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Hi I'm Mike Seymour from FXGuide.com for Wired.

It's one thing to create something that is

computer generated and looks completely photo real.

It's another when there's literally no reference for that

because the character's completely invented.

In Game of Thrones season three Pixomondo in Germany

were tasked with the problem of producing some

realistic flying adolescent dragons.

Now the show has such high production values

that the team set out to produce something

that was not only cool,

but physically plausible.

To do this concept designs were developed that accounted

for the adolescent proportions of the dragons

who had actually grown since season two.

The bigger challenge though was making them fly believably.

Just how do teenage dragons fly?

Clearly there doesn't exist a fire breathing mammal

or some kind of flying winged creature

the team could reference.

So they had to set out to work out for example,

the lift to wing ration with

digital wind tunnel simulations.

They also had to do water simulations

and studied a variety of reference material.

In fact they ended up with a mix of an eagle and a bat.

The eagle is used more for soaring and gliding motions.

And more of a bat kind of motion when the dragons

were taking off.

This also had to be tempered of course

with the fact that the dragons are not yet fully grown.

So they needed to have a young kind of energetic

and slightly awkward appearance.

The most complicated part was really the animation.

The hovering mode was always tricky

because it shouldn't look too stable

and so we had to have those wing flaps big enough

to the body in position.

And to find that right amount of speeds and wing flap size

was very important for us to keep it believable.

The final result is both a fan favorite

and something that really sits very well with

the immersive world of Game of Thrones.

Of course animation only partly solved the problem.

To fully solve it they had to get very accurate lighting

and really interesting interaction between

the actors and the digital characters.

[Sven] So I would say it is traditional approach

so they had a staffy on set.

So three staffies for the dragons.

It was a great help for the actors to have real

puppet creature of the air standing in front of them

to get an idea of what,

how it would look in the end.

This was taken out of the frame and then

the shot was done with a tennis ball on a stick,

just mimicking what the dragon might do at the end,

so to just give her an eyeline.

The final solution delivered on the realism

and the quality of feature film visual effects,

but inside the constraints and timescales

of episodic television.

Well if you want to learn more about

the visual effects secrets behind some of

the biggest blockbuster productions,

be sure to subscribe.

I'm Mike Seymour for Wired.

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