How to Train Your Dragon trilogy head of character animation Simon Otto makes his animated feature directorial debut with the comedy adventure That Christmas. It debuts Wednesday Dec. 4 on Netflix. Otto’s skillset is on full display. In this Animation Scoop Q&A, he discusses collaborating with recent honorary Oscar winner Richard Curtis, working with Brian Cox and crafting a unique holiday family film. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: You adapt Richard Curtis’ books and show us multiple families at Christmastime at Wellington-on-Sea. How did it feel going along with three different storylines — and a little bit more — juggling all the characters and making it all work for the families who will watch this?

Simon Otto: It’s what drew me to the project. In animation, we tend to tell single hero journeys in a fantastic world, or with a big fantastical idea. And there’s a villain, usually. And our story is a multi-threaded storyline, with multiple protagonists, in a world that’s real… that’s based on and inspired by a real town — a small, seaside town in England. That to me was very interesting because I’ve never seen that before. Of course, having one of the greatest screenwriters of our generation actually write our screenplay and being able to collaborate with the person who made “Notting Hill”, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and even up to recently writing “Yesterday” — these incredible, wish fulfillment stories that are talking about small problems or challenges people have and making them big and fun.

SO: As an animator, I studied Mr. Bean sketches frame by frame. He and Rowan Atkinson created that character. All things that I have known and adored. I never actually put it all together until I was asked if I wanted to adapt this children’s book, which turned out to be multiple children’s books that we then turned into a feature film. I got extremely lucky being the person at the right moment at the right time. I was there from the very beginning being able to collaborate with Richard on writing the screenplay and then shaping this film.

JM: There’s this unique dynamic you have in the movie between the kid characters and the adult characters… including Danny and his teacher, Miss Trapper. That stretch of the film, when he has this snow day and she gets to help him improve his education a little bit — and he gets to see a different side of her — that’s a really nice dynamic that we don’t often see in animated films.

SO: Danny is probably the heart of the story. You feel for him because you really understand his predicament of wanting the family to be back together to celebrate Christmas, and then he finds himself in this predicament with the teacher that is really not how you want to spend the funnest day of your life, which is a snow day. I grew up in Switzerland. The moment that snow arrived was extremely special.

It’s a bit [like] the forbidden friendship scene from “How to Train Your Dragon”. I always thought this moment where you linearly experience something happen with a character that you don’t quite comprehend, but it’s like the crossing of a threshold that the characters can’t return from without them knowing that this happened. They’re not aware that they’ve now created a bond from which they can’t really return from. And that’s what the scene is about, and therefore it has quite a heartfelt meaning in the film that builds a lot of what then later gets paid off. I love making those scenes because it’s the kind of animation that I enjoy the most, both making and watching — where you’re really inside the characters’ experience and you try to make it fun and entertaining and also truthful.

JM: Yes. And a lot of that truth comes from Santa. Brian Cox is terrific. And you use him as a supporting but important presence in the movie because he is the narrator who’s providing this interesting perspective on everything that’s going on.

SO: Yeah. For lack of a better term, he’s like a god-like figure, who watches this town slip into chaos. And it even is the trickiest night of his career. Actually, he’s more like an angel, who sweeps through town and touches everyone with just the right thing they need in order to flip a page on what they’re hung up on. I find that really wonderful.

The villain of the film is the blizzard. People’s own expectations of Christmas, which I very much relate to… Christmas was always, “This and this and this and this”, and inevitably it was never that because something went wrong. The turkey got burnt. The dog ate the treat of the Christmas tree. This idea of having this character come into this blizzard against all odds — he’s the master and commander who brings the ship to shore in these difficult times — and that he takes this purpose quite seriously of helping people enjoy this moment where they’re all together. I find that quite beautiful and poetic. And who better to do a master and commander, rough-edged Santa with this really heartfelt, sweet core? I will always cherish these recording sessions I had with none other than Logan Roy [Cox’s character on “Succession”].

JM: Locksmith Animation did “Ron’s Gone Wrong”, now this, and “Bad Fairies” is coming [in 2027]. What do you love about this team and the perspective Locksmith Animation is bringing to the animation medium?

SO: It’s a very interesting company because it’s a small but fierce company that sits in North London. And the talent that is inside Locksmith Animation is very high. Everyone is from movies that you have seen. What Locksmith does really well is that they develop projects up to a certain point with this high-level, highly skilled team of people. It’s run by a group of very, very influential and smart women. Developing a movie outside the studio system gives you a certain kind of freedom to think and be a little outside of the pressure cooker.

And then once we knew the film was ready to go, we collaborated with DNEG Animation, which did “Ron’s Gone Wrong”, “The Garfield Movie”, “Entergalactic” and lots of great projects. This studio that’s on a roll and making better and better films. Collaborating with them seemed like the perfect marriage. Because “Ron’s Gone Wrong” was a really successful collaboration, it felt to us like the right decision to do that again, and it clearly paid off.

JM: In knowing you for about 15 years, you’ve been a part of so many incredible animated films… and now… you directed this. What amazed you about being in the director’s chair and what you’re going to take from that experience to the next films that you do and the rest of your life and career?

SO: My career as an animator has always been about learning — studying something deeply. I animated horses in “Spirit”. How does a horse move? How can you make a horse act? I was behind “How to Train Your Dragon” understanding the physics of flight. How can we create an entire animal kingdom out of these dragons? So for me, it’s always been about learning the next thing and evolving as a filmmaker and an artist. Directing is that next logical step.

I applied the same principle here. I wanted to learn the secret sauce of a Richard Curtis movie and understanding, “What is it that makes his films connect with an audience in a way that a lot of other films don’t?” It’s a combination of wish fulfillment, the cleverness of sketch comedy and the charm and thematic themes about love that he’s after that I find extremely fulfilling. So I learned a lot, and I’m hoping that my next project will be something completely different [and] I can learn new things. I love that aspect of that journey that I have as an animation artist.