standpoint.
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I do not at all agree with your statement about Drago being ridiculous (regardless of whether his methods are far-fetched)
I can just about see how Drago's method was supposed to work on paper. DeBlois most likely envisioned a very savage, animalistic roar. Unfortunately, what he got was Hounsou doing a really silly yell, which is either like some drunk person pretending to be King Kong, or someone doing a really bad Rain Man impersonation. That's not the slightest bit intimidating, and in fact, Chester A. Bum's impersonation of it came closer to being scary than the real thing did.

Now, if they'd hired a professional voice actor, it would probably have worked (well, except maybe for the stick - I still don't see the point of that). Frank Welker is the obvious choice, since he can do good villain dialogue and does animal sounds so well that people can't tell the difference (fun fact: he did all the lion roars in The Lion King, which were way more terrifying and powerful than anything that came out of Drago's mouth). I get the feeling Jim Cummings could have pulled it off as well, as some of his performances have scarcely been recognisable as human.

But, you know, that would have required a western animation studio to cast an actual voice actor in a major role in a feature film, and I'm legitimately struggling to think of an example of that from the last twenty years. This is in spite of the fact that it would probably be cheaper than hiring celebrities. So instead, we get stuck with Hounsou's funny noises routine, and a villain who is thus impossible to take seriously.
Number of times I've watched the trailer: 18.

My pet peeve: people who refer to complete strangers by their first name. The correct ways to refer to a "John Smith" whom you have never met are Smith, Mr Smith, or John Smith. Not "John". He's not your buddy.
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hcsp1
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My only master is the free wind

I'm just going to say that while Cartoon Freak does bring up A LOT of good points on why this cape is made out of Night Fury skin, there are a few behind the scenes info bits that could help support this theory.

From what Dean told us about HTTYD 3 so far;
1) Toothless will have a bigger focus in the 3rd movie and I recall hearing something about disscovering his past.
2) Drago will be back and Dean said that he plans to make him "A lot more complex".
3) The movie is going to have a non-linear structure, meaning flashbacks.

Taking all of these points into consideration, making Drago's cape made out of a Night Fury's skin is almost mandatory in order for this movie to work. Dean pretty much set himself up for making this theory real with all of these facts.

Let's not mention that by the time HTTYD 2 was out, Dean already started working on ideas for 3. Both sequles were pitched at the same time as we all remember, so he most likely had this idea running in his mind once Drago was made the villian of the second movie, meaning that making the cape black has a point behind it.

Only 3 years until we'll find out what's going on in that film...
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Toothless123
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Night Fury

hcsp1
20 May 2015, 14:21
2) Drago will be back and Dean said that he plans to make him "A lot more complex".
This could imply that Dean purposefully made Drago un-complex (I personally thought he was very complex, but hey, that's just me ^_^ ) in order for us to be amazed at where his character development goes in HTTYD 3. I mean, by just looking at the two films so far, you can tell he's not a bad director, so I doubt that he'd have made Drago a "bad" villain without even thinking about it.

Just going to post this analysis I made here because it's on-topic, and you guys might be able to think up some good points to say about it:
https://docs.google.com/document/m?id=1 ... uluvGI54xA
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Demonwolf002
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Lone Dragon

hcsp1
 
From what Dean told us about HTTYD 3 so far;
1) Toothless will have a bigger focus in the 3rd movie and I recall hearing something about disscovering his past.
2) Drago will be back and Dean said that he plans to make him "A lot more complex".
3) The movie is going to have a non-linear structure, meaning flashbacks.

Taking all of these points into consideration, making Drago's cape made out of a Night Fury's skin is almost mandatory in order for this movie to work. Dean pretty much set himself up for making this theory real with all of these facts.
Again I've accepted I'm more than likely wrong on this one, and that's fine I accept that. But I don't think it's unreasonable to say that all 3 of those things can be done without the cloak being made of Nightfury skin, and to say that it has to be is just well false. Yes I do understand this is more than likely the way it will work for this movie, but it doesn't have to.

1: More focus on toothless is fine I'm all for that, but knowing his past is not needed to enjoy this story. It's an unnecessary answer to a question that I do think is better left ambiguous. The same can be said for Nightfuries in general it's an unnecessary answer. Especially when you remember the movie has already set out to answer the question what happened to all the dragons. (and we know this because Dean has talked about this also) Again I would be fine if this turns out to be a Nightfury skin cloak. My problem comes in when you have Drago coming out and telling us this as well as telling us he killed the last Nightfury nest I mean at least try to be vague with it.
See you in the skies Dragon Rider!

The Dragon Root:Thing what I wrote.

Is Toothless Evil? :Me possibly being crazy, but fun.

The BerkCast The HTTYD podcast, you should listen.
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