Opening credits sequences for TV shows can set the mood for a series, hint at the story, and become iconic in their own right. Just think about the opening credits to Game of Thrones; even if you weren’t watching, you’d probably heard this tune:
As such, the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon had a tough act to follow. The new show kept the theme song from Game of Thrones, but it changed things up visually; instead of sweeping over a clockwork map, the House of the Dragon opening titles familiarize us with the Targaryen family tree:
As it happens, what we’re seeing here is the model of Old Valyria that King Viserys Targaryen kept in his room, although some fans didn’t think that was clear. Posting on ArtStation, Rustam Hasanov — one of the artists responsible for the House of the Dragon opening credits — shared some of the concept art behind the sequence, and talked about its conception.
House of the Dragon artist explains the opening credit sequence
“It was with some hesitation that the team at Elastic and I took on this project,” Rustam wrote. “How the hell do we top the iconic title sequence Game of Thrones that we created all those years ago? Is it possible to catch lightning in a bottle twice?”
"Putting all the fears aside, we focused on the needs in this expansion of the storyline and what has to be communicated to an audience. The more we thought about it the more it became obvious that we needed to create a hypothetical brutalism-inspired family tree monument, a record of the Taragaryan heritage that would help track the events and characters in the show in a similar way that the GOT sequence used locations."
When you watch the opening credits of House of the Dragon, you see blood leaking down and through what seem to be slabs of stone all stacked on top of each other; this is visually meant to represent different generations of Targaryens; slabs of different color and shape representat when another bloodline (such as the Baratheon line) enter the Targaryen family.
“It was very fun to do a deep dive into George R. Martins’ characters and worldbuilding to make sure we got everything right,” Rustam finished. Check out more of the concept art here!
House of the Dragon season 1 is available to stream now on HBO Max, with season 2 hopefully due out next year.
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h/t Los Siete Reinos