Creating the Teenage Dragons of 'Game of Thrones'
One of the biggest draws of HBO's hit show Game of Thrones is its ability to transport its viewers into another world. One way that the show's creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, manage to do that is by enlisting talented VFX artists to transform Northern Ireland (as well as its other filming locations) into Westeros and Essos, as well as cleverly animating imaginary creatures, like Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons. Focusing on conceptualizing their idea, this short video from fxguide and WIRED reveals how VFX company Pixomondo brought the dragons on Game of Thrones to life.
As the video explains, it's quite a task to create something with visual effects and make it photorealistic, especially if the thing you're creating doesn't even exist in the natural world.
One of the difficulties with creating the dragons in season 3 of Game of Thrones was not only making their movements physically plausible, but also taking into account the fact that the dragons weren't full-grown, but adolescents. How do teenage dragons move around? How do they fly?
The team had to determine this by calculating and testing things like lift to wing ratios with digital wind tunnel simulations and water simulations, and referencing certain real world creatures like eagles and bats.
Check out the video below for more on the thought process and motivation behind creating these winged creatures.
All of this and more went into bringing the adolescent dragons to life in a realistic, though age appropriately awkward and slightly unskilled way.
What do you think of Pixomondo thought process/efforts? Do you think producing VFX this complicated is practical for no-budget indie filmmakers?