Character Visual Effects in Game of Thrones: Behind the Scenes

Summary

In this article, we dive into the character visual effects in the final episodes of HBO’s Game of Thrones. From the dragons to the wights and the new characters introduced in the series, we explore the range of character work done by the visual effects team.

Table of Contents

• Dragons
• Wights
• The Wall and the Wildlings
• Real Actors and CG Effects

Dragons

In series 4 of Game of Thrones, the dragons are bigger and more impressive than ever before. Emilia Clarke is filmed reacting to full-size molded plastic heads on sticks, which Pixo Mondo then replaced with detailed CG dragons. Gone are the stuffed toy reference stand-ins of previous seasons.

Wights

The reanimated undead of the White Walkers, the wights, were implemented with advanced visual effects in series 4. In one scene, Bran Stark and his companions are attacked by a group of wights that emerge from the snow-covered ground. Vera fights them off by actually fighting a healthy stuntman in a green suit. The production matched CG characters over the top of the motion of these filmed green screen stuntmen. The wights couldn’t be matched perfectly to these stuntmen, not only because of their skeletal form, but also because the team at Scanline VFX wanted a sense of rigor mortis, a stiffness added in because those wights had actually been dead and buried in the snow for some time.

The Wall and the Wildlings

The Wall, the massive 700-foot high wall that stretches from Forest Fang Mountains in the west to the Bay of Seals in the east, is a new character in the series. It is attacked by the Free Folk, or the Wildlings Army, complete with giants and woolly mammoths. These shots required some creative thinking. The team at MPC had to animate those mammoth walk cycles completely before anything else so that the team could then program the motion bases that the giants sat on to move correctly. This allowed the actors playing the giants to be composited back on the walking CG mammoths and still move and sway correctly. This was made even more complicated by the fact that the giants had to be shot with a special scaled motion control green screen system. This would allow the giants to be scaled up relative to the normal actors who are playing the wildlings of the north that are moving next to them, and they all had to move correctly in perspective throughout the shot.

Real Actors and CG Effects

Sometimes the best solution to character work is to actually use real actors whenever possible and then just add and craft the final shots by adding in complex CG and effect simulation animation. In the massive scythe shot which dispatches the climbing wildlings on the wall, the characters are actually live action, and the environment and all the effects are added as CG, showing the importance of combining real actors with CG effects to create the most impressive visuals possible.

Conclusion

The character visual effects in Game of Thrones are truly impressive, and the range of work done by the visual effects team is remarkable. From dragons to wights, and new characters like the Wildlings and the mammoths, the team at MPC and Scanline VFX have truly outdone themselves in creating a world that feels real and alive.