For his part, Silvani has the unusual challenge of trying to realize 3D characters in a 2D medium.  “There’s no real reference as far as putting it onto a comic page, as opposed to doing Darkwing Duck, where we had everything as line art,” he explains from his home studio in Hawaii.  Sparrow, miles away in sunny California, feels his cohort is continuing to churn out work that will impress his fans.  “James is doing a really good job of keeping the characters on-model while still retaining his signature style.  And we’re lucky enough to have Andrew Dalhouse, who was our Darkwing Duck colorist, coming on-board to color James’ art, so we’ll leave all that texturing up to him.”

The comic is currently slated to run for three issues, with a lead and back-up story in each, though there’s a strong possibility of it becoming a regular monthly publication in 2013.  “We’re following the standard format that we use at Ape Entertainment for our children’s properties,” Sparrow shares.  “We have a stand-alone book with two stories in it that a kid could pick up and enjoy without having to have bought the previous issue.”  It’s an increasingly rare approach in the industry these days, which tends to prioritize hooking readers in with multiple-issue arcs.  Sparrow is comfortable with writing both formats and teases, “as we move on, we may play around with longer stories with deeper themes and more epic adventures.”

In the meantime, they’re occupying themselves with developing the core cast of characters.  “On the parts that I’ve been writing,” Sparrow says of his lead story in issue two and backup in issue three, “I’ve mostly dealt with Toothless, who I think is everyone’s favorite.”  Silvani can’t help but agree.  “I mean, there’s so much expression to him.  I look at my dogs for inspiration when I’m looking for an emotion or a facial expression or a nod of the head or something.”  His mixed hound dogs, Boingo and Huli, are all too happy to serve as models for the creature, whose relationship with Hiccup drives the narrative of the franchise.  As Sparrow explains, “one of the things that was really great about film is that when Hiccup lost his leg at the end, it kind-of tied him more closely to Toothless, who had lost a piece of his tail, and couldn’t maneuver without Hiccup’s invention.  It made the characters mirror each other a little more and brought them closer together.”

“As far as the people characters go,” Silvani goes on to say, “I think I’m having the most fun drawing Ruffnut and Tuffnut because you can just stick them in the background of any scene and have them hitting each other and it’ll add a nice little comedic touch, even if they weren’t written into it.”

That kind of visual storytelling is essential, according to Sparrow.  “Comics are a medium where the motto is ‘show don’t tell’.  I think the quickest way you can ruin a really fun scene in a comic book is to put a bunch of unnecessary dialogue over it.  That said, my story in issue two is intentionally mostly pantomime with the dragons and doesn’t have a lot of words in it, so James really gets a chance to tell the story with their expressions and their body language.”

Silvani will also get a chance to show just how much action he can cram into a panel.  “The story that I’ve just finished up is called ‘The Two Thousand Terrible Terrors’, which are the small dragons that you see in the movie.  I took that theme to heart,” he laughs, “and I think I literally drew two thousand Terrible Terrors throughout the course of a fourteen page story.”  Sparrow can’t help but point out how typical this is of partner-in-crime.  “Anybody who remembers the ‘Infinite Darkwings’ storyline knows how many characters James can put on the page!”