In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sven Martin of Pixomondo revealed how excited they were and mentioned about all the challenges they faced as they made these dragons. Read on to know more.
Game of Thrones Season 8: VFX team reveals how dragons are brought to life on screen
Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons play one of the major roles in the series. They were first seen in the season 1 when the dragons hatch and baby dragons born. Now, they are fully grown and sadly one of the dragons is now with the Night King. To jog your memory, one of the dragons, i.e. Viserion was killed by the Night King in the season 7 to get resurrected as an ice dragon. So, who are the makers of these majestic and fierce beasts?
Several artists have been involved over the period of time to make these dragons. Among those are VFX supervisors Joe Bauer and Steve Kullback. Apart from them, there are various vendors under their supervision such as VFX house Pixomondo.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sven Martin of Pixomondo revealed how excited they were and mentioned about all the challenges they faced as they made these dragons. When asked how they create the same, he said, “I think what most people can’t imagine is, how many different living animals influenced the dragons. Birds and bats were used as flying reference and for anatomy studies, multiple types of lizards and crocodiles were used as models for skin structure and details, and even cheetahs were used as texture patterns. HBO production VFX supervisor Joe Bauer, for example, came up with the idea to add unfolding frills to the dragon design as threatening posture- a feature also existing in nature on the so called ‘frilled lizards'”.
When asked what was the biggest obstacle in creating them and their evolution, Sven said, “Technically, the main challenge was to add all the extra detail which increased drastically with their every year’s growth. For example, one single chest scale of the adult dragon is roughly the size of the full baby dragon in season two.” He also divulged how every artist has got their own special connection as they know almost every inch of the dragons.
He also said that he was surprised to know dragons became fan favourites after season 2 even after having less screen time. When asked about his emotional investment in the dragons, he said that it was good that another VFX team had to kill Viserion as their team’s heart did bleed when he died.
What are your views on the same?
By Pinkvilla Desk