Meet The Characters Of How To Train Your Dragon

With the revelation of a tie-in book for Dreamworks' next CG toon How to Train Your Dragon comes our first real sniff at the film's human characters. Get a good look at them all after the break, just to reconfirm your Pixar bias. Also note that the book promises "Cool 3D images" and a "3D movie viewer", which sound intriguing. What on earth will this "movie viewer" be? I'll be blowed if I know but I really do want to find out.

So, here's the book cover in all its glory.

Are those twins fighting on the right of the image? I think we can quite clearly see who the hero, slightly feisty love interest, fat friend and snarling antagonist are. Doesn't look too promising does it? Somewhat tired, to say the least.

If the source stories are anything to go by, the hero is called Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.

Perhaps more surprising than the human designs are the dragon faces. Not really what I was expecting at all – they're looking rather short and humanoid, when the obvious route would have been longer and more lizardy. Is that the 'bad' dragon on the top left? Why's that one getting the prime spot, with the other dragon off in the background? All the same, if you're up for the book, its available for pre-order on Amazon now.

You can – just about – get a better look at the dragons from another book cover. This one too is up for pre-order. That promise of "Over 200" combonations is a rather amusing way of saying "12 pages" because that's what we have here – a 12 page book.

At least that first one has 24 pages, right?

If you look to the Simon and Schuster site you'll see that the first book is part of a series they're calling "Dreamworks 3D", which suggests that this 3D viewer, whatever it is, will be employed in several tie-in books from here on out.