Making Dragons

This article was about how the Pixomondo Animation team brought the dragons to life in HBO's Game of Thrones. Senior animator Florian Friedmann was the main talent to make this possible. He had previously worked on projects like Hugo, Hunger Games and Star Trek Into Darkness. But 2012 on wards, Florian left his biggest mark with his work on the dragons of Game of Thrones which he recited many rewards for. But animating them through out the seasons has proved not to be an easy task in the slightest. For starters the rigs get more complicated as the dragons grow older. To start out they were just small things crawling around with not much detail. But when season two came out they started to fly, which made the rigs vastly more complicated. And by season three, their chests had grown so controls for the chest muscles had to be made. Now the rigs have gotten so complex there's over 400 controls for them. Down to the horns onto their head, and their individual fingers. Also all the dragons have the same basic rig, but small changes in their proportions and textures are made. To study how the dragons would fly, the animators studied bats and watched how they flew through the air and crawled on the ground. To hide the fact that dragons looked weird walking, often times they would hide it with the wings so the animation didn't look weird. The animators also wanted to show the dragons have feelings, but still at their cores are lizards. So they made sure they look reptilian, and not too soft faced like humans. They also make a point that animators don't have to do everything. Multiple simulation tests are done to make subtle movements seem more realistic. The animators are looking forward to the future seasons, for what cool things they will get to animate next.
I thought this article was very interesting. I think it's cool how the dragons get older and bigger through out the show. I'm also even more intrigued to watch Game of Thrones now, which I've been meaning to watch. But overall, very fascinating article.