Dragons Are Coming (Blog #49)

Let's Create a Dragon

. At Pixomondo is Frankfurt, Germany, is the home for the three dragons of Game of Thrones and the senior animator and rigger, brought these creatures to life. Florian Friedmann helped in other films such as, The Hunger Games, Hugo, Star Trek into Darkness and some German films until he helped on the hit tv show. For animating these dragons, Friedmann won a VES Award for his part in the show and for his animation of these character. In the beginning, their rigs were much more simple and not as heavy as they are now, Friedmann explained. The rig was re-built with each coming season as they grew bigger and bigger to their size now. Soon new animations were added to make them fly, muscles were added and animations of the horns and scales and by now, they are extremely heavy. Though, with more details, comes more animation controls, over 400 controls. Each spike, each frill has an animator and each finger is animated on their own. Though, making things easier, each three dragons have the same basic rig and just small details are changed when needed to fit that dragons proportions. With the aging of the dragons, many things had to be fixed and changed along with, making more problems that need to hidden which is competely fine as problems are gonna happen at any point, and problems could be covered. And other animals could create the ultimate animal as they are good for reference to understand a creatures movements. 


I Like Dragons. 
Not watching Game of Thrones yet, I haven't seen the progression of the dragons yet, until now and it's extremely impressive of how much time is put into these three dragons and that the rig is so many controls on it to give the dragons true life. Friedmann deserves more recognition for his is teams work on these dragons and all the other work they have done in my opinion. Using animals for movement and to combine them to something you want is a great method and using yourself as an actor, I have seen before and even if it's funny, it does help in the long run.