Nigel began his career in London, where he was a founder and director of the international touring collective Trickster Theatre. He went on to work at the Royal National Theatre, found both the London Festival of New Circus and the London International Workshop Festival and receive a Greater London Arts Award for outstanding contribution to London's Arts.

Moving to Australia in the 90's, he directed Tin Symphony for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Opening Ceremony and created eight segments for Today 2000, the worldwide 24 hour Millennium Broadcast. The following year he co-directed The Yeperenye Federation Festival, a historic gathering in Central Australia involving some 2000 indigenous performers from 40 different language groups. In 2002 he directed the Closing Ceremony of Commonwealth Games in Manchester, and created a show at Ankor Wat in Cambodia, featuring 400 Buddist monks, the Royal National Cambodian Dance Troupe and Jose Careras. From 2003 to 2005 he was Artistic Director of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, during the development phase of the event. More recently he directed an epic outdoor show for Liverpool, to celebrate its year as European City of Culture.

In addition to such large scale projects, Nigel's theatre work tours the world. It includes multi-award winning works such as his Indonesian collaboration The Theft of Sita, Clearance, All Of Me, Homelands and Wake Baby which have all toured extensively throughout Australia, Asia, Europe and the US. Other productions have included In Our Name, created in association with the Albaddy family, which told the story of their young children's five year imprisonment in Australian detention centres and Honour Bound, about the detention of Australian David Hicks in Guantanamo Bay, named Best Mainstage Production and Best New Australian Work at the 2006 Sydney Theatre Awards. It has toured to festivals in Vienna, Amsterdam, Wellington and London. The following year his production of the opera Dead Man Walking received seven Helpmann nominations and three Awards.

More recent projects have included Minutes of Separation for the Sydney Theatre Company and IWC Switzerland, featuring Cate Blanchett, Joseph Fiennes, film, aerialists, live performance and animation and the creation of Galipoli, also for the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2010 he directed Sydney Festival First Night, which won the Helpmann award for Best Australian Special Event, and in 2011 received a further Helpmann for Best Direction of an Opera, for his production of Pucini's La Fanciulla. Most recently he created As The World Tipped with Wired Aerial Theatre, a large scale outdoor event about Climate Change which toured the UK through the summer of 2011 and played at this year's Sydney Festival.

Nigel's contributions to Australian cultural life have been recognised with the award of an Australian Federation Medal in 2002 and the 2007 Sydney Myer Individual Performing Arts Award.

Sonny Tilders has spent the past two decades designing and making unusual bespoke contraptions and special effects for both the film and theatrical industries. With a degree in Graphic Design (Swinburne University) Sonny began his professional career at Australia's foremost models and effects company, Mothers Art Productions. For ten years he worked at this Melbourne based company on dozens of TV commercials, television series and feature films. Leaving in 1998, he devoted his freelance career to the specialized field of "animatronics" (the world of high-tech puppet making).

He went on to work on US feature films such as Peter Pan, Ghostrider, The Chronicles of Narnia and Star Wars -The Revenge of the Sith as key animatronics engineer. His television credits include being a lead animatronics engineer for the US science fiction series Farscape. Although focusing on film and television Sonny has also made puppets for Australian theatrical touring productions of The Hobbit and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. In late 2005 Sonny was approached to head up a workshop to develop and build the dinosaurs for Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular. The success of this venture soon lead to the formation of The Creature Technology Company (CTC). Sonny is currently the Creative Director of CTC and sits on the Global Creatures board.

Peter England received a Bachelor of Performing Arts in Design from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, 1994 and a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (Hons.) from the University of New South Wales, 1986. He has won multiple awards including: Helpmann Award for Best Set Design in 2001, 2002 and 2004, Green Room Award for Best Opera Design in 1998 and 2002, Green Room Award for Best Dance Design in 2005. In 1997 he won a Mike Walsh Fellowship and he was a finalist in the Pentagon Memorial Design Competition (with Room 4.1.3) in 2002.

