The origins of Toothless the dragon

"Panther? House cat? Stealth bomber? Imperial speed bike? Mini? Only one thing is certain: the design of Toothless is the most captivating creature design of the year, managing to combine cuteness and lethal force in one streamlined package that is irrestistable to six-year-olds. Let’s face it: the monsters have been getting a little samey at the movies recently. The screaming red triffid that attacked Jim Kirk in the recent Star Trek would have been scarier still if we hadn’t already met Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. The insectoid mandibles of the predators in Predator will be less of a shock to anyone who has closely watched the Star Wars movies. And as for the massive lower jaw sported by the Kraken in Clash of the Titans, well it bore a striking resemblance to Godzilla in the 1998 turkey, and both to the gargantuan chin sported by Sky Sport’s Jimmy Hill. You half expected the beast to rise from the ocean depths and start correcting everyone’s sports trivia. Toothless has one more advantage over these caterwauling beasties: apart from the odd purr he is almost entirely silent, thus allowing him to retain his essential dragonishness, and granting him to pass unscathed through some of the script’s purpler passages. Not since Ridley Scott denied his alien eyes, in Alien, has a handicap paid off so handsomely' — from my weekly blog post for the Daily Telegraph