#i'm going through all these old posts on the dreamworks account from when the show was brand new and it's giving me all these FEELINGS 🥺

[tippenfunkaport]

I was today years old when I found out the official She-Ra Dreamworks site has a little VR set up of the characters.

[kingofthewilderwest]

I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the dragon designs in TNR, but I actually liked them. (With the exception of Wu and Weiʼs wings, which look awkward). What do you think about the dragon designs?

I have more fun talking in an upbeat way about the latest media myself! I’ll be honest about my opinions of the dragon designs below, including the good, the bad, and the ugly, but I hope you won’t think I descend into complaints, because I have no intention of complaining for a second. And there’s lots I enjoy and will highlight. TNR honestly does give us some great dragon design material.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Feathers and Plowhorn's designs are fantastic, a perfect reflection of the DreamWorks Dragons universe: taking unique inspirations from unexpected creatures and combining them with lovable, whimsical designs. The limitations to their appearance is the animation budget, not the design itself. Imagine how stupendous they’d look with the budget of a movie theatrical release: they’re just that good they’d deserve to be on the big screen!

Feathers is beautiful, long, and lithe, the forms I’ve gravitated to since I was a kid drawing my own serpentine creatures. With Plowhorn, the combination of the gem horn and the beetle wings was a stroke of ingenuity. Give the artists my applause for creating such uniqueness!

Now we’re getting into the polite constructive criticism territory. I don’t think Webmaster is a good design for a rider dragon. For a single episode enemy, that’d be fine. But I don’t think the shape is conceptually graspable enough to imprint on viewers in the way a main character’s dragon should.

I think Wu and Wei looks clunky and unappealing. In theory the colors should work together, but they don’t. And the dragon’s shape does not work. I hope you’re not upset at my personal opinion, but for those interested into what I really think, I admit I find the design ugly. Which is a shame, because I love the notion of expanding HTTYD dragons beyond Vikingdom into other cultures’ understandings, like Chinese dragons.

I’m not a fan of Thunder’s look. It could be worse but it could be improved. The blaze on the face, for whatever reason, doesn’t come off looking appealing. Mostly, though, it’s the proportions with Thunder that feel “off.” I get that they gave him a lanky, young cat sort of look, but the result is his whole body feels “off.” The flatness of his head combined with the skinniness of his neck is the start of the awkwardness.

Granted, I'd prefer he weren’t a Night Light at all, and I have my bias in that I didn’t like the original trio of Night Lights introduced in Homecoming (in that case, it’s because of how they were babyified). So that needs to be taken into account when I say I don’t care for Thunder’s appearance: the whole premise isn’t catering to someone like me. Chances are you’d be hard pressed to make any Fury-adjacent creature appeal to me in a modern show.

As far as the rest of the dragon designs in the show, I want to make a post where I glibly rate everyone! Go through every dragon, old and new, that TNR shows. I appreciate that we see some but not all of the old species and that the high majority of the screen time is on new dragons. Off the top of my head, the vomiting pus bag is the best thing I have seen in my thirty years on earth. I. Love. It. I would buy merchandise of that dude! The Sky Torcher is a cool concept, though needs more budget and a few tweaks, but it certainly stuck with me among the many new dragons we’ve seen. I hate how the Bubblehorn looks with an utter passion. But overall, I have fun seeing how the new dragons look! And I think there are way more positives than negatives when it comes to the designs of background, non-rider dragons! Definitely can’t complain to MORE DRAGONS!