Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1144162
s u m m e r 2 0 1 9 c g w 4 5 directors could see the dragon pre-animat- ed, as opposed to just a tennis ball on a stick, and reposition the camera and better frame the dragon." The pre-animation was a single, two-minute piece. "I think Pixomondo completely nailed their work in Episode 6," says Bauer. Scanline participated in the meltdown when the dragon was absent. When it is present, Pixomondo handled the work. The fire, however, was not CGI, but rather mo- tion-controlled flamethrower footage, as is most of the dragon fire in the series. "The challenge was creating a subtleness to the animation, transporting emotions and [Drogon's] thoughts without making him look like a human being. It's a fine line making the audience understand what he is thinking but not making him a cartoony character or humanizing him," says Martin. Another challenge was accommodating Drogon's enormous size for the scene. "You have to squeeze him in but also get a good pose, especially when he is nudg- ing Dany aer she is killed and having all this facial performance in the close-up," explains Martin. "It's all about emotional moments, which is very hard to translate on a CG character, especially when it is meant to be a real animal, more or less." To locate the dragon's performance in its real scale within the set, the crew used simulcam once again. Insofar as Drogon snatching up Dany, while the scene may not look complicat- ed, it required a lot of preproduction and design. "Drogon has no hands. He has these huge claws on his feet, and he had to stand on one leg and carefully and gently slide the other foot underneath her, liing her up and tucking her safely in his foot," Martin says. "We did a lot of different poses before coming up with the right one that's very slow and a calm moment." Dany, meanwhile, was outfitted with a special rig and harness on a long gimbal arm that lied and rolled her to the side, referencing the animation Pixomondo prepared prior to the shoot. End of a n Er a The VFX supervisors and studios were tasked with some difficult shots throughout this final season. While Weta's Hill notes there were so many distinct one-off shots that were really complicated in their own right, he believes the biggest challenge was in the diversity of the work. "We were combining live-action elements with CG el- ements, and there's set extensions and big, epic simulation shots. There's just so much complexity across the board," he says. For Pixomondo, it was definitely an end of an era. "It was really weird seeing the last episode on screen, and I was think- ing, 'OK, this is really it now.' It's strange not to have a discussion with Joe [Bauer] and Steve [Kullback] about the next season. But after eight years, I am very thankful to have been a part of this," says Pixomondo's Martin. While the number and complexity of effects on GOT continued to increase each season, Image Engine's workload jumped by a factor of four between the last two seasons alone. "[The effects] had to be better, but we also had to do more," says Schelesny, as the dragons commanded larger roles. And like the other studios, Image Engine did not want to disappoint audiences in this final season of the cultural phenom- enon known as Game of Thrones, but rather exceed all expectations – and even deliver some surprises. "We knew right from the start that we might be working on something unique and special that may not be repeated by another series for a very, very long time," he adds. So, who won the game of thrones? Bran Stark is crowned King of the Six Kingdoms, as his sister Sansa reigns as Queen of the North, keeping it an independent kingdom. In reality, the big winners were the viewers, thanks in no small part to the armies of VFX artists who helped bring this fantasy adven- ture to life for over eight years. n Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of CGW. A er fighting the wights at Winterfell alongside his master, Jon Snow, the direwolf Ghost is le behind as Jon heads to King's Landing without so much as a pat on the head. But in the very end, we see a battered Ghost receive his reward as he heads outside of Castle Back with Jon. To make the Arctic wolf that plays Ghost the size of a much larger direwolf, the animal was shot with motion control and scaled in the photography for its proper movie scale of 20 percent larger. Weta assembled the photograph- ic elements and applied the damage to Ghost incurred during the Battle of Winterfell. In this last scene, the artists also ensured that Jon's hand interacted correctly with the direwolf's fur. 'It's amazing how many steps we had to do for that," says Joe Bauer, overall VFX supervisor. WITH EACH SEASON, THE DRAGON MODELS BECAME INCREASINGLY MORE COMPLEX.