Emilia, pet the pillow like it's a dragon

February 11, 2015 6:06 PM

This video explains, using a raw-visuals approach (no narration, just lots of images) how the dragons in Game of Thrones are integrated into various scenes. Trigger warning for many scenes of half-eated goats.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (15 comments total)

no not the goats! :(

no not the scene where they chain the dragons up! :(

thanks for nothing Blatcher!

(this is very cool though)
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:55 PM on February 11, 2015

So they model the skeleton. and the muscles and their attachment to the skeleton? Is that standard these days for realistic CGI models?
posted by benito.strauss at 7:04 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought they'd always done it that way?
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:11 PM on February 11, 2015

I love how they go through the trouble to work out the skeletal and muscular structure. So now we can be all, "Oh look at those somewhat anatomical yet still completely obvious CGI animated things drawn next to the wooden live actress who obviously is just sitting there on a rock. I mean, the Jolly Holiday sequence in Mary Poppins still looks more real than this. Except for Bert's accent.
posted by ReeMonster at 7:17 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

They've been doing the skeleto-muscular structure since at least LOTR, it's not a new thing.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:19 PM on February 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I love how they go through the trouble to work out the skeletal and muscular structure. So now we can be all, "Oh look at those somewhat anatomical yet still completely obvious CGI animated things drawn next to the wooden live actress who obviously is just sitting there on a rock. I mean, the Jolly Holiday sequence in Mary Poppins still looks more real than this. Except for Bert's accent.

I think it all looks pretty neat, personally. Is maintaining suspension of disbelief that hard?
posted by lumensimus at 7:26 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

They've been doing the skeleto-muscular structure since at least LOTR, it's not a new thing.

> mfw The Lord of the Rings is considered "olden times"
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:57 PM on February 11, 2015

They were doing that for Jurassic Park so it's more than olden times. It's prehistory.
posted by wabbittwax at 8:21 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

I don't know how the field of animation has progressed (and I'm also old enough that The Hobbit Movie could refer to this) but looking briefly found this article on Jurrassic Parks's CGI, it looks like it was modeled as "mesh draped over armature", with no reference to defining individual muscles.

Did no-one else noticed how much the dragons looked like anatomy drawings underneath, where they used the convention of red for muscle body and white for attaching tendons? (Look at 1m18s for a good shot.) I'm guessing that this must be useful to their animation somehow, as it seems unlikely that they just added it in for this clip.

(You can also see it in the inset at 1m55s.)
posted by benito.strauss at 9:03 PM on February 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you watch the LOTR special features they actually go a step further--you can see that both Gollum and the cave troll have genitals.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:09 PM on February 11, 2015

> mfw The Lord of the Rings is considered "olden times"

14+ years seems plenty long for a technique to no longer be considered "new."
posted by explosion at 9:31 PM on February 11, 2015

Emilia is super sexy, but she does actually move and emote less realistically than the CGI dragons in some of these scenes.
posted by colie at 11:31 PM on February 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

feckless fecal fear mongering: If you watch the LOTR special features they actually go a step further--you can see that both Gollum and the cave troll have genitals.

Can not unsee that comment.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:42 AM on February 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am not sure which modeling software they used for the dragons, but I imagine that the red musculature/white tendons are a built-in feature to aid visualization. The red areas will be the ones that deform and bulge the most. I'm not up to date with the latest trends though.
posted by polywomp at 9:01 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

One shot showed they were using AutoDesk Maya for the 3D modeling, although I'm not sure what else they may have been using for the rendering.
posted by daHIFI at 9:56 AM on February 12, 2015 [1 favorite]