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vindikaetion · 9 days ago

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Hello! I've love your analysis and was hoping you could do one breaking down and examining HTTYD2 hiccup's flight suit. There are so many interesting functions in it and I'd love to hear what you think.

Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoy my analyses. :) It’ll be a lot of fun breaking down Hiccup’s flight suit. I’m not someone who is good at building or designing things, so I cannot acutely talk about the mechanics of how Hiccup’s flight suit fully functions, but I would enjoy remarking on all the features he has and giving my best explanation for how this works (it might not be >90% accurate and I might have made some mistakes, but I tried, haha). I’ve already had to break it down some since I once made a cosplay of this ridiculous clothing (albeit a non-functioning, non-winged one).

For some other analyses on Hiccup’s flight suit, check out these:

Deadly Nadder symbol on Hiccup’s armor

Evolution of Hiccup’s armor [1] [2]

Symbol change on Hiccup’s armor

Hiccup’s flight suit must have taken a whole lot of planning and development. We have already seen the beginning of that in Race to the Edge, but a lot more will have to be designed before he reaches the suit we see in HTTYD 2.

Hiccup’s “Wings”

The wing flaps, unused, are tucked into the sides of Hiccup’s flight suit in the brown leather dragon scale under-tunic. When he wants to unfurl his wings and glide, he has to reach for his legs. There are two brown loops below his knees which attach to the bottom of the wing webbing. Another pair of loops, further up, hook to another part of the wings. These four brown loops are latched in with button clasps to the brown material running up either side of his legs. You can see that pretty clearly when he’s dismantling the flight suit:

Here he’s stuffing the wing material back into the pockets where it’s stored.

After tucking in the wings, he clasps it with a button. There is a small slit in the leather loop that is used to hold the button.

So this means that, in order to unfurl the wings, what Hiccup does is he has to pull the wings out by the loops near his thighs and ankles. Hiccup sticks his wrists through the loops, all four of them. The thickness and length of his vambraces helps the loops remain hooked to his arms.

This design allows Hiccup to unfurl the wings quickly in one swift motion. The loops detach/unbutton from the side of his legs, pulling with them the stored-up wings. The wings are pulled out from inside the “pockets” of his leather “dragon scale” tunic, and the result is that he has the leg loops now wrapped on his arms, the wings pulled out from up and down his sides, and a full webbing between his limbs maximizing surface area and allowing him to glide. The loops near his hips slide up near his shoulders and the loops near his ankles slide to his wrists and hook above his vambraces.

Altogether then, the wing unfurling motion is this:

In the Race to the Edge episode “The Next Big Sting,” we see where Hiccup came up with this idea. One subspecies of Speed Stingers uses webbing between their toes to allow them to run on water. Hiccup creates a webbing between his arms and legs to allow him to spread his limbs and fly. (Notice that the scaled outer vest he’s wearing in Race to the Edge is the predecessor for the “dragon scale” leather tunic he wears in HTTYD 2).

This is an incredibly clever design because there’s no easy ways for the wings to slide out from his arms once he’s unfurled them. Hiccup has made sure that they will stay spread out once he has pulled them out.

The wing flaps are attached to his body at several points. The main area they are attached is below the belts, tucked in the legs and hips of his flight suit. The picture below is with the wings half put-away. I do think the movie shows him tucking away the flight suit slightly too quickly for what he has to do.

The wings are also connected higher up, too. They seem to be tucked from his legs to his armpits, running along his sides above the belts, and they also have some areas where they’re connected higher up near the armpits. The first picture I posted at the top of the analysis gives a clear shot of that. This is the part I’m least sure about on the flight suit, but this is the best I can reconstruct from what I see and reason.

To try to make sense of this all, I honestly recreated the flight suit with hair bands, chip clips, and a towel.

What was fun about this experience was I realized why Hiccup has to wear tight clothes. Wings quickly become heavy and really pull downward - and Hiccup’s wings would have been even heavier and thicker than my towels. The first shirt I wore was a typical loose t-shirt, and the wings pulled down so much on my collar it was ridiculous. You want tight clothes to prevent the wings from pulling down at your shirt, sleeves, and so forth; everything holds better together that way and allows for a tighter unfurled wingspan, too.

So here’s the towel experiment in its full glory:

I attached the towel to my shirt with clips at the armpit, the lower waist, and right above my knee. I placed two loops (hair bands) on the outer edge of the towel and let it drape down.

Then I could stick my arms through the loops just like Hiccup did (although his pair of loops are lower than mine, and his wings longer than my towel).

And then I could just open the wings!

And there you have it. You could imagine that, in the long area on my torso where I don’t have clips, I could circle two belts around me. And that’s what Hiccup does.

