A trip inside the dream factory where they made 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' (photo gallery)

It took five years for DreamWorks Animation to create How to Train Your Dragon 2, the summer blockbuster movie with box office revenues that have surpassed $300 million.

It also took 495 artists, 90 million rendering hours, 398 terabytes of storage, 700 million digital files, and a lot of visionary dreams in the minds of artists, animators, and storytellers.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.