《驯龙高手》中的动画和角色特效
原文节选自《驯龙高手设定集》，由龙崖社·龙之书翻译组汉化整理，本合集仅供Bilibili，爱发电（最先更新），Lofter平台龙崖社社团官方账号发布，未经授权禁止转载！
动画师控制角色的身体运动，就像演员提供声音一样，动画师在开始刻画角色之前，会考虑每个场景中的角色动机。无牙是《驯龙高手》中最具挑战性的动画角色，因为他在电影中很重要，而且缺乏语言交流。例如，在制作小嗝嗝第一次接近受伤的无牙的镜头时，动画是需要考虑各种各样的场景，比如：“野生动物被捕获之后会怎么行动？”在拍摄卡嗝第一次接近受伤的无牙的镜头时。角色动画主管Simon Otto回忆道：“在故事的这个部分，我们知道我们需要把无牙塑造成一个动物，而不是一个人，所以我们找来了一个动物行为顾问，以便深入了解。她告诉我们，它会试图立即逃脱，但出于戏剧性的目的，我们认为让无牙更爽快地听天由命，坐以待毙的话，这样能更容易引起小嗝嗝和观众的同情。”
动画团队还花了很多时间。花了大量的时间和精力把“禁忌友谊”的镜头拍好，因为他们知道卡嗝和无牙第一次认识对方的场景是“电影的核心，如果我们失败了，我们就会在故事结束时失去观众。“奥托说。团队在研究故事版之后，把这组镜头里的关键姿势确定了下来，然后把具体的镜头分配给了动画师。他们还测试了无牙的绑定，以确保它能完成某些有创意的动作，比如直立地坐在尾巴上。
角色特效团队负责确保在最终所有元素都加入场景中后，动画角色还能保持原先希望的样子。为了支持这部电影中动感十足的动画场面，角色特效团队需要处理众多的飞行镜头。在这些场景中，人和龙的移动速度超过了每小时100英里。因为这远超一般的衣服和头发自然运动的范围，所以团队需要做出可信的有强风迎面吹来的效果，包括他们的衣服抖动，头发飘动，以及如小嗝嗝的小抄在内的道具随风抖动的效果。视觉效果主管Craig Ring解释说：“要让这些东西看起来很漂亮真的很有挑战性。角色特效团队需要恰到好处地融合真实的风，同时保持角色发型还算好看。正是因为他们出色的工作，才造就了这些飞行镜头中的速度感。”
原文：
Animators provide the physical acting for the characters, and just like the actors providing the voices, animators think about character motivation in each scene before embarking on their portrayal. Toothless was the most challenging character to animate in How to Train Your Dragon, given his importance in the film and lack of verbal communication. For example, animators had to think through scenarios like "how would a wild animal act in captivity? " while working on the sequence where Hiccup first approaches the injured Toothless. "At this point in the story, we knew we needed to establish Toothless as a creature, not a personality, so we brought in an animal behavior consultant to gain some insight. She taught us that it would try to get away immediately, but for dramatic purposes, we thought that having Toothless be more nobly resigned to his fate, just laying down his neck to be killed, would be a draw for compassion from both Hiccup and the audience," recalls Head of Character Animation Simon Otto.
The animation team also spent an extraordinary amount of time and focus to get the "Forbidden Friendship" sequence right, because they knew the scene when Hiccup and Toothless first get to know one another was "the heart of the movie, and that if we failed that we would lose the audience at the end of the story," says Otto. The team studied storyboards and set up key poses for the entire sequence before assigning specific shots to animators, and they also tested the Toothless rig to see if it could handle certain inventive movements, such as sitting upright on its tail.
The character effects department is responsible for making sure that the animated characters look the way they were intended when final and all the elements are placed into the scene. ln support of the action-packed animation in this film, the character effects team had to contend with numerous flying sequences, in which humans and dragons are moving at rates exceeding one hundred miles per hour. Way beyond the normal scope of making clothing and hair move naturally, the team had to believably portray the effects of having a strong wind in the characters' faces, where their clothes flutter, the hair blows around, and props, like Hiccup's cheat sheet, flap in the wind. "It's really challenging to make these things look good. The character effects team has to hit just the right blend of realistic wind, keeping the characters' hair in a pleasing shape. When they've done their job well, it makes a huge difference in the feeling of speed in the flying shots," explains Visual Effects Supervisor Craig Ring.