Peter has designed over 50 event and theatrical productions including: For Bangarra Dance Theatre: Fire, Mathinna, Boomerang (Green Room Award 2005), Unaipon (Helpmann Award 2004), Bush, Walkabout, Skin and Fish. For Opera Australia: Sweeney Todd (Helpmann Award 2002, Green Room Award 2002), Simon Boccanegra, La Bohème and Madama Butterfly (Green Room Award 1998). For The Australian Ballet: Amalgamate, Aesthetic Arrest and The Rite of Spring. For the Shakespeare Theatre (Washington DC): Titus Andronicus, Richard III and Hamlet. For Sydney Theatre Company: The School for Scandal, Betrayal, The Virgin Mim, Victory, Tot Mom and Bloodland. For the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Closing Ceremony: Sydney Handover. For the 2004 Adelaide Festival of Arts: Universal Playground. For the Sydney 2000 Olympic Opening Ceremony: Awakenings (Helpmann Award 2001). For the Victorian Opera: Orpheus and Eurydice. For Global Creatures: Walking with Dinosaurs The Arena Spectacular. And for the City of Sydney: Millennium NYE Celebrations on and around Sydney Harbour. Peter is currently designing sets for the Global Creatures stage production of King Kong.

Dan was born in Romania. He studied traditional animation techniques and design while a student at the N. Tonitza Arts High School of Fine Arts in Bucharest and studied art in both Europe and Australia, graduating in design from NIDA in 1991. Dan's skill in traditional animation techniques has culminated with the design for projections in How to Train Your Dragon.

Dan has worked as a designer on over 120 productions in Australia, Europe, USA, Russia, Asia and Africa. Amongst Dan's many career highlights include designing the now famous Deep Sea Dreaming and Tin Symphony segments in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony for which he won the 2001 Helpmann Award for Best Costume Design. Following this success, Dan designed many other large scale sporting and cultural events, including the opening and closing ceremonies for both the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, production design for the opening of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and the 2008 opening and closing ceremonies of the Liverpool European Capital of Culture directed by Nigel Jamieson. This ceremony involved the creation of hand drawn one-off animations projected over huge spaces in Liverpool and 13 regional centres in the UK.

Dan is a designer across the full spectrum of the arts, designing sets, costumes, concepts and animation for opera, theatre, large scale events, dance and film. He received five Helpmann Award nominations for his design work in opera and theatre in Australia of which he has won three, including Best Scenic Design in 2008 for Dead Man Walking at the State Theatre in Sydney. Dan is currently developing the design for a new opera about Walt Disney by Phillip Glass for the English National Opera/Teatro Real de Madrid.

Gavin draws inspiration from a broad spectrum of theatre and performance experience. His work focuses on the biomechanics of the actor and the animation of the actor for both stage and screen.

He has toured internationally as a physical performer with Legs on the Wall and has created large-scale visual and aerial performances in many theatre festivals throughout the world.

He was instrumental in the training and choreography of the Tin Symphony in the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Olympics.

Currently Gavin is working as the aerial/circus director of the Global Creatures production of King Kong scheduled to open in Australia in 2013.

As director, his credits include High Flyers for the Sydney Festival, The Opening of Ferrari World, At First Sight for the National Institute of Circus Arts and Wicked Bodies, La Boite Theatre Co.

As Movement Director and Choreographer, he has worked for The Sydney Theatre Company, Opera Australia, The Queensland Theatre Company, Company B, and The Bell Shakespeare Company amongst others.

For Television and Film, his credits as movement director include Farscape Series 2, the 2001, 2002 and 2004 ARIA Awards, The AFI Awards, and Australian Idol (series 1, 2 and 3); Australian feature film Prime Mover and the TV series Spirited.

Gavin is a teacher of movement and acting at a host of our leading performance training institutions.

The Dragon LX design project was a dream engagement for Philip. The pleasure of collaborating again with Nigel Jamieson, the challenge of integrating lighting and special effects with projection, and of course Dragons.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, Philip's thirty years of design experience encompasses lighting, puppetry, circus, theatre, architecture and events. Many of his works have enjoyed extensive international touring.