Then he just tucks all that away in the “pockets” running up his sides (including over his belts, or that’s the only way I can think it works).

The Dorsal Fin

Once the wings are pulled out to glide, the next step is to release the dorsal fin. This relies on the spring coil he warns Astrid not to wear out. This dorsal fin and the spring coil are not attached to the brown under-tunic like the wings are. Instead, they are a separate contraption, one Hiccup probably developed at a later time. If you look closely, you can see the buttons securing on the dorsal fin. I have it circled in red below:

The fin straps onto his upper belt. Note that this same belt has the spring coil release in the front.

Nothing about this dorsal fin is attached to the original tunic. And as we have seen in Race to the Edge, the original designs did not have a dorsal fin. However, this tunic was always designed to have the back fin attached, being as there are specific loops in the dragon scale tunic to allow the belts to slip through and not slide up and down on his body. This design makes sure that the belts remain secure and in place. The breastplate is also made to accommodate that. It’s split in the back, allowing the fins to pop up right between the plates.

Now in order to release the dorsal fin, Hiccup punches a button on his first belt.

I believe the coil string runs from his chest, around his side, and to the back of the fins, but I could be wrong. The string is wound tight around the coil and pulls the dorsal fins downward; when he punches that button on the side, it allows the string to unwind and the dorsal fins to pop up and outward like they want to. In order to pull the back fin down, Hiccup has to rewind the string. You see him do that multiple times during the movie, including the screenshot I have inserted below.

Other Features

There are additional features embedded into Hiccup’s suit beyond the mechanisms to glide. Some of the features are old, such as the carabiners he has on his second belt (#1 in the labeled picture). Those he first developed on his first official flight harness to snap him into Toothless’ saddle. He keeps that feature in the contemporary HTTYD 2 flight suit. You see him unstrap himself before he skydives off Toothless in the “Where No One Goes” sequence.

You notice (#2) how the belt and dorsal fin arrangement comes off because the belts have buckles.

#3 is the button for the spring coil.

And then there is #4, his knife. He has built his vambraces in such a way that they carry the knife and allow him to sheathe and unsheathe it with ease. That knife is primarily used for simple things like sharpening his pencil. The fact that Hiccup even stores the knife on the left arm is a hint he’s not planning to do anything threatening with it. He’s a left-handed individual, but he doesn’t expect to use the knife much, so doesn’t store it where it’d be most easily accessible - his right arm. It’d be a bit of juggling to get the knife out and into his left hand.

The breastplate (#5) comes on and off at the front at the clasps. He has the ability to tuck his map beneath that plate, which holds it securely for him.

And the last thing I have labeled above is his compass (#6). The right arm - where he stores his most accessible materials - contains both the compass and his unfolding rime of paper. What’s cool about that is that it shows what’s important to him - mapping and exploring the world. The paper compartment stays shut with the same clasping mechanism he has used everywhere else on his suit.

Other Fun Details and Random Comments

It probably takes forever to put this poor thing on. Hiccup wears a tight long sleeve shirt and pants (and a short sleeve shirt) beneath everything. Then he has to put on the leather brown tunic, which would involve stepping into it, slipping his arms through the arm holes beneath the shoulder pads, and then lacing it up in the front. Then he has to put on the back fin and the breastplate and clasp that shut. Then he’ll have to pull on his boots - at least that’s easy - and strap up his vambraces, tightening them with the straps running on their outer edges.

The red emblem on his right shoulder could be a Night Fury. I’ve called it a skull in a past, but I’ve seen other people suggest it’s a Night Fury with its mouth open. This emblem patterns the white symbol on Toothless’ tail. Hiccup basically designs his entire suit to match his best friend.

That said, his breastplate has a Deadly Nadder symbol, giving a bit of indication about his relationship with Astrid Hofferson, while the back of his new helmet has Berk’s crest - the Monstrous Nightmare.

Hiccup would have had to make multiple of these. There’s no getting around it, since he would have added things like the dorsal fin later, and then rework the flight suit to get around the dorsal fin attachment, etc. etc. etc. We’ve already seen him make two sets of wings in Race to the Edge… this means there’s a minimum of three flight suits. I’m guessing there’s at least four.

I have the feeling that Hiccup has advantageous access to materials being both Gobber’s apprentice and the chief’s son. This flight suit can’t be cheap.

These are my observations about Hiccup’s flight suit (combined with the links). I’d love to hear if others have a better, more nuanced view of some of the features, as well as any knowledge that might correct my understanding of how the contraption works. It’s a really cool piece of work, and Hiccup clearly spent a lot of love and joy on it.

#SAVING THIS FOR FUTURE REFERENCE #and also bevause its fascinating

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