VFX Supervisor Wayne Stables talks about how he and his team helped manifest a slew of dragons – without getting toasted – for HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel.
The title is kind of a giveaway, but if you somehow thought that the HBO series , the wildly popular prequel to HBO’s wildly popular , featured fire-breathing kitties or flying marsupials, you would be wrong.In fact, the series is populated by, in addition to some narratively consequential humans, a whole lot of dragons, with names like Seasmoke and Vermithor and Caraxes.
And, rather than being more or less interchangeable reptilian eye candy, they are an integral part of the show, with individual personalities and other distinctive characteristics that continued to grow in importance as the season progressed.Leading VFX studio Wētā FX is no stranger to the universe, having worked on the last two seasons of the original series, as well as the first season of the prequel.For Season 2 of , which premiered June 16, 2024 on Max, Wētā FX delivered 290 shots over all eight episodes.
Key features of their work included: Building and animating the new all-white dragon Seasmoke and the 100-year-old dragon Vermithor.Creating the fully digital external environment of Harrenhal, as well as environments for the interior of Harrenhal, Dragonmont cavern, and a dream sequence involving Prince Daemon.Crafting a scene in Episode 7 where Vermithor rampages inside Dragonmont Cave, which included a complicated ‘oner’ shot that was meticulously stitched together with more than 5,400 frames.
Overseeing all these dragon and dragon-adjacent manifestations was Wētā VFX Supervisor Wayne Stables, who explains exactly how this was accomplished.Dan Sarto: Wayne Stables: While they're all unique and there's parts of them that become bespoke, like how they're textured and how they're modeled, there are things that you learn from one dragon to another that you can carry through – things like how they're shaded.What works really well for transmission on the wings on one dragon will work really well for transmission on the wings of another dragon.
You start to develop a certain look across the show.You get some efficiencies from that and also from really just learning what the client likes, what it is that's important to them.Once we've worked out the pattern for a particular dragon, say Seasmoke, we can take that to Vermithor, or to Caraxes, or to Syrax.
So, you create some efficiencies that way, certainly in that you're no longer trying to explore and see what works.Even if we tune it slightly, we're going to have a really good baseline on that second dragon starting point.DS: WS: We got good dragons from Season 1 for Vermithor, Syrax, and Caraxes.
Seasmoke was sort of new; even though he'd been in Season 1, he was very much developed for this season.He was the new dragon on the block.But all the dragons were changed for this season in some way, shape or form.
Some of that was because HBO wanted to really let the dragons be more like actual characters in the show.And if you're going to do that, there's a lot more facial performance and things like that.Also, as we began to put them in different places, we had to start working things out.
For example, you see Vermithor a lot more, and he's big, and he's rampaging through Dragonmont.The design is a bit of a turkey shape under the neck – what does that mean for the performance? Maybe we need to tame that down.So, it certainly wasn't simply loading it in and just animating it.
DS: WS: Jason Snyman, who was our animation supervisor, had worked with the dragons on , so he was quite familiar with them.Usually, we would get into that a lot more, but, in this case, he just drew on his experience from the first series.So, it became more about, what do we want the performance to be, as opposed to just acting like a particular type of animal.
Because, as I said, the dragons became characters.They started to get their own personality and move beyond a particular animal.DS: WS: I think we were really lucky in that [VFX Supervisor Dadi Einarsson] and [VFX Art Director Thomas Wingrove], and the client-side visual effects crew did a really good job with what they shot.
It was one of the easiest shows that I have worked on in terms of incorporating the creatures, because stuff was so well-thought out with regard to scale and where things would be when they filmed it.A lot of planning had been done, and it meant that we didn’t have to worry about how to try and squeeze a character into this space.One of the things I really loved about the show is that the cinematography and the lighting was so beautiful.
For example, for Dragon Mountain, they have the big opening off to the side, so you've got that really dramatic light sweeping through.As we built out that massive cave interior, we put another small opening in the background, which gave us a chance to cheat a bit of an edge light onto things and to work out how the light might wash across it.When you have really nice lighting to start with, it becomes a creative challenge, as opposed to a technical challenge, to make it look the best for the story.
DS: WS: There was a lot – even things like changing the horns on Vermithor from the base model.Obviously, we went through and put a massive amount of detailing into both model and textural type.It wasn't even just the face.
There are close-up shots with Damon sitting on top of Caraxes, and we had to really rework the neck.And then we had to work out what those scale pans look like as they come off the neck into the shoulder so that it works physically.We've done a lot of creatures across a lot of different shows, so we have a technology basis – we know what works for eyes, we know what works for facial, we know what we have to do with the teeth, and the gums and that sort of thing.
DS: WS: They had done previs for the shot, which was our basis.And they had shot a bunch of the plates, sections of it inside, the rough choreography of what was going to go on.Jason, the animation supervisor, took the plates, and he took the set, and he took the previs with Vermithor, and he began to stitch them all together to form something that was coherent.
It was an iterative process that he and Dadi did.And that just stayed in animation in a postvis-type stage for quite a long time.By the time that we began to work on the actual shots, we had established everything that was going to happen.
The key to it was, once again, the planning – how they'd shot it and then taking that postvis time to really put it together.We had to put in some CG ground and, obviously, the walls and the ceiling were all CG, but we tried to hang onto every bit of the plate.We had a big oner team that worked on it.
The biggest part that we ended up iterating on was at the end, when Vermithor hits the ground, to work out how much of an impact, how much weight there should be.We ended up redoing new effects for the dust and the dirt and the other stuff getting kicked up, because we wanted to make that a bigger event.Also, at the base of the gantry in the shot, there's a little doorway that we had to light in a way that allowed the story to come through without the shot becoming about that doorway.
There were 101 other little things about it that we had to negotiate.How much fire should there be? Where do we want the fires, so they don't draw your eye away from the action, but it still feels like Vermithor’s torched the place and we still have continuity? That was actually some of our major work.It was just working through the 101 things that nobody else thinks about, but if they're not there, or they're not done correctly, everything falls apart.
Whether it's a 5,400-frame shot or a five-frame shot, we do whatever it takes, and I take great pride in the fact that we never say no.DS: WS: We did a lot of exterior stuff, which people probably don't notice, but which we really enjoyed doing.We did a lot of ocean work, and a sunset shot of the ships at anchor.
Sure, you've got the big dragons, but sometimes it's quite fun to do the background stuff as well.The shot can just be a bunch of people rowing out to a ship, where you need to put the ship in.It doesn't scream, hey, I'm a visual effects shot, but I like doing that work.
There's a thousand of them in there that you would never know are visual effects.But in every case, every pixel is carefully considered to make it right.Jon Hofferman is a freelance writer and editor based in Los Angeles.
He is also the creator of the Classical Composers Poster, an educational and decorative music timeline chart that makes a wonderful gift.
George R.R.Martin Slams Big Change to ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2
Rodeo FX Soars in ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 VFX Breakdown Reel
HBO Renews ‘House of The Dragon’ for Season 3
HBO Drops ‘House of the Dragon’ Dueling Season 2 Trailers
Wētā FX Helps the Merc with a Mouth Get Expressive in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
Creating the ‘Kingdom’: Wētā FX Brings Life to the Latest ‘Planet of the Apes’ Outing
Wētā FX Fashions Creatures Great and Small for ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’
Wētā FX Flexes its Cordyceps in ‘The Last of Us’ VFX