International projects include lighting design for the Australian Pavilion for Expo 2010 in Shanghai China and Expo 2005 in Japan; Citrawarna for the Malaysian Govt; the award winning Dragon Child for Beijing Children's Theatre; Circus Oz in New York, Stockholm, New Delhi & Bogota; the English National Ballet in Shanghai and 'Bali Agung' a Hindu epic with 150 performers, elephants, horn bills and more in Gianyar, Bali.

Australian projects include Philipe Genty's Stow-aways; Melbourne Theatre Company's The Seagull, Life x and Rockabye. Chunky Move's Two Faced Bastard; the Melbourne Commonwealth Games opening; Opera Australia's production of Puccini's La Fancuilla del West; the Australian indigenous bicentennial celebration Yeperenye; Handspan Theatre's production of Picasso's Four Little Girls an Cho Cho San; Fruit Fly Circus' Helpmann award winning "The Promise",

Philip is the recipient of a Creative Fellowship awarded by the Australia Council for the Arts and has received numerous Helpmann and Green Room nominations and awards.

Grammy, Tony and Olivier award nominated. Selected Broadway Designs include: Shrek the Musical (New York, US Tour, London), Rock of Ages (New York, London, Toronto, Australia, US Tour), The Scottsboro Boys, Lend Me A Tenor, Elf, Wonderland, Cry Baby, The Times They Are A-Changin', The Wedding Singer, Sweet Charity, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Little Women, Brooklyn. Other credits: Le Reve at Wynn Las Vegas, Ragtime (London), Walking with Dinosaurs, Mame, Opening Doors, Annie. He's designed for Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and The Kennedy Center. Architectural projects include the Plaza Hotel (New York City), Wynn (Las Vegas), Chicago Auditorium Theater and the American Museum of Natural History.

Peter is also a producer and engineer for film, album and television projects. He's engineered television commercials for Sony, Levi's, General Mills, Kia and Mercedes Benz, to name a few. He co-produced the cast album of Shrek, the Musical and was the re-record mixer on his fourth film for the American Museum of Natural History titled Journey to the Stars. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University.

British-born composer John Powell is one of Hollywood's most prolific film composers. His versatile music can be heard in animated films, comedies, action films and drama's including Face/ Off, Kung Fu Panda, Antz, Chicken Run, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Italian Job, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93, I Am Sam and X-Men: The Last Stand, Fair Game, and Knight and Day. Powell's recent credits include Rio, Kung Fu Panda 2, Happy Feet 2, and Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. Powell is currently in production on Ice Age 4. John Powell is the recipient of four Ivor Novello Awards for Shrek, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and How To Train Your Dragon. Last year, Powell was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for his score to How To Train Your Dragon. He was nominated for a Grammy in 2008 for his work on Happy Feet.

Jón þor (jónsi) Birgisson is an Icelandic musician, best known as singer of Sigur Rós, a band he co-founded as a teenager 18 years ago. With Sigur Rós he has released six studio albums, which have taken the band on a journey from obscurity to a position as one of the biggest 'underground' bands on the planet. Sigur Rós' beautifully atmospheric and frequently darkly dramatic work continues to defy categorisation, attracting a broad spectrum of admirers, among them the many film makers who have used their music to startling effect in films such as 'Life Aquatic', '127 Hours' and 'Vanilla Sky'. Elsewhere Sigur Rós have written music for the Merce Cunningham dance company; composed and performed a full orchestral works based on the Icelandic sagas; and made a celebrated film of a tour of their homeland in 'Heima', directed by none other than 'How To Train Your Dragon's very own Dean DeBlois. As a live band they have honed their set to become players of rare emotional heft, performing at festivals and concerts all around the world. Meanwhile, Birgisson, the solo artist, has released 'Go', his first collection of songs under the name Jonsi, which only enhanced his reputation for stunning live representation; and 'Riceboy Sleeps', a collaborative ambient record with his partner Alex Somers; with whom he also stages exhibitions of drawings and paintings. As a film composer Birgisson first work was to write the end title song to 'How To Train You Dragon', followed last year by the score for Cameron Crowe's 'We Bought A Zoo'.

