The Concept Art of Game of Thrones Season 6

wun wun battle
Wun Wun in the Battle of the Bastards

Every year, Game of Thrones bowls us over with its incredible visuals and season 6 was no exception. The show reached new heights with the epic Battle of the Bastards and the Battle of Meereen (packed into one episode), the introduction of beautiful new locations like Horn Hill and Oldtown, and with huge moments like the wildfire explosion and the attack on the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave. Now, thanks to design studio Karakter, we get a look at the concept art that helped create the stunning visuals that we saw onscreen in season 6.

According to Karakter, they worked onsite for several weeks in Belfast, Northern Ireland with the show’s VFX team to create the concept art for season 6.

Here is a selection of the artwork from this season:

The Battle of Meereen, with Daenerys’s attack on the ships and the Dothraki horde taking on the Sons of the Harpy.

battle of meereen

Meereen2

 

Dothraki horde

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Horde

Oldtown and the Citadel

On Karakter’s site, the VFX concept artist Floris Didden says of the location, “As we had not seen Oldtown before it was double important for me to hit all the established points we did have. The layout was inspired by the radial city plan of Amsterdam, with Oldtown’s many canals circling the spoke of the Hightower.”

Oldtown

Of the Citadel’s awe-inspiring library, Didden says, “The Maesters of Westeros are the most scientific people in a world of backwardness and I wanted the architecture of the Citadel to reflect this fact: ordered, radially symmetrical and highly sophisticated with complex mechanisms reflecting the light of reason through a cavern of gloomy ignorance.”

Library

Horn Hill:

Horn Hill

The destruction of Baelor’s sept and High Sparrow’s end by wildfire:

wf1

wf2

HS

The Siege of Riverrun, with Brienne and Pod:

Riverrun

The Night King’s attack on the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave, with the famous door-holding:

NK1

NK attack

Meera Bran etc

wights

Hodor

There are even more images at Karakter, so visit their website for the full slate of season 6 concept art!

(H/T to Kotaku for the find.)

Sue the Fury
Susan Miller, Editor in Chief of WatchersOnTheWall.com

12 Comments

  1. Some awesome art. Also impressive how close some of those shots were to what we ended up seeing on screen.

  2. Wun Wun swinging a horse around would have been cool to see on the show, but I imagine it would have been really hard to pull of effects wise.

  3. The three dragons, Wildfire, the one with Hodor, Meera, Bran and Summer are all amazing, so is the one of WunWun at the battle. A bit disappointing that there aren’t more from the BotB.
    The artwork here is excellent.

  4. batfan:
    Wun Wun swinging a horse around would have been cool to see on the show, but I imagine it would have been really hard to pull of effects wise.

    Not really, they had horse molds to make that ridiculous pile of bodies. I’m sure it would have been easy to make one appropriate to scale for Ian to grab onto and smack into soldiers. I admit the Battle of the Bastards was a visual masterpiece but the whole progression of the event made no sense and is one of the biggest qualms I had for this season. Especially Sansa “WE NEED MORE MEN” but other than the 5000 knights I have waiting for me. Ugh. They just needed characters to die and that’s why things happened.

  5. Mark: Not really, they had horse molds to make that ridiculous pile of bodies. I’m sure it would have been easy to make one appropriate to scale for Ian to grab onto and smack into soldiers.

    yeah, I knew it was weird that Wun Wun didn’t have any kind of weapon, now at least I know someone thought about it, but it was cut, prob for the budget (or maybe they thought that a good guy shouldn’t swing an animal like that, animal cruelty and stuff)

    Mark: I admit the Battle of the Bastards was a visual masterpiece but the whole progression of the event made no sense and is one of the biggest qualms I had for this season. Especially Sansa “WE NEED MORE MEN” but other than the 5000 knights I have waiting for me. Ugh. They just needed characters to die and that’s why things happened.

    The battle was very well shot, and yet I didn’t enjoy it. Everything about it was so dumb:
    – Sansa’s silence about the vale
    – Her great advice about Ramsay: “he will try to trick you” (awesome, the enemy’s commander is not going to do what we expect, that’s new in military history)
    – Rickon can’t turn left (or right)
    – Jon’s Leeroy Jenkins moment
    – Ramsay’s soldiers are so devoted to him that won’t abandon him even as he fills them with arrows
    – The crazy huge stack of corpses
    – Jon et al just looking and scratching their balls while being encircled very slowly
    – LF being able to move a whole army all the way up the north without anyone noticing (more innovations in transportation?)
    – Jon’s Leeroy Jenkins moment 2: assaulting Winterfell by himself (cost him a giant by the way)
    – Somehow no-one thinks that Sansa’s silence and Jon’s “bravery” cost the life of thousands of men, au contraire, he’s the right material for king

    😛

  6. I do like concept art :thumbs up: sometimes it’s more aesthetically pleasing than the realisation of it!

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