Artist Robert Ball talks about his Game of Thrones: Beautiful Death series
If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, it’s probably safe to assume that you’ve seen Robert Ball’s work before. Artist Robert M. Ball has been commissioned by HBO to illustrate major deaths from every episode in Game of Thrones since the early days of the show. Tech Insider recently spoke with Ball regarding Season 6, and asked the artist what goes into his highly praised, fan-favorite art.
"The Beautiful Death series began back during season one. Game of Thrones was recommended to me by friends – having grown up on Tolkien and Moorcock it was right up my street and I devoured the whole thing."
According to Ball, each poster is created using a combination of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Ball also says it takes roughly four days to finish each piece, and since he lives in London, the artist waits until he has breakfast on Monday morning to watch each new episode of Game of Thrones.
"After that, I open up an e-mail from HBO which contains the quote for the week, and the subject for the week’s Beautiful Death."
Ah, so Ball doesn’t choose which death to illustrate—HBO picks for him. That kind of explains why his illustration for “Mother’s Mercy” depicted Stannis’ death rather than Jon Snow’s, even though the latter was more notable. Apparently, HBO didn’t want Ball to emphasize Jon’s death, given that it was temporary.
"I have Monday to think of ideas and sketch them down, very loosely and rapidly. Usually there’s two or three interesting ideas which I take to the next stage over Tuesday. Over Wednesday and Thursday the chosen image takes shape, and there’s usually big changes in composition to get the image right."
Ball will usually post drafts of the piece during the week to his Instagram account, so his followers can see what the alternative designs looked like. Here are the work-in-progress versions of the illustration for Season 6’s “Blood of My Blood,” which memorializes the scene where Benjen mows down a bunch of wights.
I love how Benjen’s fire-flail has a wolf’s head, the sigil of House Stark. It’s that kind of detail that endears Ball to fans.
When Friday arrives, Ball adds the final touches and HBO releases the official images through the Beautiful Death website.
Ball talked in detail about one of the more memorable designs from Season 6: the one for “Battle of the Bastards.” It’s about the death of Ramsay Bolton, it took Ball some time to find the right angle.
"With only a day or so to go, we realised the story was really about Sansa. And being true to the spirit of the episode we made Ramsay very much a bit part player in his own picture!"
And what’s Ball’s favorite Beautiful Death illustration? He likes the ones where he captured the mood of the scenes the most. For example: he used Ned Stark’s shadow in this one, when Jon Snow beheads Janos Slynt, which is a direct callback to Season 1, Episode 1, “Winter is Coming.”