House of the Dragon
Client
For the second season of House of the Dragon, HBO and co-creator Ryan Condal wanted to refresh the opening titles with a dramatically different new direction. In this season the “Dance of the Dragons” begins, a period that finds the powerful Targaryen family on the brink of civil war. The visual language of our sequence is modeled after real medieval tapestries that were a record of history (such as the Bayeux tapestry, which tells the story of the Norman Conquest). We wanted to delve into the Targaryens’ long, illustrious history dating back to their mastery of dragons in ancient Valyria, and carry that story through to the tumultuous events of the present. While some of these moments have been seen throughout the show, we also wanted to include events that fans deeply familiar with Targaryen lore would recognize.
As we watch House of the Dragon, the history is still being created, and this tapestry is a living history- events are stitching together before our eyes. To create this effect, we started with Medieval-style, flat 2D illustrations. Then our 3D team broke them apart by color, and broke those colors down further into thousands of dots. These dots dictated where each individual thread would start. After manually directing the orientation of each thread, we were able to create a convincing digital tapestry. Blood was added to the 3D scene, seeping into the weaving threads to represent the bloodlines that are key to the Dance of the Dragons. As the story continues to unfold, our visual history also continues to be written; the sequence will continue to be updated as the season progresses.
