Those cute little dragons on Daenerys Targaryen’s shoulder proved to be some of the trickiest special effects on Game of Thrones yet.
For those shots, Pixomondo visual effects supervisor Rainer Gombos used storyboards and a pre-visualization team to get things ready before filming began on Season 2 episodes, as seen in the video above, which focuses on the VFX house’s work on the popular HBO series.
“The dragons mature this season so their look is more fierce,” Gombos said in a statement about Pixomondo‘s work on the show. “In the first season, the dragons are freshly hatched so they are more delicate. We changed the proportions up a bit and made the spokes more prominent so the dragons are much more menacing now.”
And the great, green flames known as “wildfire“? Pixomondo worked on those, too. The VFX house also made that creepy demon-baby thing Melisandre birthed; built out the many worlds of Westeros; and worked on the direwolf scenes (real wolves were used in Season 2, not dogs).
Pixomondo, which employed nine of its 13 facilities to work on the VFX for the show based on George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels, also created those awesome White Walkers that lurched in from Beyond the Wall at the end of the second season of Game of Thrones, which is nominated for an Emmy (.pdf) for its visual effects.
Check out Pixomondo’s effects reel above to see just how Westeros (and beyond) was built.
P.S. Pixomondo doesn’t say so, but we’re going to assume no VFX were necessary for Tyrion Lannister’s Joffrey-slapping action. That’s gotta be real.
