The new DreamWorks film “How to Train Your Dragon” is poised to be a one of the best-received animated films of the year. Several critics have already alluded to its charming storyline and characters, but more so to the painstaking manner in which the 3-D version replicates the wonders of flight. “Dragon” is directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, the duo behind Disney's "Lilo & Stitch," and the Disney studio is the origin of the partnership from which this concept was born.

“Chris and I met on 'Mulan,' actually. That was our first film together,” said DeBlois in a conference call interview. “We were in the story department. And Chris Sanders was head of story when I joined the team as a storyboard artist. And then I took over as head of story when he went to develop a project. And that project turned out to be 'Lilo & Stitch,' which we wrote together and then we directed together.”

Sanders has worked as a co-story writer of such Disney classics as “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.” In consideration of this, it’s no surprise that “How to Train Your Dragon,” which won the box office last weekend with $43 million, is shaping to be such a critical and commercial success. But beyond the singular requisite of crafting a compelling story, there’s also a fascinating aspect of Sanders’s strategy that he claims is the key to his films’ popularity.

“The interesting thing about working where we do is, it’s important not to exclude an age group. It sounds silly, but it’s true — we think pretty much exactly like our own audience,” Sanders said. “You want the finished film to work on multiple levels. If you are a young viewer, you’re going to come in and see things that you find genuinely funny and that you get, and likewise if you’re an adult you’re going to see different things that will affect you on a whole new level. But we do work pretty hard on the teen crowd, I think it’s one of the toughest crowds to get in(to the theater).”

And how does the duo plan to draw an age group characterized by an insatiable desire for action and violence?

“Two things. I think that the level of action in the film ... (is) very grown up in that the film actually starts with a battle,” Sanders said. “But the other thing is that it is a story that emotionally I think would speak to (teens). It's about a kid who is in that exact same age range, who is struggling with his identity.”

Not surprisingly, Sanders seemed unwilling to comment on the negative aspects of his time at Disney — the studio’s penchant for quickly quelling any negative press by either current or former employees exemplifies its commitment to its blameless reputation. Even so, he was eager to comment on the perceived benefits of working for Disney’s rival studio.

“The great thing about DreamWorks is that it has no house style,” Sanders said. “It’s very, very open in terms of the movies we make there — everything from broad comedy to this one, which is a bit more fantasy-adventure. Comic for sure, but it’s also largely about the adventure.”

The process of storytelling is certainly expedited by the lack of a stifling atmosphere, but the best way to draw the most viewers to the cinema is by means of compelling characters. In DeBlois’s opinion, this can be best achieved by endowing characters with the dynamic personalities and subtle complexities of real-life people.

“I think that there are a lot of films where characters are embodying too much of an archetype. If your characters are either pure good or pure evil, they’re just flat, and that’s nothing like real life,” DeBlois said. “So building faults in just makes them more human. It makes the whole experience a little more real and grounded in reality and we're always referencing sisters and people we know ...