Game of Thrones Season 5: Mastering the Dragons with Pixomondo
Since the Game of Thrones Season 1 finale, we have watched Dany’s dragons grow from cute little kitten-like reptiles with a proclivity for charring their food — and blue-lipped warlocks — to large and angry death machines…with a proclivity for charring their food. Game of Thrones Season 5 definitely had its fair share of problems, however — Viserion and Rhaegal, as well as their wild and free brother Drogon — were not one of them.
In that vein, Pixomondo (the VFX team tasked by HBO to bring the dragons to life) has released a rather neat video, showing how Daenerys’ children are digitally rendered onto the small screen.
As you can see, the amount of time, energy, and computer savvy it takes to make those dragons real…or real-ish, is quite simply mind boggling. Also, if you recognized the background music for the video, here’s a list provided by Pixomondo’s YouTube page from Game of Thrones theme composer Ramin Djawadi. This is relevant, since our latest Small Council piece is debating the best musical score from Season 5.
Pixomondo is the same animation/VFX company that used chickens as the inspiration for the dragons on Game of Thrones.
"“I was looking for an animal so we can really discover how the muscles underneath should work,” [Sven] Martin said. “I called over all the animators and they all had to just play with the chicken … You could feel how the muscles underneath are moving and what are the restrictions, where the bone can’t go. We built our dragon basically the same way.”"
In the books, we already know what Dany’s dragons are doing, by the end of A Dance with Dragons. However, with Season 6 stepping into uncharted territory — in relation to book material available to be drawn from — it will be extremely interesting to see how Dany’s dragons fare without her around. Let’s all hope Tyrion has some flame resistant armor, or an apron, or a potholder…or something.