Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1144162
s u m m e r 2 0 1 9 c g w 4 3 the dragons maintained a realistic speed through the environment, as many VFX would be affected. The decision to animate the dragons for one continuous piece and doing so in real space required more work upfront, though in the end, the continuity of the animation was correct and accurate, and didn't have to be fixed. "If you assign 10 shots to 10 different artists, you'll get a different style or feel for each shot, so this saves you from fixing them," says Snyman. "You have that continuity right out of the gate." Dr a g ons & Dr a g on Fire Weta and Image Engine were responsible for destroying two of Dany's Dragons. The first death occurs when Viserion corners Jon in the courtyard in Episode 3, with Image Engine animating the dragon and Weta disintegrating him. Digital artists also helped Rhaegal once again become airborne, only to be killed off in Episode 4. Injured, after being torn up by Viserion – wounds inflicted by Weta – Rhaegal is finding its wings once again thanks to Image Engine, which animated, lit, and comp'd the shots as the dragon begins to fly again. Then, shockingly, the beast is taken out by enormous bolts fired from Euron Greyjoy's fleet in the harbor outside King's Landing, and Weta picks up the action. Weta developed con- cepts for Rhaegal's wings and quills using a mix of fresh and healing tears. "There's a shot where the dragon raises its wing and you can see the subsurface scattering from the backlighting, to see just how torn the underside of the wing is," says Hill. "Then, in that moment, the arrow hits, and it's a shock – and brutal, as well." In Season 7, Drogon gets hit by a Scorpi- on arrow, but it doesn't kill him. But for this scene, it had to be apparent that Rhaegal has been taken out. Three arrows find their mark, but instead of three different shots, Weta combined them into one majestic orbiting camera move from the point of impact, past the dragon's head, all the way down to the point of view of Dany. "The end of it is from her perspective," Hill says. Then we see the impact of the other arrows tearing through his chest and neck, and we see the beast's face, before coming around to Dany as his wings fold up and he crashes into the water. The dragon's finality is punc- tuated with a last gasp of breath as blood sprays out from its mouth. " T he Bell s " Aer the defeat of the Night King, the victors from the North head toward King's Landing in Episode 4, where they are met by the evil Euron Greyjoy and his Iron Fleet, and that's when Rhaegal is killed. Dany is reeling aer losing her "child" as well as her best friend, Missandei, at the hands of Cersei. She starts to become unhinged. Jon and Dany meet up at Drag- onstone, where Dany accuses her advisor Varys of treason for supporting Jon's right to the throne. Furious, Dany orders Varys' death, and issues the command to Drogon to burn him to death – work done by Pixomondo. With Euron's Iron Fleet lying in wait in the harbor to King's Landing, the second battle ensues. Weta's work was in the harbor, sim- ulating all the rigging, sails, and flags on the boats so layout and animation could reposi- tion the vessels for each shot with all the dy- namics on the boats working correctly. The I n one pivotal scene during the Battle of Winterfell, tiny Lady Lyanna Mormont is picked up by the wight giant Crum, who was filmed with forced perspective, enlarging his 7-foot-plus frame to 14 feet. Lyanna, meanwhile, was filmed separately on greenscreen. The plan was for Weta to composite the two shots together and perform digital alterations to make the connection work. "But when we got into it, we were wondering how we could give the scene more tension and make it more dramatic, more visual and tragic for Lyanna," says Martin Hill, Weta VFX supe. To this end, Weta artists replaced Lyanna's entire body with a digi-double as well as Crum's hand, "so he could almost crush her like a soda can. Just enough to make the scene more horrific but in a very Game of Thrones moment." Before she dies, Lyanna gets her hero moment and stabs Crum in the eye with a piece of dragon glass, and he disintegrates. Unlike the smaller wights, which disinte- grate quickly, Crum begins breaking apart first at his claws, followed by his skin, the tissue and muscles underneath, then the skeleton. "We had this escalating disinte- gration emanating from his eye out toward the rest of his body, which happened in effects, but it also affected all of Crum's shading," Hill explains. "The skin sort of crinkles and retracts. All these cracks appear, and his color changes. We wanted to keep faithful to the plate, so the outer layers were a re-projection of the plates that we re-lit as the disintegration occurs." For the overall effect, Weta used a combination of internal solvers and SideFX's Houdini; the re-projections were done through Manuka, Weta's in-house renderer. Then some additional crumbling elements were added in Foundry's Nuke.