Congrats to Dean DeBlois, co-writer and co-director of DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon, which just won 10 Annies, including Best Animated Picture, Best Directing in a Feature Production, and Best Writing in a Feature Production.
Dragon is dedicated to Blake, and Dean’s written on this site: Our first step was to lay out our concept according to Blake’s Beat Sheet, and from there, we laid out the detailed structure. The Board became our foundation, and we never veered from it as we felt our way through the moments of the story. I’m a big believer in Blake’s approach because everything he teaches was proven true in the years of story work I did prior to reading Save the Cat! The theories he touches upon are undeniable, universal truths of human storytelling, and Blake did us all a huge and lasting favor by putting them in a digestible form that people can immediately use and rely upon.
Our heartfelt congratulations on the Annies to Dean, who’s currently writing the Dragon sequel.