Basil is an award-winning composer, musical director, arranger and producer. He has collaborated with some of Australia's theatre greats on mainstage productions for Sydney Theatre Co., Melbourne Theatre Co., Company B, Bell Shakespeare. He collaborated with Nigel Jamieson on Wrong Skin, a devised dance/drama piece featured at the Adelaide and Darwin Festivals, featuring the famed Chooky Dancers. He received the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Score, for the critically acclaimed Three Furies directed by Jim Sharman (original director of Rocky Horror Picture Show). He also composed and conducted live music for Dream Masons, a devised outdoor theatrical spectacle which opened Tasmania's Ten Days on the Island to 12 000 people, featuring a 18 piece ensemble and choir. Basil has scored over thirty films, many of them screening in international film festivals and winning awards. He composed the score for the critically acclaimed feature film Romulus My Father, starring Eric Bana and Franka Potente, for which he received an AFI nomination. Recently he completed writing songs for Andy X, a surreal exploration of Andy Warhol's life, also directed by Jim Sharman. His score and sound design for the short film Apricot won international acclaim when the film was voted Best Narrative Film at the Vimeo Awards, and his orchestral score for the music-driven art-film SUB- won Gold at the Park City Film Music Festival. Originally trained as an architect, his collaborations with video and visual artists explore relationships between music/sound, image, narrative, and architectural space. Basil also has produced albums and tracks for singers, songwriters, and bands.

Max Lambert is one of Australia's most talented composers, arrangers, musicians and musical directors. His composing credits include work for the Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland Theatre Companies, the Sydney Dance Company and The Australian Ballet. Max has recorded albums with Kate Ceberano, Wendy Matthews, Grace Knight, Vince Jones, Judi Connelli, Renee Geyer, Paul Kelly, Iva Davies and Icehouse. Max was the pianist on the ABC's Playschool from 1991 to 2000. Max has been involved in films such as George Miller's Happy Feet, Jane Campion's Sweetie and Gillian Armstrong's The Last Days of Chez Nous. Notable musical theatre credits have included David Atkins' critically acclaimed production of Hot Shoe Shuffle and Musical Supervision on the ARIA award winning The Boy From Oz. In the realm of Dance Max co-composed and performed in Berlin for the Sydney Dance Company and co-wrote Tivoli for The Australian Ballet. Max's Musical Directorship credits include the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of The XXVII Olympiad, the Commonwealth Games held in Manchester in 2002 and the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar in 2006. Max has also overseen the 2007, 2008 and 2009 New Year's Eve Celebrations in Sydney and the Australia Plays Broadway concerts in New York in 2008 and 2009. Max was Musical Supervisor on the musicals Hairspray and Fame and the Director of Music for the Opening Ceremony of World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. He is currently working on the Global Creatures production of King Kong.

Cressida Cowell is the author of the bestselling "How to Train Your Dragon" book series.

Cressida grew up in London, U.K, and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland. The house in Scotland was lit by candle-light, and there was no telephone or television, so she spent a lot of time drawing and writing stories. In the evening, her father told her tales of the Vikings who invaded the island archipelago twelve hundred years before, of the quarrelsome Tribes who fought and tricked each other, and of the legends of dragons who were supposed to live in the caves in the cliffs.

In 2002, Cressida began to write and illustrate a book for children. She remembered the stories she had written on the island as a child, and turned these ideas into the book "How to Train Your Dragon." There are now nine books in the series and she is currently working on the tenth.

The How to Train Your Dragon books have been translated into over 30 different languages. In 2006, Cressida received the Nestle Children's Book Award. She is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust in the U.K.

Cressida still lives in London. She is married to Simon Cowell (not THAT Simon Cowell), and she has three children, Maisie (13), Clemmie (11) and Alexander (8).