I’ve been lucky enough to get to know Dean DeBlois, co-director of LILO & STITCH and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, and a man who is as friendly and personable as he is talented. I just saw him at San Diego Comic-Con a few months back (interview from that coming shortly) where he was helping celebrate the genius of movie poster artist Drew Struzan. Dean has been busy prepping HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2, for which he takes sole director credit. President Barack Obama visited Dreamworks Animation and their motion capture stage on Tuesday, where Dean, along with Jeffrey Katzenberg (a big time Obama fundraiser), presented the magic that is mo-cap and gave The Prez a tour of the company.
Take a look at video from the visit, which has a bit of sneak peek at HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 Dean posted on social media about the event, noting “I just presented our filmmaking process on Dragon 2 to President Obama. He was very gracious and full of questions. And he knew the first movie well. Kind of a surreal moment.”
There’s also the following video of Obama meeting with THE BIG BANG THEORY’s Jim Parsons and legendary comedian Steve Martin (notice the elbow greeting). Wait until you see what Barack sees during this portion of the tour. While addressing almost 2000 Dreamworks Animation employees, the POTUS was quoted to say “Entertainment is one of the bright spots of our economy,” adding “The gap between what we can do and other countries can do is enormous. That’s worth cheering about.”
All in all this is a fun and rather unique moment, for a sitting U.S. President to show some love and attention to some of the hard working animators out there in Hollywood… and being a huge fan of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, and a friend of Dean DeBlois, I couldn’t be happier it happened where it did. Check out the video below and tell us your thoughts in the comments. Are you excited to see the 2014 sequel?
Photo sources: The Wrap and Los Angeles Times